Page 9

MY PARENTS LIVED in a little blue house by the sea.

It’d been Grandma Lark’s before it was Dad’s, and then someday I guessed it’d be mine.

It was a weird little house, with gnomes hidden in the bushes and a garden that could never grow roses no matter how hard Dad tried.

My room was up the stairs at the end of the hallway, and it hadn’t changed an inch since I’d moved out for college, so at least I knew when I stumbled home that night exactly where my bed would be.

Mom sat down beside me in the breakfast nook the next morning, sliding me a strong cup of coffee. “Tough night?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

While a lot of last night was a blur, I remembered the highlights.

Mainly, the Revelry closing. My parents retiring.

Them dropping the news right before the show.

I wanted to ask her then and there—why? Why close it, why not ask the rest of us first?

But … it wasn’t the time to ask. My head throbbed with a hangover, and my knees were definitely bruised.

“Ugh,” I groaned, and blew on the coffee. Later, I promised myself. I’d ask her about it later. “When did I get home last night?”

“Around two,” she replied. “You scared the shit out of your dad and me.”

“Oh no, what did I do?”

“You decided to crawl up the stairs because ‘your kneeckles were too wobbly.’”

I wanted to bury myself out back and be done with it. “What the hell are kneeckles ?”

“I have no idea!” she replied with a laugh and pulled out her phone. “But it was funny as hell. I even took a video …”

I moaned, “You did not .”

“See! Right here.” And there, on her phone, was indeed a video of a scene in my life I barely recalled. But now I knew why I had bruises on my knees, at least. “Ooh, ooh, watch when you get to the top!”

Drunk, bad-decision me got to the top, rose to her feet, and did the Rocky Balboa pose.

“YO, ADRIAAAAAAN!” video me shouted, and I decided at that moment that I’d never drink Maker’s Mark again, and that if I could go back in time, I’d shove myself into the trunk of my parents’ old Subaru, take myself out to the state park where the wild horses roamed, and dump my body in the dunes for the crabs to eat.

Mom giggled, kicking her feet like a schoolgirl. When she laughed, she scrunched her nose. I wondered if I did, too. “I’m going to keep this forever.”

“Just don’t share it on Facebook,” I replied, taking a sip of coffee. Oh yeah, it was definitely a hoof to the face kind of cup. Mom always made it so strong, even sugar couldn’t save it. It was the only way I liked it.

Mom was suspiciously quiet.

I slid a glare to her.

She smiled. “It has over a hundred views already! Look what your cousin Sami said—‘real winners quit’—I don’t know what that means but I think it’s supportive!”

“Mom.”

“And see? There’s Todd—you know Todd, the barista at Cool Beans?—saying that you’ve earned a cup of nitro on him! What’s nitro?”

“Hipster coffee that makes you go zoom.”

She shook her head. “That’s what we used to call speed.”

“Mom!”

“I’m joking! Sorta. Your grandmother popped them like Tic Tacs.”

“ Mom! ”

“She did! It was the sixties,” she added with a laugh. “We joke about it because otherwise it’s so awful I can barely stand it. Now, Ami ’s mom was addicted to Valium …” She trailed off. Her smile faltered a little.

I tilted my head. “Ami?” I’d never heard her mention an Ami before—was she a new friend from her poker games?

“Oh, did I say Ami? I meant Cheryl.” I followed her lead, letting her brush off the slip.

She did that often, confusing one word or name or place for another.

“Anyway, it seems like everyone’s really excited to have you back, and I heard from a little birdie that a little someone else is back in town …

” She wiggled her eyebrow. And just like that, she shifted the subject.

Mom scooted over an inch and whispered conspiratorially, “I’m talking about Van. ”

“Mmh,” I replied, sipping my coffee. “Gigi told me he was here helping his parents move?”

“Sad to say, I think they’re moving away away—like the Ashtons.

” Mom sighed. “All the good neighbors are leaving and being replaced by those Airbnbs. It’s awful.

You know, Mitch and Gigi can’t even afford a house in this area because it’s so damn expensive these days.

I feel like I’m forgetting something,” she added with a note of frustration.

I drank some more of my coffee. I also felt like I was forgetting something from last night. Something important—besides the Revelry closing.

But I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was.

She pushed herself up from the table and crossed the kitchen to refill her coffee.

She glanced at the refrigerator and the flurry of notes there, set her cup on the counter, and then did a double take.

“Oh! That’s right,” she said, plucking a sticky note from the multitudes and bringing it back over to me.

Tell J about G coffee—10am!! the note read in her long, loopy handwriting.

“Gigi came by this morning while you were still asleep and asked me to remind you about coffee today. Thank god I remembered. That was going to bug me.”

“Did she say where?” I asked, flipping the sticky note over. “Cool Beans?”

Mom nodded and went to fetch her cup she’d abandoned on the counter and refill it while she was there. With her back turned she said, “I know we sprang the news on all of you last night.”

I almost choked on my coffee.

Was Mom really—was she going to talk about it unprompted ?

“We just didn’t know how else to do it,” she went on. “I know that place is home to you and Mitch. But thank you for being so understanding that it’s time. It makes all this easier. Your dad and I raised two pretty amazing kids, I think.”

And just like that, my protestations died in my throat.

She left out the back door to the garden, and I sank down into the breakfast nook again and watched her out of the bay windows as she put on her gardening gloves and started to prune a tomato plant.

I took a deep breath, told myself it was all fine, and stared down into my coffee. My head throbbed. I massaged the bridge of my nose, hoping that the hangover would go away. How much whiskey did I really drink last night? I remembered sitting at the piano, in my feelings, and then—

That voice.

Well, I guess hearing voices wasn’t the worst thing I could have done.

At least I didn’t strip naked and sprint down Main Street.

I propped my head up on my hand, closed my eyes, and tried to soothe the throbbing in my brain.

Talking to an imaginary voice seemed rather tame, all things considered.

It was a nice voice, at least from what I remembered of it, and it itched a familiar part of my brain, like I’d heard him before.

What was the saying—when you had a voice for radio?

A backhanded compliment about not having a face for TV, but I imagined dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, soft lips—the kind of guy who held the door open for you and remembered that you didn’t like alfalfa sprouts on your sandwiches.

Someone dreamy, and nice, and very much not real.

“Well, about that …” said the same deep, soft voice in my head.