Page 121 of Alexander: Alexander's Story

“And is all of this recent as well? As in the last couple of months?”

“Yeah, mostly.”

“Is there something that’s changed for you…in the last couple of months?”

“I miss my wife.” She nods, making a note.

“You’re married?”Technically?

“I don’t know anymore.” She nods.

“Do you want to be married?” To Emma?Yes. Maybe.Ultimately, no.

“It’s complicated.”

“Then let’s uncomplicate it.” I laugh at her suggestion.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” I say at the sheer immensity of it all.

“Then let’s start at the beginning.” Damn, she is good.

I sigh, “Alright then. I was born on January 3rd to Georgia and Ray Palomino. Newlyweds, middle-to-lower-class family. Georgia was a secretary, and Ray worked construction. My first memory is sitting on a diving board with a cabbage patch dollwhile my dad screamed at me. I was maybe two and a half or three.”

Maureen makes a note. She ends up making lots of notes over the next 45 minutes. I only get through kindergarten when our time runs out.

“I’ll see you in two days,” She says with a gentle smile.

Can’t fucking wait.

august

Connie has me on a strict program. I work out every morning, we have some sort of family company for lunch, therapy or meditation in the afternoons, and then I have to cook dinner in the evenings. Maybe I don’t have to, but it’s not like there’s anything else to do.

Matt moves in my second week at the house, but the routine stays the same. He only eats dinner with us a few times and he never speaks, at least not to me.

My phone stays off, dead in some corner of my room.

With the nights cooling off, we’ve been taking the dogs on long evening walks after dinner. We don’t talk all that much, Connie and I, but sometimes he’ll tell me about Georgia. Sometimes he’ll tell me how Brit is doing. Sometimes he tells me about myself, and what I was like as a little boy.

I always viewed Constantine as a father figure, but it never occurred to me that heismy father. Always has been. He’d been the one to drive me to boot camp in Arizona. He’d been the one that bought me the Jeep. He’s always been there, loving me from the sidelines when I wouldn’t accept it, and now taking care of me, when he knew I needed it.

“Do you ever miss Julie?” I ask him one night because I’ve never heard him speak her name, not once.

He rears back in surprise. “Well, no. I don’t miss Julie. I miss the idea of her, but never her. I do miss your mother, though. Everyday.”

It’d been three years since her death. “Yeah,” I didn’t share the same sentiment, though. “Whydid you love her?” I don’t mean to ask how I do. It almost sounds cruel.

“Well, she was undeniably the best person I knew. The way she endured… Alexander, she was so strong. And being with her was the only time I felt…free. It was the only time I felt like I was really me. The best version. Isn’t that what love is?”It isn’t pain?

I guess I hadn’t learned about love the same way other people do. I learned it looked like a broken and bloodied face. Bruised ribs. Shouting matches that went late into the night.

“I guess,” is all I say because the pit in my stomach is weighing me down. The pain and the guilt gnaw at me because I’d had that. With her. With Em.

When we get back to the house, Carl nods, giving us his nightly greeting. “Evening, sirs, uh, I just want to let you know,”except this is new,“Miss Britain is here, I let her in.”

Fuck, the last person I want to see.

“Thanks, Carl,” Connie says, patting him on the shoulder as we pass.