Once Upon a Present
The asphalt was still wet from the earlier rain. It hadn’t let up all damn week, but I was glad, at least today, it’d chosen to give me a fucking break. The driveway was slick as I pulled up to my mother’s house. Kieran’s truck was in the carport and Paige’s car was right behind it. The engine on my bike thundered as I came to a stop. I let it idle as I stared at the front door. Mom had made a huge turnaround these past few days, and even though it felt good, I wondered what debt I’d have to pay back to the universe for such a miracle. I exhaled and cut the engine. Kelly was in town… maybe that would be the balance life demanded…
“Come back to bed, baby.”
His voice, the last time she’d called me and I’d been dumb enough to call her back, still resonated in my brain. My head hadn’t been right since I saw Kelly at the hospital. She was with that asshole, and the sight of his hand in hers, it’d rattled the foundation, the brick and mortar I’d built around myself in order to survive the day to day. I was still nursing open wounds, and seeing her again, made it plain as fucking day that I wasn’t as close to healing as I’d hoped. Why had she come back here? I had enough self-preservation instincts to know I couldn’t fucking care. I’d felt like shit, and instead of forgetting myself in a bottle like my old man, I’d gone straight over to Tana’s to fuck away my anger. Whiskey would’ve probably been better for my soul. Regardless of how “open” Tana was about everything, I’d let her linger too long and that choice would bite me in my ass someday. And, I’d deserve it when it finally did.
I set the bike on its stand, dismounted, and removed my helmet. I set it on the seat and grabbed my bag off the back. I should be happy that Mom was here and not at the hospital. Every damn time I walked into that place I expected to see Kelly, and by the fifth day without a run in, if it hadn’t been for Kieran seeing her, I’d thought maybe I was seeing shit like Dex.
She’d looked good. She seemed shinier than I remembered. Polished in a way that would only smudge and tarnish under my touch. But, hell, who was I kidding, it had always been that way. Kelly and I had been on a final count down since day fucking one.
“Are you hiding?” Paige’s soft voice drew my attention to the front porch.
Her swollen belly made me smile, if only because of how excited it made Declan. She wasn’t due until June, but when someone as small as Paige was carrying twins… I wasn’t sure she’d make it another month, let alone three. My smile darkened as that ever present worry trickled in. Dex could handle it… he had to.
“Maybe,” I said with a smile. “You leaving?”
She shook her head. “No, just grabbing your mom’s get well card. I forgot it. I seem to forget everything these days.” She laughed softly. “I’m using all my brain cells to make these babies.”
My smile widened as I chuckled, watching her waddle to the car. It didn’t take her long and we both headed inside. The house was quiet as the door clicked shut behind me, and I set my bag on the floor by the couch.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Kieran and Declan are settling her in. We got here a little while ago. The home health nurse just left. She set up the oxygen for tonight, but said she’d be back in the morning.”
I stopped mid-step and gently grabbed Paige’s hand. My throat felt tight as I asked, “What the fuck, they said Mom was—”
“She’s okay, Liam.” Paige’s smile was placating and it pissed me off. I’d left the hospital this morning and everything had been fine. Mom had been ready for discharge. “I wouldn’t have left if I had known she wasn’t one hundred percent. They said it was okay for me to get back to the shop.”
Paige tugged on my hand once and released it. “They said she’ll most likely need the oxygen for a while. Her bladder infection, plus the narrowing of her aorta… she’s weak, Liam.” Paige took a step closer to me and my spine stiffened. “I guess they said her blood flow isn’t that great, and the oxygen will help her heal faster, feel better, in general.”
She reached out to touch my shoulder and I turned away heading down the hall. I wasn’t trying to be a dick, but the air in my lungs, the pain in my throat, it was too fucking much. I just wanted to see my mom. Paige followed behind me and, when I opened my mother’s door, I was greeted with laughter. Kieran’s eyes were bright, and Dex was holding his stomach as he laughed. Mom… she seemed happy, and that sick feeling that was building in my gut vanished.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, my own lips lifting at the corners.
“Mom thinks Kieran should date her nurse.” Declan chuckled. He stood from the bed and took Paige’s hand in his as he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.
Kieran rolled his eyes and he scooted his chair closer to Mom’s bed. “She’s not my type.”
“You have a type? Could’ve fucking fooled me.” I smirked and Kieran narrowed his eyes.
“Liam…” Mom shook her head. “That mouth of yours, but he’s right, Kieran. You’ve always been too picky.” She patted the hand Kieran had placed on the bed.
“She’s like thirty-five, Mom.” Dex laughed again and the sound of it made my grin widen.
“Nothing wrong with an older woman. Maybe she’ll have a soul as old as your own, son.” My mother’s light eyes turned glassy as she stared at Kieran. “You can’t wait forever, honey, I just want you to be settled.”
“Happiness is overrated,” I barked and then gave my mother a smirk when she frowned at me.
“Don’t even get me started on you.” She shifted to sit up more and coughed.
Kieran fussed over her and helped move some pillows. Was it possible she looked worse than this morning? My light mood was shadowed by the oxygen tank. I hated this. Instead of feeling happy that she was home, it almost felt like she’d come home to die.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said and sat on the end of the bed.
My mother gave Kieran a look and he nodded.
“I’m going to attempt to recreate your Guinness stew, Mrs. O’Connell.” Paige laughed as my mother clicked her tongue.
“You know I hate it when you call me that.” A smile played at the curve of my mother’s mouth. “But, Kieran is pretty handy around the kitchen. He can help.”
Paige lifted her eyes to Dex and his lips parted into a grin. “Don’t look at me, I’m good with a paint brush and that’s about it.”
“That’s not true.” Paige turned and faced him fully, his hands falling to her belly. The private look they gave each other made me uncomfortable and I turned my eyes back to my mother. She watched them with pride.
Kieran stood and said, “Let’s get the show on the road, I’m starving.”
Declan and Kieran left the room as Paige handed my mother the card she’d gotten from her car and whispered, “I thought you might like to know.” And left the room right behind my brothers.
My eyes fell to the cream-colored envelope and then back to my mother’s tear-filled eyes. The crashing of pans and the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen almost made the moment feel staged. It was as if life was moving on around me, around her, and we’d both been left behind.
I watched my mother open the card with shaky fingers. I wanted to help her, but if I even tried her pride wouldn’t allow it. She always told me she hated that I had to hold up the family. She’d said once that I should’ve gotten to be a kid instead of a pillar. She gasped when she read the card and my curiosity got the better of me. “What is it?”
Her eyes flicked to mine, and her face broke into a huge smile. “Paige and Declan are having a boy and a girl. She lifted the ultrasound pictures from the card and held them up for me to see. My heart hammered as I scanned the flimsy black and white glossy paper. Life really was moving forward… and even if it made me a jealous fuck, I couldn’t help but feel a weird sense of loss.
Without anyone to take care of… I didn’t really know who I was anymore.
“He’ll… they’ll be fine you know.” My mother’s voice broke through my selfish thoughts.
I nodded and took a deep breath. “What about you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Who knows? But, when God’s ready for me… I think… I’ll be happy to go.” As she said it her shoulders sagged, and the deep grooves around her eyes relaxed. I’d felt so many things in my life. I’d experienced every up and fucking down possible, but my mother’s resignation to life… it was the first time I ever felt absolutely helpless.
“Mom…” My voice cracked and my eyes burned.
“You can’t stop it, Liam… you can’t. I saw it in your eyes the first day at the hospital. Time eats us alive every day, and I wish you hadn’t been forced to miss out on so much of it. If anyone deserves a break, it’s you.” She patted the mattress and I shifted closer to her. She wrapped her warm hand in mine, and my restrained emotion shook my shoulders. “I’m sick, but I’ll get better, or maybe I won’t, but you have so much time left. Don’t waste it on hating yourself a minute more.”
Her words reflected back at me like a mirror. No matter how hard I worked, tried to make shit right for everyone else, I was sinking… sinking deeper every damn day into the gaping hole I’d created for myself.
“I saw her at the hospital… the day you were admitted.” I sucked in a breath, reeling in all the shit threatening to pour from my mouth. “She looked real good, Mom. Healthy. And maybe I wanted to save her back then, and maybe I’m still fucking pissed that, after everything, she saved herself. She realized she didn’t need me, and the cost of staying here… I wasn’t worth it.”
I lowered my eyes to the light blue fabric of my mother’s blanket.
“We both know that’s not the whole truth.” My mom squeezed my hand and coughed lightly. I raised my gaze to hers and was surprised to find a smile on her lips. “You screwed up, son, and you let her go without fixing things, but I think, and maybe it’s just me being sentimental, but I think when she ran, she wanted you to chase her… and I bet she still does.”
I loved my mother and, as much as I wished shit were different, I didn’t fucking play games. Kelly knew I couldn’t leave, and the night everything went down, the night she left, she’d flashed everything that was wrong about me and her in my goddamn face.
“She was with someone, Mom. Three years is a long time. And with the way I left things…”
She exhaled and her lids lowered heavily. The oxygen tubing in her nose made her look even more fragile. “You’ve always been the one to make it work… you don’t hit walls, you knock them down. Maybe it’s time you knocked down the ones holding you back.” Her eyes closed and she tapped my hand once more before raising it and settling it on her stomach.
“Get some rest. I’ll bring you a bowl of stew when it’s ready.”
She didn’t answer, just nodded her head. As I left her room, I turned off the light and closed the door, leaving it open a small crack. I didn’t head toward the kitchen, instead I headed to my old room. The door was open and everything was exactly the same as I’d left it. My old punk rock band posters were still hanging on the walls. My shitty comic book drawings were stuck with pins to the cork board Dex had made in seventh grade. I scanned the small bed and my stomach twisted as I thought about how I’d used to sneak Kelly in through my bedroom window at night. We would stay up way too late, talking about dreams that would never come true, at least not for me. I could almost smell her, hear her—see her eyes locked on mine as I covered her mouth when she came. It’d been the only way not to wake my brothers or my parents.
Eventually we traded the window for the front door after she’d graduated. And after my father died, and I moved out, she basically lived at my apartment. But everything had gone from storybook to fucked up, and for the past three years, I’d been haunted by how I’d let it all crumble down around me. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face… the fear in her eyes on the night she’d finally left. Kelly walked out of my life, not because she wanted to be a model, not even because she was tired of this town, she fucking left me because I was no longer her prince. I’d become the villain. I’d held her captive, and she’d finally found the strength to leave.