“It’s so good to see you,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“You too, Mom.” I held on to her just that little bit longer, even though she gave me the freedom to step back if I wanted. “It’s the dumbest question in the world but … are you okay?”
She stood back, but didn’t answer, just took both my hands and held them outward, getting a good look at my potbelly. “Aren’t you a picture of perfection? Look at that baby.”
“Growing strong.” I patted the bump.
“Oh.” She covered her mouth. “I never thought I’d see this day.”
David moved in from behind me then and hugged Vicki.
“Yeah, nice bump, sis,” Sam said, elbowing me as I took the back seat to the greetings.
“Thanks. I grew it myself.”
He offered a smile, but it was weak.
“You too,” Vicki said quietly, stepping away from David to hug Mike. She seemed to hug Mike that little bit tighter than she did David, maybe because he spent so long living here with us, helping me through my tragic recovery, that they’d just seemed to forge a better bond. “Come on in then.” She turned away. “I’ll make some tea.”
***
After my tenth yawn, Vicki stood and offered to show us to our room. Mike, seeing the awkwardness coat David and I like sludge, suggested a room at my old house. But Vicki absolutely insisted we stay with her
—said Greg would never forgive her if she didn’t have us here. David and I politely agreed, but neither was happy about it.
We farewelled Mike at the front door, and he left with a cheeky glint in his eye, knowing the situation David and I would find ourselves in tonight when we laid down to sleep. I had my own little laugh, though, because he still hadn’t told Vicki that he and Em had broken up. She’d expect them to be at least holding hands at the funeral. And I quietly wondered how that would make Blade feel.
“I thought about making up your bedroom,” Vicki said, pushing open the door to Mike’s old room, a.k.a the spare room. “But…” She looked sadly at the floor, and David’s thoughts came through to mine:
She didn’t have anyone to ask for help to move the furniture. Your dad always did that.
I touched her arm, deliberately making my smiling eyes a little wider with excitement as I took in the room. “Mom, this is perfect. And, truthfully, I’m just so happy to be home I don’t care where we sleep.”
She stilled the quivering of her jaw and looked up, the sadness moving aside for a smile when she saw the honesty in my face. “Really?”
“Yes.” I stepped past her and did a circle in the room, taking it all in. The bed was still placed to our left, between the closet door and the bathroom, facing the wall where an empty set of drawers waited for our belongings, the TV now sitting on top of it. It was exactly as it had been when Mike lived here, which gave me a very odd but very comforting sense of safety. “I spent a lot of time in here with Mike over that winter, remember?”
She nodded, eyeing David sideways, obviously to see how he felt about that statement. But he just smiled at me affectionately, as though it hadn’t bothered him. It did, though. I heard him stop his own spiteful thoughts, knowing I’d hear them; that I was always just a little bit too close with every guy I ever had in my life, and nothing had changed.
Hey!
I thought.
You left me! And Mike proposed to me. I was
supposed
to be close with him.
I know. I didn’t mean to think that,
he added.
It was a fleeting thought.
“Well—” Vicki smoothed both hands firmly down the front of her jeans. “I’ll leave you two to rest.”
“Okay, thanks, Mom.” I held my skinny arms out to her as she passed. She stopped to give me an awkward hug, patting my elbow once before breaking away and closing the door behind her.
My arms slowly lowered to my sides. I looked to David for a smile, maybe a bit of reassurance that I wasn't imagining Vicki’s strange behaviour toward me all afternoon, but he walked away, standing over at the window instead.
“You should rest,” he said, keeping his gaze on the world outside. “Vicki will need you tomorrow to help with the funeral plans.”
I nodded, rolling down slowly and numbly onto my side across the foot of the bed.
“Ara?”
“Mm?”
He sat down just above my head and moved my ponytail off my shoulder. “Is … is the baby okay?”
I laid my hand to her. “She hasn’t kicked since we left.”
“She kicks?” he asked, surprised.
I nodded. “I felt her for the first time the other day.”
“Oh.”
“What’s
‘
Oh’
?”
“You mean Jason did.”
The sludgy awkwardness I bathed in downstairs turned into stone on my limbs now. “Um…”
“Forget it.” He grabbed the blanket corner from the top of the bed and rolled it over my curled-up body. “I don’t actually care, Ara. Now get some rest. I’m sure she’ll start kicking as soon as you fall asleep.”
Which was true. Ever since that first kick, I’d noticed them more and more, and usually always when I was trying to sleep. But my mind couldn’t quiet itself enough to drift down through the layers of consciousness and find that blissful cloud of dreams. I chewed my thumbnail, splitting it slightly, so tight and tense I just couldn't close my eyes. “How’s Sam possibly gonna cope, David? He—”
“Shh,” he said, tucking the blanket around me again. “Don’t worry about that now. We’ll take care of Sam, okay?”
I nodded, closing my eyes involuntarily then. I knew David was putting me to sleep, I could feel the fogginess of his mind moving into mine, forcing me down into the realm of the carefree. But I didn’t mind. I wanted to sleep. I just wasn't sure I wanted to wake up.
***
The morning radio-show played as a background to the gentle conversations in the kitchen. I stomped down the stairs, stopping dead when I noticed a gold band on my ring finger.
Okay, so I’d now taken sleepwalking to new heights.
I put that there,
David thought, leaning back in his chair so he could see me around the corner of the dining room wall.
I started walking again, thinking,
Why?
He raised his brows at Vicki, who stood in the kitchen with her back to us, flipping eggs over a pan.
You should've checked with me first,
I thought, taking a seat across from him—avoiding my ‘usual’ seat beside him.
I didn’t think it’d be an issue.
Well, it is for me. Maybe I was content with her asking questions about why I wasn’t wearing it!
And how would you answer them, Ara?
I folded my arms.
Tell her I lost it in the
kitchen
back home.
Kitchen, huh? Better to tell her it was the bedroom,
he added spitefully.
That’s where you really lost it. Maybe leave off the bit where you were under my brother at the time!
“Ara.” Vicki turned around. “I didn’t hear you come in. Did you sleep well?”
I nodded, rubbing my face. I didn’t want to fight with David, and wasn’t ready for all this normality, either—for the version of Vicki that was ‘coping’ with everything so well. I could handle a few tears, maybe a quiet house, even making my own breakfast, but I couldn’t stand to see her pretending everything was okay—not when it wasn’t. The kitchen smelled like Saturday mornings, with the warm scent of cooked eggs and fresh coffee, but my dad wasn’t upstairs taking a shower. He wasn't walking down the street to get a newspaper. He wasn’t mowing the lawns or marking term papers. He was dead. Cold on a steel table in a morgue.
This is her way of coping, Ara,
David thought.
I didn’t ask for your opinion,
I shot back.
Just let me deal with this in my
own
way. And stay out of my thoughts.
His top lip lifted on one side.
Why are you being like this?
Because I
hate
you. That won’t change because I’m grieving, David. So don’t expect it to.
“Is
…” She looked at David then back at me. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” David said absently and placed his napkin down as he stood, kissing Vicki’s cheek before leaving the room.
She turned her curiosity on me then, laying an egg on the plate of toast in front of me. “Let me guess, tired?”
The hurt, angry girl inside me wanted to say,
No. Cold hatred!
But the grown up me smiled. “Yeah. It was a long flight. And I think he’s pretty cut up about Dad, too.”
“Well, he would be.” She sat down, placing the frypan on a corkboa
rd at the centre of the table. “He was a student of Dad’s for a few years.”
“I know.” I picked up a fork and stabbed the yolk, sending it spilling out all over the whites, seeping into the toast underneath.
“Something wrong with your breakfast?” she asked, nodding to my plate.
“No. It’s really nice to have a home-cooked meal again. I just
…”
“I know.” Vicki reached over and took the plate as she stood. “It was the same when you lost your mom. You didn’t eat for a week.”
“Well, that’s not an option these days.” I stopped her by the wrist and grabbed the plate. “I’m eating for two now.”
Her eyes shot to my belly, almost as if she’d forgotten, and the emptiness flitted away for the return of a smile. “Of course. Want some bacon then?”
“Thanks.” I grinned, taking up my fork. She needed me to eat this almost as much as my baby did. So I shovelled it down, nodding and smiling as we talked softly about my life in Paris, then I made a quick escape under guise of needing a shower. In truth, I really did need a good soak in some hot water and steam, but I really just wanted to escape the awkwardness I felt not knowing what I was to her now that she was officially free of being my stepmom. Something in my heart told me that things wouldn't change, but I also knew from everyone else’s experiences that it often did.
***
The bedroom door closed as the bathroom one on the far right of the bed opened, clouds of steam wafting out around the tall, dark figure emerging from within. He looked a little like a movie star on the set of a cheesy romance film, his absent thoughts freezing with the white blank of alert when he saw me.
I shut the door slowly behind me, wondering if I should offer to leave.
“Stay,” he said. “It’s fine. I’ll dress in the bathroom.”
“No, it’s okay. You dress out here. I’m gonna go have a shower anyway.”
He looked back at the steam. “Might wanna wait. I kinda used up all the hot water.”
That was one thing I didn’t miss about my dad: his lack of desire to modernise anything
—including the hot water tank. “Great.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I flopped back on the bed, my arms sprawled outward. “I planned to do exactly the same thing.”
He laughed and turned away, opening a drawer.
I knew I should keep my eyes on the roof, but habit, I guess, made me watch him. Beads of water pooled on the ends of his dark hair, dragging them down slightly over his ears, before dripping slowly down the curves of his shoulder blades. He’d lost so much weight now too that the once-sinewy lines under his tight golden skin looked rigid, as if they might snap, his spine peeking out like knuckles between the soft, rounded curve of muscle encasing it. He still had that sexy triangular shape guys with bigger chests and arms seemed to have, though, and despite being thinner, he wasn’t so thin that I didn’t still find him … appealing. But my gaze stopped short when I noticed a new tattoo on his left shoulder blade, running onto his spine in an off-kilter kind of script, black and sharp-looking, like something spiking from
under
his skin rather than drawn
on
it.
“Hey, what’s that?” I sat up to get a better look.
“What’s what?”
“That Mark.”
“It’s uh—” He looked over his shoulder, even though he couldn't see it from there, then popped his head through the top of his white T-shirt. “It’s just a Mark.”
“What for?”
“Nothing. Hey—” He faced me again, slipping a leg into his jeans under the towel. “Jason came to see you while you were sleeping last night.”
A wave of dread dropped my stomach into the mattress under me. “Did you—”
“I didn’t do anything.” He put his hands up. “I knew you’d want him here, so I let him stay for a bit. He’s coming back tonight.”
I stared at him, my eyes narrowed. “Why are you being so nice?”
His head flicked to one side in a half-shake. “It’s temporary. If I rip his gizzards out just after you lost your dad, that’s not gonna help anyone.”
“So, you’re just letting him in? Letting him—”
“I’m not
letting
him, Ara.” He tossed the towel over his shoulder. “I’m just not stopping him.”