My chest was in physical pain, like my heart was being torn in two. It was a feeling I was used to, one I’d had often when I was watching my beautiful wife endure treatments, when I held her hand while she was in the kind of pain people dread.
This wasn’t the first time I had let a journal help me decide. I was clutching it tightly, like I was clinging to her. Greer would have known what to do. Greer would have been sure. Most of the time, like that Bible test, I could interpret Greer’s words however I wanted to. But this entry was pretty cut-and-dried. She was damn attached to those embryos. I couldn’t see just handing them over for scientific research or throwing them out with the hypodermic needles.
Was being in Cape Carolina exacerbating this feeling somehow? Here, there was no doubt, I had always known I would grow up to be a husband and a father. Once I got back to Palm Beach, would everything feel different?
I was certain that my mother had already heard somehow that I was back and was wondering and worrying why I hadn’t made it home yet. Hell, she’d probably seen the rental car in the Saxtons’ driveway next door and intuited it was me in that Southern mother way of hers.
I almost didn’t want to go home now, but what was my option? I could check into the Holiday Inn on the highway, get back on a plane—maybe to Tahiti?—or sneak into one of the four empty bedrooms at Amelia’s house. That house had gone downhill since the last time I’d seen it. It wasn’t terrible, but it needed a few things fixed, paint in some places. No doubt about it: Dogwood was a lot of house, probably bordered on being a burden. I decided to grab the guys and do some maintenance around there the next day. Mr. Saxton had his hands full with the farm. Looking around at the paltry grass, I respected him even more. It took a Herculean effort to create viable growing conditions here, especially to run the size of operation that he did. Dad was always saying Mr. Saxton should sell. But I understood needing to hold on to the past.
I almost didn’t bother taking the car down Amelia’s driveway and into mine. It would have been shorter to walk through the side gate. But I drove anyway. And just as I thought, my mom was sitting on the front porch.
“Well, there you are, darlin’,” she said as I walked up the steps, as though I had wandered down to the store for some milk. She handed me a glass as I leaned down to kiss her cheek.
I took a big gulp of what I thought was sweet tea; it was sweet tea and bourbon. I coughed.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here unannounced,” she said, “but I figured whatever it was, you probably needed a drink.”
My mother had never treated me like a little boy. From the time I could walk, I was a man. I was supposed to open doors for her and help with yard work and, when I got old enough, drink bourbon.
I sat down beside her, looking out over the driveway. Our Georgian-style house wasn’t mammoth like the Saxtons. But it was where the Christmas tree sat and where all my friends spent the night and where I played basketball in the driveway. And, while some people moved to the big city and scorned their small-town upbringings, I was the opposite. I appreciated mine even more.
From the brief time I’d spent in New York, I felt like I knew a little of the city that never sleeps. And I was grateful that I’d been raised in a town that slept all the time—especially after the full lunch we had every day.
“You want to go to the church softball game this afternoon?” Mom asked.
I smiled at her. “Do I have a choice?”
She didn’t answer, just turned back toward the driveway and kept rocking. This was another way my mother had taught me to be a man. She didn’t tell me what to do, and she let me tell her what was on my mind when I was ready. It was an unspoken rule in our world that whatever Mama said was what we did. And when Mama didn’t say, we did what she wanted us to anyway. Because there was nothing that could tear me up quite like being out of that woman’s good graces.
It had trained me well to be married to the one and only Greer McCann.
I held up my glass. “I’m gonna need another one of these.”
I walked in the house, its dark paneling and floors made bright by the sunlight reflecting off the water and through the windows. I took a deep breath. Cinnamon buns. My favorite. I would never tell my mother, but, even though her cinnamon buns were good, nothing was as delicious as Aunt Tilley’s pie. I set down my glass to refill it just in time. My brother, Mason, was running through the hall, tackling me to the floor before I could even say hello. Widower CEO Parker Thaysden thought this was ridiculous tomfoolery. Little brother Parker Thaysden got Mason in a headlock. I vaguely heard the front door slam and my mother sigh and say, “Boys, please go outside if you’re going to do that. I don’t want any blood on the new rug. It’s impossible to clean.”
We were laughing too hard to hear her. Three minutes later, Mason had me pinned to the floor. I could have fought harder, but the kid needed a win.
My brother still lived in one of Mom and Dad’s houses on the property and “worked” for Dad, which basically meant that he played video games all day until it was time to start drinking. It annoyed me. I mean, yeah, I was definitely the A student in the family, but he was plenty smart. He could have gone into sales with Dad. He could have moved away and become a sports agent—a job he was offered numerous times after the accident. He could have coached a high school team, taught a few classes, too. My brother had a lot to offer the world, a lot more than just his once-great pitching arm. I wished he could see that. But he couldn’t. Greer and I used to joke that when Mom and Dad died we would get custody of Mason. But it really wasn’t that funny because it was true.
Mason had been Cape Carolina’s star pitcher. In a town where baseball is as important as oxygen, that is the top honor a boy can hope for. I spent my childhood on the sidelines, my activities and practices always taking a back seat to his. I had a love-hate relationship with Mason’s stardom: When it got in my way, it was a pain. But when it got me something I wanted, it was awesome. When people would talk about the kid from Cape Carolina who was the next Babe Ruth, I’d casually say, “Oh yeah. That’s my brother.” And then, suddenly, all eyes were on me. I was famous by extension.
Even as a kid, I knew I had a lot of things Mason didn’t—I was smart. I had goals and ambitions. I had a big imagination. I was a good writer.
Mason could pitch; that was it. Even when I was really young, I realized that Mason was cool and a good athlete, but that was all he had. As a kid, though, that’s all that matters. I wanted to be him so badly I could taste it.
Sometimes, when I’m questioning the type of man I really am, I think I almost wanted that night to happen. But of course I didn’t. I’d never have wished this life for him.
Sometimes I envied his lack of responsibility. But I knew he carried pain. He had lost the love of his life, too. Only, the love of his life was baseball. In some ways, his complete devolvement was a lesson. When Greer died, I knew I couldn’t end up like Mason. I’d seen that there was a fine line between grieving and living in your old bedroom. Her death was the worst thing that could have happened to me, but I didn’t want my mom doing my laundry for the rest of my life.
“Good to have you home, ass face,” Mason said as he helped me up.