Connor

Skipping school wasn’t something I did very often, but when I’d woken up today, I’d felt like the fucking universe was completely out of whack. I had done my sun salutations, like every morning. It was something my second mom, Laurie, had made sure I did when we all lived together. If I didn’t do them, I didn’t feel right.

Well, I’d done them, and I still felt like there was something wrong.

Instead of hopping on the school bus, I’d headed for the regular public transport, getting off at a shopping center to grab a coffee and something to eat at a café.

I wanted to talk to Alys, but she had class this morning. I’d have to wait until after noon before she was free.

She had pissed me right the fuck off when she told me she didn’t want us holding each other back, but things between us hadn’t changed, so I’d gotten over it pretty quick. Plus, she had totally snuck over that night.

“It’s not forever,” she’d told me on our last night together.

She’d cried in my arms, and I might’ve cried a little in hers.

I’d bawled like a little bitch after she creeped out of my room though. She’d parked her car down the street from my parents’ house, creeping out before dawn and Da waking up.

I missed her with a deep, hollow ache. It felt as though she’d taken a part of me with her when she moved to Lafayette.

At least we spoke every night before going to sleep. It helped.

Sitting with my plain black coffee, I couldn’t shake this weird-ass feeling. Everything was calm, quiet but strangely so. Like how the air turned stifling right before a mad storm showed up. Around me, the world kept spinning, but I sat in a sense of limbo.

I wanted to talk to my sister.

I wanted to go home to Ormond. Bad. Like, I needed to be there. While I loved my parents, adored my mother, I never really felt like the house in Gentilly was home.

We were supposed to be one fucking family. I didn’t like not living in the same house as Kenna and Laurie. I even missed Grandma Betty. Technically, the woman wasn’t my grandmother, but she was the only one I’d ever known. My mother, Gloria’s parents didn’t approve of her…lifestyle choice, so I never met them.

Da and Mom had gone to visit them for Christmas, 1981, when they found out Mom was pregnant with me. When Mom had told them that she and Da were together with Laurie Craddock, they’d disapproved to the point where they kicked Da out of the house, so Mom had gone with him, writing them off.

I wondered now if it would matter so much to them.

But Laurie was so sick, and from what Mom had said, Laurie didn’t want us watching her slowly die. It had been a shock to see her on Kenna’s birthday. Thin but oddly bloated, her skin yellow.

Laurie had been so beautiful. She still was, but…she didn’t look like the woman who had helped raise me. Laurie was tall, and once upon a time, she’d been well built. Her dark brown hair was thick and wavy, and she had eyes the color of mahogany. When I was a kid, she’d had skin the color of bronze. Nowadays though, she looked jaundiced.

My own mother had beautiful dark hair and eyes, too, but she was nearly as pale as Da, and the two of them had given me the power to freckle. I guessed, from a distance, I could pass as tan, but up close, one could see that I was still bone white under a fuck-ton of freckles.

Kenna would turn the color of honey in the sun. I’d spent my whole life feeling jealous of that.

I was supposed to spend the weekend over at Grandma Betty’s. I had thought about sneaking off to Lafayette to be with Alys, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing my other mom. Not now. I felt as though she needed to see me.

There was no point in sitting in a café all fucking day. Laurie wouldn’t rat me out to my parents that I was skipping. She knew I was a straight-A student, that my grades wouldn’t suffer. She’d understand if I told her that I was feeling off and needed to sort shit out.

Maybe she’d lead me in some meditation. She was always good for that. She’d helped me to hear the music inside me when I was a kid, and from then on out, it was all I felt. Music was everywhere, whispering through every living organism.

“Music is the language of the soul,” she’d told me. “You hear it, feel it, more than most. Don’t ever stop listening to it.”

And I hadn’t. Since that day, I’d made sure to pick up every instrument I could lay my hands on. Even the fucking bagpipes.

Da had been so proud when I learned to play them.

Finishing my coffee, I grabbed my shit and headed for the bus that would take me to LaPlace. I was meant to take it after school got out. Mom had the afternoon shift at the nursing home and couldn’t drive me herself.

The bus ride took about forty-five minutes. I grabbed a seat in the back and popped in my earbuds, turning on my precious portable CD player. I’d gotten it for my birthday a few months ago, and I never went anywhere without it or my CD case. Led Zeppelin IV started pouring through the speakers, filling my soul, recharging it.

When I got off the bus, it was nearly noon, and I crossed the street into Ormond. Within minutes, I was passing the spooky Plantation House. I stopped to take a look. Even in the daylight, the overgrowth of vegetation made the place seem dark, haunted with things better left alone.

Instead of making my way all the way around, I hopped the fence into Grandma Betty’s backyard. I loved it back here. It was a substantial property of its own but nothing as large as the Plantation House. All of this had once been one property.

After I made it through the tree line, I could clearly see the porch, and for a second, I got a trippy sense of déjà vu. Laurie was sitting at the large round table. She was looking at me, a tired smile on her face. I waved, and in response, her hand lifted weakly from the tabletop.

A strange sensation tickled around my heart, prickling its way down my spine and up my brain stem. I didn’t know if it was the strong sunlight blasting my eyes, but it looked as though Laurie was young and healthy for just a second, maybe two. I wanted so badly to believe it.

But then space and time brought us back to this moment, and she was just a sick, weary woman, worn away from a weak heart.

I thought it was ironic that her heart was failing her when, my whole life, she had had the biggest heart of anyone I knew. She gave so much of herself to everyone—her wisdom, her faith, her love—but, in the end, while her spiritual heart might be the strongest out of all of us, it was her human organ that couldn’t sustain her life.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, my voice pitching deep.

She smiled as brightly as she could. “Hey, son.”

And I was. I was her child as much Kenna was. No, I hadn’t come from her body, but I had been conceived with her love and blessing. She had wanted me just as my own mother had.

“You all right?” I asked as I went around and took the porch steps.

“No,” she replied.

Startled, I looked over at her. She was still smiling, but I could see it. Her body was done, and she…she was ready.

“But—”

Her hand fluttered, dismissing my concern. “I was waiting for you.”

“Where’s Grandma?”

“Making us some lunch.” She sighed, sounding resigned. “I told her to make you a sandwich, too. Come sit with me.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, taking the seat next to her, dropping my backpack to the floor.

“I’m dying, Connor,” she replied, a hint of snark to her tone. “But, before I go, I want to tell you that I love you so very much.”

“Before I go…” Like she was just going on a trip or something.

The hairs all over my body stood up on end, making me shiver, despite the raging heat.

“I love you, too,” I replied. What else can I say?

“Your da is going to have a hell of a time dealing with this. You all are, but he…” She took a deep breath. “Just take it easy on him, okay? He’s going to be a huge pain in the ass, I know it, but I’m begging you to forgive him. Just let it slide, and…when it doesn’t hurt so much, you’ll have your da back. I promise.”

Grandma Betty came out with a couple of plates piled high with corned beef sandwiches. She gave me a smile that was blunted with pain, her soft brown eyes watering and red-rimmed.

“Grandma—”

She cleared her throat. “Iced tea?”

What the fuck is going on?

Shit was always strange with Laurie and Betty, but this was straight-the-fuck-up weird. I was a part of it, woven into the fabric of this moment for some reason. They looked like they knew something.

“Sure,” I replied.

My eyes went back to Laurie. She really didn’t look well.

Grandma Betty turned and headed back into the house.

“Mom?” My voice was barely above a whisper.

“My little soul singer. Don’t…ever”—she took a deep breath, and my heart shuddered—“stop speaking the language…of the soul.”

Her breath left her body, and I felt it. Her fucking soul burst out and washed over everything in a cosmic blast.

Laurie’s body toppled out of her chair, and I just narrowly caught her before she hit the ground.

“Call 911!” I shouted into the house, gently laying Laurie flat on her back. “Grandma!”

But all I heard was quiet, muffled weeping. Grandma had felt it, too.

“I’m coming right back,” I told Mom.

Running into the house, I grabbed the cordless phone off the jack in the kitchen and called 911. The operator picked up, and as I dashed back onto the porch, I gave her the information needed, set the phone aside, and then started chest compressions on Mom.

As I breathed into Laurie’s mouth, it was as though I were trying to breathe my own life force into her to bring her back. If I could just send out my own soul to find her, I could convince her to return.

I didn’t know how long I’d been performing CPR on her, but at some point, EMTs came in, and Grandma Betty gently pulled me to the side. They lifted Mom onto the gurney, strapping an oxygen mask onto her face, and the smallest of them hopped on top to take over chest compressions.

I heard the slam of car doors, and I felt Kenna. She was here. I didn’t want her to see Mom like that.

Tearing myself away from Grandma, I rushed out of the house, intercepting her just in time. She’d been about to plow up the front porch.

“No!” she wailed.

I swore, it was the same sound my own soul was screaming inside me.

There was no hope.

Our mother was already gone. Even if her body still had residual traces of life, I’d felt it when she left. We all had. She’d been more than ready to leave this world behind.

That night, Alys lay in my arms on Kenna’s futon. Neither of us had it in us to care what anyone else thought. We had all lost our mother, and though the feelings between Alys and me were anything but that of siblings, Lili and Kenna didn’t see us beyond that.

Alys’s familiar scent and weight, her softness, eased the pain slightly. As I tightly held her to me, it was as though she were leeching the ache from behind my eyes and in my chest.

Kenna had no such solace. I saw the wound in her throughout the following days, festering and becoming infected with her anger, yet…she was calm, holding in all her rage and pain. Like a robot, she went through the motions of living.

Alys spent all her time with Kenna, and I couldn’t find it in me to ask that she share herself with me. My sister needed her more than I did.

“Kenna and Lili are driving up next weekend,” Alys told me, pulling out of my arms and sitting up.

She’d finally moved out of the dorms about five months ago and into this old house with a couple of other people. It was in a heavily wooded neighborhood, not far from campus. I had helped her move in after winter break.

I stretched out on the bed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. They haven’t come to visit me at all. I’m excited about it.”

It upset me that Kenna hadn’t bothered to visit her best friend since she moved away. I would sneak up to Lafayette at least three times a month to spend a day or two with my Sunshine.

Alys must have seen the thought on my face.

“Don’t be mad at her,” she said. “Do you have any idea what she’s been putting herself through? She barely has time to sleep, let alone come up to visit. I’m just happy Lili is keeping an eye on her. She said…”

“What?”

“She said Kenna almost looks sick. She’s lost a lot of weight. She’s not sleeping, and she’s studying all the fucking time. I mean, I feel stressed out with the amount of shit I have to do, and I’m not doing even half as much as she is.”

“She did look a bit worn out the last time I saw her,” I conceded, remembering the dark rings beneath Kenna’s eyes.

“And I know Kenna is constantly worried about Grandma Betty.”

That, I could understand. The woman had deteriorated so quickly after Laurie’s passing.

“Well then, I’m glad she’s taking some time off to come and see you,” I said, reaching out and pulling her back into my arms. “You’re coming back for summer break, right?”

She sighed. “I thought about taking some classes over the summer, but…”

“But?”

“I miss you too much. Graduating a few months early wouldn’t be worth it. After next year, you’ll be going off to college, too, and then we’ll hardly ever see each other.”

A flash of panic flooded my brain. “Damn, woman. You know just how to kill a happy mood, you know that?”

She giggled. “It’s not forever. If you bust your ass, we could be together for real in, like, five years or so.”

“For the love of the gods…” I groaned. “Is it really still that far away?”

“Right? Don’t worry. It’ll go quick. I can’t believe I’m nearly done with my first year already.”

I hugged her tight. “I know. I’m proud of you, Sunshine.”

She snuggled into me, her arm snaking across my belly and squeezing. “What time are you heading back?”

“Afternoon sometime. Why?”

She slipped her hand in between my legs, and my dick twitched to life.

“Because I want to get as much of you as I possibly can before you go.”

“Anything for my Sunshine,” I replied.