Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (19 page)

Her eyes darted around. She didn’t want to leave me. She’d been clinging to me like a shipwrecked sailor holding onto the last of her sinking universe ever since I’d announced my job offer.

“I’ll call you every night,” she said.

“I know you will,” I teased.

“I wish you were coming.”

“You need this time with them,” I reminded her. “They need this time with you, too. I can’t keep you all to myself.”

The roaring and whistling of a subway train rumbled through the city’s underbelly, and a speeding train came to a screeching halt right next to us.

“That’s your train.” I leaned in and kissed her lips, brushing my finger alongside her jaw as I took a mental snapshot of her pretty face. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, picking her bag up from the ground. The train’s doors opened, and she lingered for only a moment before boarding. The thought of being away from her for two days wilted my shoulders and put an ache in my heart.

I can’t leave her.

I waited until her train charged away before heading back up to the city sidewalks and preparing myself for a lonely weekend without her.

A buzz in my pocket brought my attention toward my phone. An unknown number was calling me.

“Hello?”

“Yes, is this Dr. Jamison Garner?” a woman’s voice asked.

“It is. Whom, may I ask, is calling?”

“This is Bridget Callahan. I work in the HR department of Brooklyn Hospital,” she said. “Do you have a moment?”

SOPHIE

The backseat of my parents’ Buick sedan was lonely. I sat behind my mom, where I always used to sit and tried to avoid looking at the empty spaces next to me. We pulled away from the train station and headed back home to Cedar Mills, past the miles of ancient, rotting cemeteries, decrepit, gray factories, outdated bowling alleys, and hole-in-the-wall gas stations. That was Cedar Mills. Home sweet home.

“I thought I’d make pot roast for dinner tonight,” my mom said, breaking the silence. Pot roast was always Nori’s favorite, not mine.

“Thanks, Mom,” I replied, forcing a smile and wishing Jamison were there to whisper in my ear that everything was going to be fine.

My dad’s window was cracked a couple inches, countering the fact that my mom always had the heat on blast in the winter. Frozen February air seeped in behind him, mixing with the hot air blowing from the vents, making me feel uncomfortably hot and cold at the same time.

“Did you know that your cousin Laura’s getting married this summer?” my mom announced. “Some winery in Vermont. I really don’t want to drive that far, but you know how Aunt Kathy is. She’d throw a fit if we said something about it. The groom’s not even from there. They just like this winery.” My mom’s way of bonding always involved some form of gossip.

“How are Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dan?” I asked her.

“Uncle Dan retired from the post office at the end of this past December,” my father said. “He and Aunt Kathy are on a Jamaican cruise right now.”

“Nice,” I said. The small talk was killing me. “It’d love a break from this cold.”

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

“Your father and I were talking about taking a cruise this summer,” my mom said, fishing through her purse for God only knew what. “You wanna come?”

“Julie,” my dad huffed. “She’s twenty-four. She doesn’t want to go on vacation with her parents.”

He was right.

“So, what’s the plan this weekend?” I asked, casually glancing down at my phone and smiling when a message from Jamison magically appeared. I fired off a quick “I miss you” and watched the screen diligently for a reply.

“No big plans,” my mother said. “We thought we could just catch up. Maybe take you out for dinner Saturday night at your favorite restaurant. Grammy Gladys would probably like to see you.”

Grammy Gladys was half deaf and legally blind. She could never keep me or my sisters straight despite our vastly different hair colors, and for a while she kept forgetting they were long gone. I cringed at the thought of her calling me by one of their names in front of my parents.

I shrunk down, comforted by the down of my marshmallow coat and took a deep breath.

Baby steps.

Jamison was right. I needed them, and they needed me. None of us could move on without each other.

We pulled into the driveway thirty minutes later, and my father carried my bag upstairs to my room. Stepping into the house was like going back in time. Nothing had changed. The same pictures were on the walls in the exact same places. The yellow Afghan blanket was still draped on the back of the couch. The vintage stuffed geese were still leaning against the entertainment center in the family room. A faint smell of cinnamon potpourri mixed with the savory pot roast aroma was coming from the Crock Pot in the kitchen.

“Welcome home, Sophie.” My mom rubbed my back, reluctant to get too close to me, as if she were still scared.

I climbed the stairs to my old room and flung myself on the bed. My tattered comforter was soft beneath my fingers and radiating with a clean laundry scent. Across the room, my old perfume bottles lined the dresser top, and a collection of stained, pilling, and over-loved stuffed animals sat neatly in a white wicker chair in the corner. Everything was exactly how I had left it years ago. I could only imagine how preserved the twins’ room was.

“Sophie, dinner’s ready,” my mom called from downstairs. She used to have to yell that multiple times when we were kids. We’d stay upstairs playing Barbies for hours until she finally gave up and we ended up eating cold dinners.

My father sat at the kitchen table, a tumbler filled with brown liquid in his hand and a plate of steaming food in front of him.

“Here you are,” my mother said, handing me a plate of roast and veggies. “What would you like to drink? Still drink milk?”

“Water’s fine,” I said. “I can get it.”

We ate in silence, mostly, until the words perched in the back of my throat felt the need to come out.

“I have to tell you guys something,” I said, reaching for my water glass.

My father dropped his fork and sat back, studying me. Even through in liquored-up state, he still knew when something was up.

I cleared my throat, eyes locked on the salt and pepper shakers sitting innocently in the center of the table. “A couple months ago, I was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.”

My mother let out an audible gasp and lifted her hands over her mouth. “Sophie…”

“I had surgery last month,” I said, still averting my eyes. “I go in for a follow-up on Monday. I have to go in for regular check-ups for a while. They’re keeping a close eye on me.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” my mother asked. I lifted my eyes to meet hers, bagged and dark-circled. She didn’t sleep as it was. I never wanted to add to her stress.

“I didn’t want to make you guys worry,” I said, leaving my other reasons unspoken. They’d already lost two daughters. I didn’t want them to worry about losing their last and only remaining child.

“But what if something would’ve happened to you?” my father asked, his voice booming and rattling the tableware. “We never would’ve had a chance to say goodbye!”

“I know, I know,” I said, feeling my lips beginning to tremble. I blinked away the water in my eyes. “I know that now. I’m sorry.”

“Do you have any idea what that would’ve done to your mother?!” he yelled.

“Ken,” my mother said, placing her hand over his balled fist. Her eyes pleaded with him to calm down, as if one more yell of his would send me packing. And she was probably right. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to be back home in the city with Jamison.

“I made a mistake. I’m sorry.” I stood up and took my plate to the sink.

“Where do you think you’re going?” my father asked, slurring his words slightly. We’d only been home a short while, but something told me he wasn’t on his first whiskey sour of the night.

I stood, paralyzed, silently praying my mom would intervene. “Rinsing my plate.”

“Ken,” my mom said. “You need to stop. She said she was sorry.”

“Damn it, Julie,” my dad said, disgusted. His sloppy tone was giving away the fact that it was not quite six o’clock and he was already hammered.

“Ken. Enough.” My mom’s voice rose, bringing my father’s words to a halt. Soft-spoken and mild mannered, she never raised her voice.

I ran upstairs, shutting my door and burying myself under the blankets of my bed. I’d never felt so trapped. I racked my brain, trying to think of who could take me back to the train station, and I pulled out my phone to try to find out when the last train for the night.

I never should’ve come home. Jamison was wrong.

A light knock on my door followed by my mother standing in my doorway forced me to turn away from my phone.

“Yes?”  I asked.

She slipped inside, shutting the door behind her and taking a seat on the side of my bed.

“Your father,” she began, shaking her head and staring up at the popcorn ceiling as she searched for the right words, “he’s taken to the bottle lately. He’s not who he used to be.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m sorry about his little explosion at dinner.”

“You don’t have to apologize for his actions.”

“He just needs a little time to cool off. That’s all.”

“Until then, I’m trapped up here.” I wanted to leave. I wanted to zip up my suitcase and hightail it back to the city. If I left in thirty minutes, I could still catch the last train.

“No,” she said. “You’re not trapped up here.”

My eyes met hers; suddenly finding them much more wrinkled than I remembered. And I watched as she tugged on and readjusted the hem of her shirt, which clung to the rolls of her stomach a little too snugly.

“I missed you, Sophie,” she said, staring at me as if I were far away and not mere feet from her.

“I missed you too,” I said.

I missed the old her. The one without the vacant eyes. The one who used to laugh and smile and bake cookies and ask too many questions. The one who cried when she saw me in my prom dress. The one who’d sleep at the foot of our beds anytime one of us had the flu. The one who would slip us an extra cookie after dinner, when dad wasn’t looking.

“So, tell me about this Jamison guy,” she said, her eyes almost twinkling. She was in there. Somewhere.

My lips curled into a shameless grin the second she mentioned his name. “He’s a doctor.”

“A doctor?”

“A neurosurgeon, to be precise.” I sat up in bed, fully willing to tell her all about him. I loved any excuse I had to ramble on and on about how amazing he was, though she’d have to get the PG version. “He lives on my street. We met outside one night, and we’ve sort of been inseparable ever since.”

“When he called…” My mother smiled, but her words seem to catch in her throat. “Never mind that. Let’s just say I was surprised.”

“I didn’t know he was going to invite you,” I said.

“Your father didn’t think you’d want us there.”

“I didn’t.”

Her face fell slightly, but I was only being honest.

“But I’m glad you guys came anyway,” I added.

“Are you and this boy serious?” she asked. I silently chuckled. Jamison was far from a boy. He was all man.

I shrugged. “I thought we were. He wants to take me to Paris. But he just accepted a job a thousand miles away, so I don’t know.”

A heavy blanket of sadness washed over me as reality sunk in.

“You’ll make it work,” my mom said with a reserved smile as her hand covered mine. “If it’s meant to be, you’ll find a way.”

I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around her and breathing her in, finding solace in the fact that after all this time she still wore the same Charlie perfume and used the same Herbal Essences shampoo. She smelled like the mother I remembered. She smelled like home.

I spent the weekend following my parents around, visiting Grammy Gladys, and helping my mom polish silver and any other mindless activity she needed assistance with. My father apologized at breakfast Saturday morning, and sent me off with a conservative kiss and hug Sunday afternoon, as if nothing had ever happened.