“Strange, isn’t it?” he said. “On the same day that you bring back a girl that you found on the streets?”
“Sounds like it’s drug-related,” I said and poured myself a glass of my mother’s iced tea that she left on the counter. I sipped it, my eyes avoiding Matt’s.
“I take it you don’t know anything about what could have happened out there?”
“Me?” I asked. Then added, sounding appalled at the mere suggestion, “No.”
I sipped more tea, trying to suppress the blushing of my face, cursing myself for not having inherited the talent for acting my sister had. I couldn’t lie if my life depended on it. Luckily, Matt didn’t dig deeper because I would have given in if he did. My savior was Elijah. He was done watching TV when he came out to us in the kitchen and sat down next to Matt. He put his prosthetic arm on the table. He had been shot last year and lost the arm from the elbow down. He was being a real sport about it, and I was proud of him for never complaining or being bitter about it. My sister had sponsored a bionic arm for him, with fingers he could move and everything, but he hadn’t gotten it yet.
“Dad, I’m tired,” he said. “Can we go home now?”
Matt smiled and ran a hand across the boy’s hair. “What happened to the movie you were watching?”
“It stopped because of some breaking news or something.”
Matt nodded. “I’m beat too, son. Let me just finish this beer, and then we’ll go back to the house.”
Chapter 6
THEN:
Somehow, it had always been like Roy and his mother knew their time together on this earth was limited—even before she got sick. He couldn’t explain how he knew; he just did. And he could see it in her eyes as well when she looked at him with such deep compassion while her hand gently stroked his hair. It was like she wanted to take all of him in while she still could.
Roy suffered from Asthmatic Bronchitis as a young child, and his mother would let him sleep with her in her bed to be able to keep an eye on him at night. Even when he outgrew his asthma, and the attacks stopped, she still insisted he sleep with her. It didn’t stop until he was eleven, and that wasn’t because of him. The only reason it stopped was that she could no longer get up the stairs to her bedroom.
Her respiratory system was failing her. The cancer was growing in her lungs.
From that day on, she slept in a chair in the living room, and Roy moved to the couch. From there, it was now his turn to keep an eye on her at night, and he’d stay awake, watching her breathing, afraid she’d slip away in the night.
On the day she did pass on to the great unknown, they were watching TV together. Roy had noticed her eyes kept rolling back in her head. It was a Saturday, and he had slept in, eaten some cereal, and then he had found a bag of chips that he devoured on the couch while staring at his mother’s hands. Roy had always loved his mom’s hands. Throughout his childhood, they had been used for soothing him when he was upset or hurt. They had stroked his hair and cheeks so much or had held him when he was sad or scared. When much younger, he’d sometimes play with them in his, measuring the length of his fingers against hers, or sometimes just hugging it close to his cheek to feel them close. Throughout the years, he had watched her hands grow bonier, the skin sagging, and the veins popping out on top. He remembered the first time she passed out in the living room, and he found her face down in the carpet. When she was taken to the hospital on the stretcher, her hands had been dangling by the sides of the stretcher, limp, lifeless.
Now, as they were watching TV, she reached out one of them and reached for his. He placed it into her hand, and she squeezed it. Roy looked down at their hands, intertwined, as she squeezed it again, and her eyes rolled back in her head once more.
“M-mom?”
Her hand gave his a squeeze. Her eyes were strained, as she was obviously fighting to stay conscious, her eyeballs spinning in their sockets.
“Mom, I’m here.”
Roy lifted her silky soft hand to his lips, then kissed the top of it. Her eyes rolled back in her head once more, and he wondered how much she sensed…if she knew he was even there. He sat there watching her breathe for a few minutes when suddenly she ran out of breaths to take.
“Mom?”
He touched her shoulder, and her head fell forward, slumped. Roy gasped and pulled away when his dad came into the living room. He put his hand on Roy’s shoulder. Roy had never liked his dad’s hands much. They were nothing like his mother’s. His were rough and big and couldn’t comfort him.
“Is she…?” he asked and looked up at his dad, who in the bright light from outside was nothing but a dark shadow.
The shadow nodded.
“Yes, son. We knew this day would come. The cancer ate her up. She has found peace, finally. Now, it’s just the two of us. But at least we have each other, right?”
Roy nodded and stifled his tears like he knew his dad would want him to.
His father was right, he decided. At least they had one another. At least he wasn’t left completely alone in this world.
Chapter 7
Sydney called right after I had put Alex to bed and kissed Christine and Olivia goodnight and told them not to stay up too late. It was summer break, and they didn’t have school anymore. As a matter of fact, none of them had been to school since March because of the Coronavirus that had closed down the entire country for several months. Once they started to open up again, the school term was over. We’d had some tough months, all being cooped up inside, doing online schooling. Especially Alex, who had the energy of an Energizer Bunny, was bouncing off the walls. I took him to the beach, and he went surfing every day, getting some of that energy burned off, but persuading him to do schoolwork wasn’t easy. He just wanted to go surfing constantly. He had daily calls with his teachers, who encouraged him to do his best, but little did it help. Surfing seemed to be the only thing making him happy these days, so I took him to the beach as much as I could when the waves were good. Luckily, they never closed the beaches around here. You could still do activities like biking, walking, surfing, and running. That decision was my rescue. I wouldn’t have survived otherwise with that boy inside the house; that’s for sure.
“She told us her name,” Sydney said. “It’s Amber.”
I walked to the bathroom. I was wearing PJs and had a toothbrush in my mouth. I spat in the sink. “That was fast.”
“She’s finally sleeping now. She wouldn’t let go of me once we got to the house, so I stayed. She needed to talk, so we did. She knows who I am and has seen many of my movies. I just left her room. I’m gonna sleep here tonight, so I can be here in the morning if she needs me. She’s quite the character. Strong.”
“I kind of got that feeling when I saw her jump her captor from behind,” I said, laughing. “That girl has got guts.”
“I can’t wait for you to meet her properly.”
“Did they drug her?” I asked after rinsing my mouth with water and putting the toothbrush in its holder.
“They did. We’ll have Dr. Martin look at her tomorrow. She hasn’t had her period for months, she says. She could be with child.”