Page 34 of Into the Deep Blue

I took Grace up on her offer—writing the piece for the psych magazine.

I’m writing about love and family, and if anyone asks, I’m telling them she chose the subject.

I read somewhere that you should write about the things you avoid, the things that hurt the most. So here we are. I’m two pages in, and I’ll probably cut a lot.

My eyes fall to the spot on my bed where Fiona used to sit, and I try to guess what parts she’d call bullshit on and tweak the essay accordingly.

I still have no idea what happened with us. There was a time I could text and ask, but those times feel so far away.

There’s only one paragraph left to write, and it’s an important one. I need to tie all my thoughts together and make it work, but I can’t get there. The cursor blinks on my screen. I type:

So what about love?

I stare at the words.

Brooklyn moved in after three months of dating.

Dad told me the same way he always does when trying to connect with me: by knocking on my door and standing in the doorway.

He tried to be nice and launched into a big speech about second chances and learning from past mistakes, but I honestly zoned out for most of it.

I will always miss Mom, and this just hurt too much.

Brooklyn’s redecorating the place.

She dug up the flowers out front and taped paint swatches to the walls.

She’s trying to make it feel like home, and I can’t blame her.

Who would want to live in a shadow? We don’t talk much.

I think some part of her feels bad about this.

Sometimes she’ll knock on my door and ask if I want a snack like I’m ten.

Soon, snacks graduated into cappuccino offers, which I also declined.

I thought we might finally be connecting when she dropped a bag of Doritos on my bed.

It was a nice gesture, but I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t feel bad, that we’ll never be close because we’re not family, and that’s okay.

I’m okay.

This place stopped feeling like home a long time ago.

It’s all theirs now, and I’m sure they’re counting the days until I move out.

I still think Dad’s choices are bullshit, but they’re his choices.

Grace helped me see that.

We email even though I stopped going to group.

I have a lifetime of my own choices to make, and so far, my track record hasn’t been so hot, either.

Besides, who am I to choose happy for anyone? We all hurt, but I don’t want to live there.

Pain is like a drug.

It can erase you if you let it.

Max’s minifigure watches me from the corner of my desk.

“Why are you always judging me, man?”

I pick it up and close my laptop.

“It’s time for you to go home.”

I find Dad painting a yellow square on the kitchen wall from a sample pot.

“Good morning,”

he says, even though it’s noon.

“Morning.”

A new moving box is on the floor with kitchen scrawled across the top in black Sharpie. I don’t know where Brooklyn’s stuff keeps coming from. It’s like it magically multiplies. I fiddle with the flap and peek inside. This one’s full of cookbooks.

“Hey, do you think I can borrow the truck?”

Dad lets out a soft laugh as if I’m joking, then lowers the paint brush realizing I’m not.

“I was thinking of going up to Portland to see Alex. I could take the rest of Mom’s stuff. Make some room for you.”

“Oh.”

He puts the paintbrush down, considering.

“I could go with you.”

A small, uncomfortable laugh escapes me. It’s a nice way of saying he still doesn’t trust me, but it sounds like a nightmare.

“I’d rather be on my own, you know? If you’re comfortable with that.”

“Yeah. Okay. Brooklyn would feel more comfortable with it gone so . . . ”

I can’t believe how much we use the word comfortable now. All the paint in the world won’t make this place more comfortable for Brooklyn, but I’m not about to tell him that.

Dad reaches for the keys on the counter and tosses them to me.

“At least let me help you load up?”

“I’ll take you up on that.”

So that’s what we do—fill his pickup with the rest of Mom’s things. I plug Alex’s address into the GPS and make my way to Portland. It’s Sunday, so I’m pretty sure they’ll be home.

I drive, and I drive, and I drive.

The closer I get to her place, the more nervous I feel. We haven’t spoken since I signed the papers, and I don’t know what I’m going to say to her.

The place is easy to find.

It’s nestled in a row of townhouses, but I spot it right away because Mom’s wreath hangs from the front door.

I cut the engine and sit there for a few minutes when their front door opens. Alex steps out in her bare feet. Max runs past her and screams.

“Uncle !”

loud enough to hear through my closed windows.

By the time I’m out of the truck, he’s already in my arms.

“Hey, little dude! I missed you!”

“I missed you, too.”

“Look what I found.”

I fish the minifigure out of my pocket and hold it out to him.

“Batman!!!”

“Yeah, he was kind of keeping me company.”

“Did you know this Batman is super rare because he has the blue mask and not the black one? But, Uncle , there’s a new Batman, and his eyes glow.”

Max’s eyes are wide as saucers.

“I know. I might have it in the back.”

“What?”

Max squeals.

Alex is beside us now.

“Yeah! Buried under all this shit somewhere.”

She whacks my arm.

“Stuff, I mean. So let me unload, and I’ll find it, okay?”

Max runs, screaming back into the house.

“Casey, I found Batman!”

“Hey,”

I say to Alex.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I know I should have called . . . ”

She pulls me into a hug.

“You don’t ever have to call.”

I wrap my arms around her and can’t stop the tears. I’m pretty sure she can tell I’m crying, so we stand there, hugging forever in front of the open truck door. When I step back, she grabs my face in her hands.

“I am so happy you’re here.”

“Stop trying to make me cry,”

I say, wiping my tears away.

Casey comes down the walkway slowly, as if she isn’t sure she should interrupt. Alex notices me staring and turns around.

“You need a hand with this stuff?”

she gently asks.

Alex takes my hand and leads me to her.

“Casey, . , Casey.”

“Hey,”

I say, but then she’s hugging me, too. I glance at Alex. I guess she’s one of those people.

“He’s so much taller than he looks in pictures!”

she says to Alex as if I’m not standing right in front of her.

“How was the drive?”

Honestly, it was long.

It was uncomfortable.

It was nerve-wracking.

It was liberating.

It was lonely.

I watched the landscape morph into a million colors under the rays of the sun. All to get to a place that felt more like home the second the door opened than mine has in a while, a feeling that found me without even trying.

So, yeah. The drive was okay. I mean, I made it.

“Not bad,”

I say, lowering the tailgate.

We fill our arms with boxes and head inside.

They give me the tour and talk over each other while Max jumps like crazy around us.

It’s hard to get a word in edgewise, so I let the tide carry me and go with it.

The place is open and airy, even though I swear it’s two feet wide outside.

It’s nice to see Alex using some of Mom’s things.

I recognize her frames and vases that don’t fit with the rest of the décor, but it works all the same.

Pieces that make the place feel special.

There are photos of all of us in the bookcase, and one of Fiona and me with the sea lion on the mantle.

It throws me. Did I text it to Alex? Before I can ask, Max tugs my arm, dying to take me upstairs.

He’s complaining about Alex and Casey talking too much. They stay behind, figuring out what to make for dinner, while I follow Max upstairs to his room.

He closes the blinds and makes me crawl into bed with him.

We lie under the tent canopy and make wishes on the glow-in-the-dark stars.

He even has some of my old toys up on his shelf, but here they feel like new treasures, instead of stale and forgotten.

My heart swells, knowing he gets to grow up blanketed by all this love.

Max talks so much, his voice goes hoarse, and he runs downstairs for a drink.

There’s a notepad on his desk, and he’s drawing some kind of comic.

Werebear is scratched in blue pencil crayon on the top page, and it’s really good.

On the wall are pictures of Mom and him, Alex and him at Disney, and one of Max and me mid-water fight from last summer.

We all seem so happy.

I check out his bookshelf and spot a shiny black rock next to a microscope.

It looks like an arrowhead.

It looks like the cliff of a waterfall.

Alex watches me turn it over in my palm from the door.

“That’s cool,”

she says.

“He must have gotten that at school.”

I put the rock down. I know exactly where it came from. I look at Alex, and I’m not sure what to say.

“Come, let’s go downstairs,” she says.

Two steps into the hallway, I stop.

“Fiona said the place was amazing.”

“You’re talking again!”

Alex lets out a relieved sigh as she walks down the stairs.

“I knew the whole break thing wouldn’t last. I wasn’t sure if she told you she came by.”

She turns back, and I’m still standing frozen at the top, staring daggers her way. She closes her eyes.

“You didn’t know.”

I shake my head.

She continues going down.

“! Why do you do that? Why couldn’t you just ask if Fiona was here?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Casey is making some kind of panini in the kitchen while Max watche.

“Teen Titans”

in the living room, a glass of grape Kool-Aid on the coffee table in front of him.

“How did you know?”

Alex asks.

“The rock. The picture on your fireplace. What the hell? Are you like best friends now?”

Casey closes the fridge and eyes us.

“Do you want me to . . . should I . . . ”

She points outside the room, hoping to escape.

“No. Don’t be ridiculous,”

Alex tells her, then turns to me.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you.”

“It doesn’t upset me.”

She gives me an oh-please look.

“It upsets me that you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. I ran into her at school a couple weeks ago. She was in the quad, so I invited her over to see the place. She was here maybe twenty minutes.”

I don’t want to hear it. But at the same time, I do.

“Why was she in the quad? Did she change her mind about schools?”

“I don’t know. I asked about you, obviously, and she mentioned the break.”

I close my eyes. “Ugh.”

“Which I had no idea about because you never talk to me. And that’s why I didn’t say anything, but now that we’re putting it out there, maybe we should talk about it.”

“No. We shouldn’t.”

I take a seat at the table, and Alex sits in the chair beside me.

“You know you can talk to us, right?”

“Us? I’ve known her for like ten minutes. No offense,”

I say to Casey.

She waves it off.

“None taken.”

“You can talk to me.”

My sister has good intentions, but relationships aren’t light switches. They can’t be turned on and off this easily. They’re more like those flashlights with the hand cranks on the side where you have to crank the handle forever to get a minute of light. I don’t know if Alex gets that.

“We’ve never had that though, have we?”

“But I want us to have that. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I know I dropped out of the big sister race when I had Max, but I was struggling, . I was trying not to be a shitty mom, so I ended up being a shitty sister. But I want to be here for you now.”

She’s quiet for a minute, which is never a good sign.

“I know you blame me for Mom.”

The words land like a bomb.

“I don’t blame you.”

“You don’t have to say that. I know you do.”

For the first time, I really take in my sister. I have maybe sixty percent of her attention right now. She keeps stealing glances toward the living room where Max is and to Casey by the sink. She has a lot on her plate, and she’s still trying. I can come in for forty.

“I think I blamed everyone. You, Dad, Mom, the entire creation of aviation.”

She’s not buying it. I fiddle with the placemat and she puts her hand on mine, stilling me.

“Honestly?”

I look up.

“Remember how we used to say that when we were little?”

She searches my eyes for our history.

A history I forgot. Fi and I have been saying it forever, but Alex was always the source.

“Always,”

I say in barely a whisper. She watches me, waiting for more.

“Yeah, I blamed you. After you got pregnant, they started fighting and never stopped. You had the best of them.”

“The best of them? You’re giving them a lot of credit.”

She unwraps a mini chocolate from the bowl on the table and pops it in her mouth.

“I was seventeen . . . ”

“I get it, but at least they were around for you. I was on my own, and I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

Alex nods.

“But nothing changed after you and Max left, so I blamed Dad. Then I blamed myself for being ‘difficult,’ and now, I’m finally getting how useless blame is. I mean, at some point it had to be her, too, right?”

I lean back in my chair.

“We all make choices. It’s like Dad, you know? Who can we possibly blame for him? Maybe I’m like that, too.”

“You’re nothing like that. I see you, . I see you.”

I blink at her.

“Okay. Don’t say that. Ever.”

I smile, and she wipes a tear away.

“Look at this place. You all seem really happy.”

“We are,”

Casey pipes up, winking at Alex.

“Max, come and eat!”

she yells. Max runs into the kitchen. Casey slides a panini onto my plate and goes back to the press, taking another sandwich from it for Max.

“Does this mean maybe you’ll start opening up to me?”

Alex asks, eyeing me hopefully.

“Baby steps,”

I say, biting into the gooey sandwich.

“This is delicious.”

Casey moves behind Alex’s chair and hugs her from behind. They watch me eat like I’m a zoo animal.

Max picks up his plate from the counter with one hand and the full plastic cup of grape Kool-Aid with the other. “Moooom,”

he calls out for help, and before they can reach him, the cup falls, and his drink cascades across the floor. He’s on the verge of tears.

“Don’t sweat it, Max, it’s only juice.”

Casey grabs a towel and tosses it over the spill while Alex refills his glass and brings it to the table. They’re seamless together, and that is not easy to find in this world.

Max sits beside me and takes a giant bite into his piping hot panini before spitting it onto the plate, yelping.

“Hot, hot, hot.”

I take it all in, thinking about my piece for the magazine.

So what about love?

Maybe we do exist in a revolving door of emotions. Sadness might not be sustainable, but love is.

This is my happy ending with Alex. It’s not full of sweeping apologies over an ocean cliff, or racing through the streets to reunite, and there’s no unconditional forgiveness because there’s a lot of hand cranking to go before we get there. It’s paninis an.

“Teen Titans”

on TV. It’s messy like the sandwiches we’re scarfing down. And it’s not even an ending.

It’s a beginning.