Page 75 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)
Chapter Thirty-Nine
AUGUSTUS
“I like your friend, I’m glad you have him.” Were my mom’s first words as Clay walked out of my front door later that same day. They were spoken so primly that they made me laugh.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yes. He’s a nice boy,” she said.
The snort couldn’t leave me fast enough.
The woman was totally uninformed about Clayton Ferguson but I guess that’s how he must have come across to her as he’d been coming by the townhouse and acting as some sort of liaison to my parents about the Fernandez deal.
Which I guess was nice for her, while I had to deal with his cutting looks and his constant not so nice reminders for me to ‘get my shit together’ .
“If he’s nice then what am I?” I asked.
“The nicest boy.” She smiled, something passing through her eyes that seemed private in a way. Sad in others. “My boy.”
My heart squeezed so tight, I think it burst. And all at once, enough was enough. It was finally enough.
Trust yourself, Harper. Alta’s voice in my mind encouraged me to push forward.
“Mom?”
“Yes, baby?”
“What if…” The breath I took in was large and vast and readying. There was so much air under my diaphragm that I felt like it might crack. But if I was going to crack, I might as well get the answer that could break me anyway. “What would we do if Mar came back?”
I don’t know what I expected when I asked her this. Maybe for her to cry or break down or storm out the room. What I didn’t expect was for her to smile, the air from her soft laugh blowing her hair away from her face.
“Well, I’d hug her, of course,” she started. “You know your sister, she gave the best hugs. Learned that from me. Oh Auggie, I don’t think I’d ever let her go.”
I raised my eyebrows, my own laugh coming out soft and wistful. “Yeah, I guess she was a pretty good hugger. But she learned that from me. You’re too tiny to be a good hugger.”
She laughed, but it quickly fizzled out into a sigh. “I’d make her peach cobbler every night for dinner and bread pudding every morning for breakfast.”
“Oh, I get it.” I nodded. “Your plan is to keep her too full to run away again.”
Her eyes sparked with humor, “Legally, chaining her up would be frowned upon, so this is my next best plan.”
Weird. I think that was the first time I’d ever joked about my sister running away, and to my mom no less. Pausing, we both looked at each other. And then simultaneously, we smiled. Smiles turned to grins, and grins turned to bubbling laughter.
And damn, was it freeing.
For so long the topic of Mar’s disappearance had been like a foggy minefield. Maneuvering it was painful, and you were almost always bound to blow something up. But was it wrong that being able to laugh about this shit show was somehow refreshing?
Mom sighed and all at once her rigid, too formal posture slipped and she was sinking backward into the cushion of the couch.
“I’ve always pictured us reuniting peacefully.
On a beach or in the sprinkling rain. But if I know this family, if it ever happened it’ll be like a thunderclap.
Probably loud. There’d probably be some yelling. ”
“Fighting too,” I added.
“That too,” she laughed. “But then… the dust would settle and there she would be. Here. Home. It’s the end scene to my every dream, Augustus. The four of us, back together again.”
“You wouldn’t be mad?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m so far past anger, I don’t think I have any left in me.
I was angry for the longest time. At everyone—You and your sister included.
Your father especially. But the anger didn’t get me anywhere.
It crippled me and made everything harder.
Hope got me a lot further. It got me to you for the first time in years. ”
I smiled at her, the feeling in my chest light as I thought about her showing up at the shop. The circumstances were not ideal, but the result was this old yet new feeling of significance that was hard to ignore.
And I was happy she came.
It took me a month to realize it, but I was happy to have seen my mom. Happy to be seeing her now. Underneath all the pain and memories and regret for our shared bad decisions, I was happy to have seen her. And guilty because of it .
“And what if she never comes back?” I asked. “What would you do then?”
She took a long, long breath, her entire body slouching deeper into the cushions.
It was such a funny sight. My mom never slouched.
She was always prim and proper, always the perfect host, perfect homemaker, perfect everything.
But right now she was slumped back into my furniture like she was utterly exhausted by the conversation.
It was a conversation we’d been having for ten years, in a way.
Maybe it was time to finally get some closure.
“I’ve had a lot of time to imagine what I would do if your sister ever came back to us. But I’ve also had a lot of time to reconcile the fact that the possibility is slim,” she said.
I frowned. It was weird to hear her talk like that when she was the one who wanted to keep the company.
“But you want to keep everything the same.”
“Augustus.” She sat forward, her elbows going to her knees and her eyes pinning me with sincerity.
“I will never give up hope that your sister still loves us and will come home. I will always hold onto that, but I have other things to grab hold of too. Baby, you were so young when she left. Nearly a boy masquerading in a man’s body.
We should have held onto you much tighter than we did, but we let our grief get in the way of noticing yours. ”
Shit.
I covered my eyes. The damn things were stinging without my permission again. Suddenly my mom’s hand was covering my forearm, a reassuring squeeze of steady pressure.
“Mar was your first world. You hadn’t found a passion big enough like this art you love so much.
Certainly not a girl significant enough to make you question your happiness outside of your family.
And the rest was just inconsequential for you,” she said.
“She was our world too, Auggie. Is. But you know who else is?”
I shook my head, the heels of my hands digging deep into my eyes trying to stop the moisture that was already spilling .
“You, son.” A deep voice said, a large hand coming around to hold onto my shoulder and squeeze. My mom’s soft voice echoed. “You. And when you lost your world, we didn’t do a good enough job of letting you know that there is more than just pain out there for you, for her, for all of us.”
I hissed and cursed, my breath feeling ragged and the slice of air feeling like knives in my chest. Still, the presence of my hands literally in my eyeballs didn’t stop the tears from gathering and falling under the cover of them.
And wasn’t that the silliest thing of all?
Hiding my tears from the people who’d seen me cry first, seen me cry the most. And why?
Because I wanted to appear strong? Well, turns out I wasn’t strong all the time.
I was actually incredibly fragile when it came to this subject and that’s why even though I could face up to everything else, I’d been running from this very thing for almost half my life.
The universe chose this precise moment to show me an image of her. Of Mar. the last time I saw her she was grown. Smiling and giving me shit like the smartass little sister that she was.
I missed her. I really, really did. But I also missed this. I missed my family. Missed my home. And whatever reasons she had deep down in her heart that ultimately sent her away back then, I just hoped she forgave me for not having the same resolve. For not being able to wait for her.
“Even if Mar never comes back, Auggie. Even if we sell everything we own or keep everything the exact same. Even if we never see her again, not even to say goodbye for good… even then, we can learn to find happiness in what we have together,” Mom said.
Each word carefully placed between the broken shattered pieces of my heart. “With what we have now .”
“And that’s okay?” I asked, crying hard at this point.
Broken and hoping this decision would fix me.
“It has to be,” dad said.
The truth wasn’t a perfect fix. It was a tacky duct tape piecing us back together with gaps and rips and tears in between the places where we’d severed.
The truth—our reality, it hurt. The pain was still there.
But the pain was ours.