I push through the double swinging doors into the kitchenette and immediately regret it. Huddled in the corner, Dad and Mom glance up at me but don’t say anything. I contemplate backing out of the room. I guess that’d make me look like a total asshole, though.
My mom’s in a wheelchair, not because she’s injured, but she’s been hooked up to a constant sedative drip since it happened. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the doctors take her off of that thing. Will the grief hit her all at once? Flood over her like she’s drowning? Or will she feel numb like I do now? Is she just prolonging the misery of feeling like the rest of us do?
“Hey, Pops, Mom,” I say. I kiss her on top of the head before taking a seat at the retro looking laminate table.
“Tell me again, Tobin,” Mom says.
I inhale deeply and hold it. Every time I do this lately, I feel like I need to see how long I can hold it. See if I can understand how Eamon must have felt. But I know nothing would make me understand that kind of agony. The fear. Did he know he was taking his last breath when he gasped that last time?
“Tell me, Tobin,” Mom repeats. I know what she’s asking, and it’s exactly why I don’t want to answer. She wants me to repeat the story of how I found Eamon. I’ve been forced to relieve this shit for a week now. I don’t know why she wants to hear it again. Maybe because she has the luxury of drugs to keep her from feeling, but it’s not fair to me.
“Tobin,” Dad says. I glance up and he nods at me, encouraging me on. I can’t believe this. He was my brother! I want to scream.
I finally let the breath out and feel the relief course through me. Eamon never felt that relief. Maybe I deserve to have to retell this story. At least I get to be alive, right?
“I don’t know how it happened, Ma. I only know how I found him. He was out there with Traive and Leslie.” I don’t tell her that what they were really doing. How stupid he had been. “They said he had his back turned. He must’ve not heard it somehow. When I got there, the medics were already working on him, Ma. They did everything they could. I’m sorry.” This is a lie. There was nothing left to work on. There’s a reason for the closed casket.
Mom doesn’t respond. She never does. I don’t know which is sadder. Mom’s emotionless glare or Dad’s constant reassurance—like he’s doing it for her sake, not to keep himself together. I don’t think I’ve seen either one of them cry yet. I wonder when that will come.
“I need to get some air,” I say. No one acknowledges me.
I make my way toward the entrance, weaving through a thick sea of black clothing. It’s even more crowded in here than just a few minutes ago.
I know for a fact not all of these people knew Eamon. But small towns like Crawford, Louisiana are like that. Even if you didn’t know someone personally, you knew someone who did. You served their coffee on Saturday mornings, or they take the offering at Church on Sundays. When your hometown’s main claim to fame is being the “Rice Capital of the World,” everyone knows everyone. So that’s who is here—everyone.
A thin, polished woman walks in. She sticks out immediately in her expensive looking navy dress, shiny bag and shoes that probably cost more than I make in a month. My breath leaves me when I see that her arm is draped around a younger version of herself. That hair, it’s pulled back way too tight now, but I’d run my hands through it a thousand times before. That face, now in a layer of makeup that makes her look older than I remember, I’d held it in my calloused hands and kissed those lips goodbye over a year ago. She said she’d never see me again and I’d learned to accept that. She destroyed me, and I’d moved on.
No. Not her. She’s not from here anymore. I don’t know who that person is anymore.
2
Delia
His light blue eyes hit me just like they always have. They go through me, strip me bare, and form a knot in my stomach that’s impossible to ignore. How can just being in the room with someone do this to me? He’s just a guy. But as I take in his face, a year older, strained with sadness, he’s so much more. I was right to be terrified on the long drive.
What can I possibly do here? Seeing his grief over Eamon makes mine pathetic. No one will feel the loss of his brother more than him. Not his parents, not his brother’s friends. Not me. No one. Me being here will probably just make things worse, not better. Or maybe that’s my arrogance in thinking I might still have the same kind of effect on him that he has on me.
His hair is the same blond mess that I remember, and his suit cuts perfectly over strong shoulders. I wonder if he tied his own tie tonight. It used to be me that helped him; tried different knots until the frustration wore on his face. Always with a hint of tease, though. Because that was Tobin. I wonder if it still is.
“You okay?” Mom’s arm wraps over my shoulder making me jump.
She’s had her two Bloody Mary’s this morning, a couple of glasses of wine with lunch, so that should last her a while. At least long enough to get her home for her nightcap. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much she needs just to function.
“Delia?” she asks again.
“I…” have no words. Now that my eye contact with Tobin is broken, I feel stupid for the thoughts that took me over. Tobin’s just a guy—like a ton of guys. Even as I run those words through my head, trying to convince myself, I know it’s a lie. Tobin will never be just a guy. Not to me. And he shouldn’t be just a guy to anyone who meets him or to anyone else that’s lucky enough to love him.
My heart’s cracking apart all over again because of the way I’ve missed him. I brush a loose strand of chocolate brown hair off my face, trying to blend it into the rest of my up-do. Forcing my head to not turn back his direction is nearly impossible, but I manage. Being hit with him again might ruin my ability to keep my composure here. Instead my gaze ends up on the casket, reminding me of why I’m here.
Eamon was the wildest, coolest, funnest, most full of life guy I knew. Tobin followed his older brother everywhere, but Tobin’s wild stunts didn’t hold up the recklessness of his brother. Eamon was truly an adrenaline junkie. We always teased him he’d die young—but I don’t think any one of us believed that anything was strong enough to actually kill Eamon.
“Delia?”
Mom’s hand drops off me as I spin around to see Kelly, a friend from school. How did I let myself lose contact with these people? We’d been close. Really close. But I can’t even remember the last time I talked to her.
Our arms are around each other, and I hold onto her like my life depends on it. Mom doesn’t know how to hold people like this. She knows how to smile, and pat. Not hold. Loss sweeps through me. Loss of friends, loss of Eamon, and loss of Tobin.
“I know. It’s awful, isn’t it?” Her arms squeeze even tighter.
“I’m still in shock.” And the shock of being home, and the shock that Eamon’s gone, and Tobin’s here—it all floats around inside me.
She steps back and pulls me away to sit against the wall. The flowers have laid a heavy perfume in the air, but everything else in here is weighted with grief.
“How have you been?” She raises an eyebrow, runs a hair through her thick blonde hair, and takes in my outfit. For the first time in a long time, I feel totally self-conscious about what I’m wearing. It wasn’t overdone before we got here. But now that I’m back in town, I realize that a Gucci dress and heels is probably a little much for Crawford. Standards in Washington D.C. are a bit different than they are here.
It’s amazing how fast I got used to it. Just over a year. It might as well have been a lifetime for how strange it feels to be here. To be home.
“I…” How have I been? How do I answer? Just driving back into this small town snagged something in me that I thought I’d left behind. That I thought I wanted to leave behind.
We drove past Fishers Lake earlier and all I could think of was how much I used to love to swim in that lake. How many times did I jump in, fully clothed, not caring that I’d be soaked unti
l I got home. I can’t remember the last time I swam in a lake, or waded in a stream. Not since I left him. Or…here. I meant here. Not since I left here.
“You still with me?” Kelly chuckles.
“Barely.” I lean back. Or maybe part of me never left.
“I hear ya there.”
We sit next to one another, shoulders touching, in silence. People are slowly filing in. The air is still thick, heavy, and hard to breathe.
“Your shoes are outrageous,” she whispers.
I glance down at my simple black platform heels. “Thanks.” And I tried to dress down for this. My eyes float to Kelly’s worn black ballet flats. How did a simple move change so much?
“He’s so hot, isn’t he?” Kelly gestures with her chin to Tobin who’s talking to a friend of his brother. Some guy with a weird name that I can’t remember. I haven’t been gone that long, and I can’t remember.
“Yeah.” The word breathes out of me before I can contain it.
“If nothing else, I bet you miss that part of Crawford.” She grins.
And there’s really no way for me to argue about that. I have missed Tobin. It’s just that I didn’t realize how much until I got here.
I make my way to the bathroom as Mom smiles sympathetically and pats arms; playing catch-up with all the women she hasn’t seen in a while. I wonder if she cares, or if she’s just so used to being polite that it simply happens. My legs aren’t working right, they’re shaking with nerves, but I still manage in my heels. If I could have seen a year ahead, would I love the girl I am now or hate her? I pull open the bathroom door knowing I would have hated any version of me that wasn’t with Tobin.
My phone beeps in a message. Holy Hell, it’s been almost non-stop since I left. I pull it out. Mercedes. Of course. She’s almost as politically driven as my dad, but graduated with me less than a month ago.
MERC: I know you’re busy Delia, but I need the signature page you got in support taking down that awful healthcare bill. I also need your numbers for the picnic next week. The caterer is making me crazy.
There are several problems with this. I never went and got signatures because I don’t subscribe to my dad’s brand of politics. I have zero signatures, but I can’t tell Mercedes that. I’ll have to come up with some really creative lie.
I’m on it. I text back, even though that’s the last thing I am.
Mercedes was queen at the private school Dad enrolled me in last year, and it took me a while, and a lot of work, but now we’re friends. Well. Not friends like Kelly and I were—hangout friends. Mercedes was more like—friends by association. Our fathers are in the same Senate committee. She’s the southern girl that helped me shed my accent, or most of it.
I still get a look of disapproval from her when I let something cliché like y’all slip out.
“It’s not cute, Delia,” she says all the time. “It makes you sound like a country hick.”
I nod, smile, and play it off, but it stings. Every time. To be honest, I can’t even remember what this picnic is for, but her dad forgets she has a spending limit on her credit card when she takes to planning charities or benefits or picnics for young republicans. They’re small scale, nothing like what my mom’s in the middle of at the children’s hospital. “But it’s all practice,” Mercedes reminds me, “for later.”
I don’t want there to be a later. I want it to be over.
I want my dad to lose the next election and to come home to Louisiana. Or now that I’m graduated, I want to go to college somewhere that no one knows me, and I don’t have to work so hard anymore. Somewhere my dad can’t constantly look over my shoulder to tell me all the ways I’m doing everything wrong.
When I step out of the bathroom, a sort of line has formed. Guess the mingling part is over. Now’s when I get to touch him, or have to touch him. How many kinds of a wretched girl am I that I’m thinking about a guy, when I’m at a funeral? My feet are suddenly killing me, which is crazy because I can stand in these things all day. I have stood in these things all day at fundraisers, and political rallies…
It’s such a relief Dad isn’t here. He doesn’t want me within sight or sound of Tobin LeJeune. Not after what I went through. There are just certain things that my daddy would rather never relive. The mess with Tobin is one of them.
I’m a wreck. Screw floating thoughts, they’re spinning too fast for me to catch them.
Twelve more people in the line between Tobin and me. I’m not sure how the line got started, or even if it’s necessary. Mom’s in front of me. Dad’s back in D.C. because Congress is in session. He can’t be bothered to go to Crawford for a friend’s son.
Ten more people. I might puke.
Kelly steps in behind me. “Hey.” She rubs her hand up and down my arm. “You look a little green.”
“Yeah.” And yeah is apparently my official word of the day. Perfect. Dad would be proud that my high-priced private school has made me such an eloquent speaker.
Mom either hasn’t noticed, or is ignoring how I’m shaking right now.
Six people. My palms are sweaty. How bad would it be if I walked away now? Can I? Do I hug him? I mean, that’s what you do, right? Can I survive a hug from him? How do I know what to do? Four people.
Mom’s hugging his mom, who’s in a wheelchair. It breaks my heart to see her like that. Tobin’s mom has always been nothing but warmth and smiles. I can only guess that losing her son has her too exhausted to walk. For the year that Tobin and I were together, they were more my parents than my parents were. I did dishes, and helped with family meals, and the memories are breaking me further. I don’t need anything else to miss about this place.
“Delia.” Tobin’s dad stands stoic, stroking his wife’s hair. “You look so grown up and beautiful, as always.” His chin quivers a bit as he speaks.
“Thanks.” I’m so lame. What do I say to these people? Nothing brings back their son. Nothing could make this more awkward. I reach in for a hug, and he holds me with the same strength as he did before I left town.
“We’ve missed you, sweetie,” he whispers in my ear.
My body nearly slumps in relief and relaxation. “I’ve missed you too.” I tiptoe up to kiss him on the cheek, my heart breaking again that they lost their son.
I hug his mom next, but she feels too fragile for me to hug the way I want to. Instead I pat her back a few times as she dabs at her eyes.
One person between us. Anything like relaxation is gone.
I can’t breathe.
His eyes lock with mine again—looking hollow, in pain—it’s something I don’t ever remember seeing in Tobin’s eyes before. It’s like he’s looking at me, but it almost seems like he’s just looking because I’m here. Not for any other reason. Not because he wants to. Because he has to.
No people. I’m here. Staring up at him, my heart trying to push its way out of my chest.
I swallow the ball in my throat so I can speak. “Hi.” I suck.
His expression is completely unreadable. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. It’s torture to be so close and not touch.
I breathe in. He smells the same. How is that possible? And how is it possible for it to still make my knees weak? I step in to give him a hug, but his hand comes in between us.
His hand.
Because he doesn’t want to do any more than shake. With the girl he’s made love to. Whose heart is bursting out of her chest.
I’m trembling in a way that makes me feel like I might fall apart any second. His hand touches mine, and I love the warmth of him. Love the way he feels.
My eyes don’t leave his. He has only some idea that he could be a model for Calvin Klein. This is so weird. I’m supposed to be angry. Hurt. Instead I’m in shock that he still makes me feel this way—like we were something special.
His eyes hold nothing but pain and confusion—again, something I’m not used to seeing in Tobin. His mouth opens as if to say something, but nothing comes out.
Right.
Of course.
I really shouldn’t have expected anything different. Not even now.
I suck in my disappointment, pull my hand away, and walk quickly for the door. I don’t care how hot it is outside. I need air.
And I’m pathetic. It’s official. I’m standing outside, in the Louisiana heat, in a black dress, black heels, and panty hose that mom insisted on. I’m taking care of those right now. I walk carefully across the rocky outer parking lot to our car. We weren’t here early enough for the small paved portion near the church. As soon as I get to Mom’s Jaguar, I open the door, sit, and pull the hose off under my dress.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Again.
WESTON
Okay. I shouldn’t need to take a breath before talking to my own boyfriend.
“Delia. How is it?” he asks.
His voice is so…like it always is. Tidy. Neat. Careful. I can picture him in his khakis and button up, probably in the student government offices at his university or something. There was just enough slouch in him to attract me. Well, and his parents spend a lot of time with my dad, so being with him just sort of happened.
“Delia?”
“Sorry, I just…it’s so hot down here. I forgot how hot it gets. Even at night.” I start to fan my face with my hand, but to get air conditioning, would mean getting Mom for the keys. I’m not ready to go back inside, or see Tobin again. At least I can hide in the dimming light outside.
My Fate for Yours Page 16
