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Like when I was thirteen and she spent weeks begging me to stay in with her, telling me she hated eating dinner alone. She even made me miss a football game. But the moment she was invited by a friend to visit her in Maui, she forgot all about our so-called special nights, leaving me to reheat leftovers while she disappeared.
Or when I was sixteen, and she cried to me on the couch, telling me how hard it was to trust people, how I was the only one who really understood her. I stayed up with her until two in the morning, reassuring her she wasn’t alone. But a week later, when I tried to talk to her about something I was struggling with, she waved me off, too busy packing for a last-minute trip to Miami.
In college, it was the same damn thing. During my first semester, she called me every day, saying she missed me, and asked when I was coming home. But when I finally did come back for winter break, she was barely around—off at parties, coming in late, acting like I was an afterthought.
The pattern was so obvious now, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. I wasn’t her son so much as a stand-in—someone to fill the silence when she didn’t have anyone else. And the worst part? I had spent years trying to be enough for her when the truth was, I only mattered when she needed me to.
But knowing all this didn’t change a damn thing. She was my mother, and I loved her. I thought about Elena then, how she loved Maria no matter what—no matter that she put Nash above her daughter.
Both of us had parents who’d not put us first; had that been the draw? Two lost souls finding each other?
I found a box of photos tucked away in his closet, the cardboard edges worn soft with age. Pulling it down, I settled on the hardwood floor and lifted the lid, the scent of old paper and faded ink rising to meet me.
Flipping through the stack, I smiled.
Black-and-white snapshots, Polaroids with yellowed edges, glossy prints from decades past—each one a frozen moment in time. Some were stiff and formal, others caught in mid-laughter, faces turned toward the camera or lost in conversation.
I turned over a photo of myself. I was maybe six or seven, standing barefoot in the grass, grinning with a gap-toothed smile. My jeans were too long, cuffed at the ankles, and a scruffy dog sat at my feet—Loki. I’d forgotten about that mutt. The back was labeled in my mother’s looping, elegant script:Duke, summer after first grade.
Another showed me a year older, holdinga fishing pole twice my size. My arms strained as I held up a modest catch. The lake behind me shimmered in the late afternoon light.Duke and his first fish. That was right before Mama and I left for Dallas.
Then, a photo of me as a teenager in our home in Dallas.First day of high school.
Had Mama sent these to Nash?
I came across a photo of Mama with a man and…Kaz? A very young Kaz. I flipped it around.
Silas with his Godson.
Was that Silas Hawthorne? I found another photo of the same man but with Nash, Mama and another woman
With Silas & Tansy Hawthorne at our seventh wedding anniversary.
I studied the photo again. Mama stood between a frowning Nash and a smiling Silas. Tansy stood next to Silas, and her face was sullen. She and Mama were probably the same age, as were Silas and Nash.
Who were these people?
I pulled out my phone and dialed Kaz.
He answered on the second ring. “Duke, it’s fuckin’ midnight, and I have company.”
I didn’t waste time. “Who are Silas and Tansy Hawthorne?”
A pause. Then Kaz let out a low breath. “My Godparents. More or less raised me after Pop passed.”
“They from here?”
“They used to be. Left for Aspen for a while. Tansy is still there.”
“Silas?”
“He passed a couple of years ago.” A long pause. “What’s goin’ on?”
“I…saw some pictures and…remembered you mentioning them.”
“Yeah. Tansy will be here next week. You should talk to her.”
“Why?”