33. Tessa
33
Tessa
Three Months Later
M y phone rings just as I stumble through the door after work. It’s probably Peyton, but I don’t have the energy to talk right now. I’ve been working longer hours lately, trying to get recognized enough that they’ll consider me for a position in marketing and I’m exhausted. I bounce around the kitchen, pulling off my heels and dropping them beside the massive, marble island. I’m just about to silence my phone when I glance at the screen and see my mom’s name for the first time in months. There’s a moment of panic, What the hell am I going to say to her? But I’m more afraid of missing her call than I am of speaking to her, so I punch the button to answer.
“Mama?” I breathe into the phone.
“Hey, baby.” She sounds tired and fragile. I don’t fail to notice the beeping going on in the background of wherever she is and it raises my blood pressure to hear it.
“What’s going on?” I ask hesitantly.
When she pauses, I hear her inhale deeply. “Your daddy fell yesterday.”
My brain goes into crisis mode. “He what? Is he okay?”
“He will be. They’re keeping him for a couple days while we wait on a surgeon.”
“Surgery?” I ask urgently. Tears rush to my eyes, hot and sudden. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there to help them when they needed it most and guilt settles heavy on my shoulders. My dad is older than my mom by a good ten years and he was getting older when I left. I’d been ignoring it for a while. I tried not to notice when he needed help lifting a box or when he forgot a few details from an order. I thought it was normal, but this is scary. It’s glaringly obvious that he’s aging and I’m missing it on purpose. “I’ll come home. I should come home, right?”
“No, honey. There’s no need for that. You stay, I’ve got it covered here. I just wanted to tell you.” The line goes silent, each of us unsure how to proceed. Does she not want me there? Does he? I hate that I can’t find the right words. I’ve wanted to talk so many times, but now that I have her, I can’t think of a single thing to say. “I was so scared,” she whispers and I hear her sniff. Just that small, pained sound squeezes my heart from hundreds of miles away.
“You can tell me about it,” I offer.
And she does. She explains how Daddy fell when he stepped off a curb. How he broke his hip and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
“I told Tommy if he took my husband without me, he was gonna regret it.”
We’re laughing when she recounts how she made the ambulance wait for her. It doesn’t surprise me that she knows the paramedic by name or that she’d threaten him. My mom is a lot of things, but she can be fierce when she needs to be. Right now though, she just sounds like home.
“I tried calling a few times,” I tell her, needing her to know I cared before this accident. I wanted a reconciliation even when I couldn’t find the words.
“I’m sorry, honey. I’m so, so sorry.” I know she’s been holding on to that since I picked up the phone.
“There’s nothing for you to apologize for, Mama. I’m the one who messed up.”
She cuts me off. “No, you’re wrong. When you left, your Daddy was so angry I thought I needed to be angry right alongside him. I let him keep me from calling because I thought if I didn’t talk to you either, that would somehow ease his anger. But it didn’t. It only hurt us more.” Her apology opens a crack inside me and some of the hurt is able to flow out. “Gosh, Tessa. There were so many times I wanted to pick up the phone, but after a while, I thought you might not want to hear from me either.”
“Of course I wanted to talk to you.”
“When I saw him in the hospital bed, all I kept thinking was what if something worse happened and you didn’t know? He couldn’t stop me then, especially since he can’t get out of bed,” she chuckles.
“I miss you,” I tell her and the miles between us are an acute sort of ache.
“I miss you too, baby. How’s work?”
It’s so simple, but just the nudge I need to tell her about everything that’s happened since I left. We stay on the phone so long that I’m still talking when Shep comes in from his therapy appointment. He mouths, Who’s that? and the brightest smile splits my face. I point at the phone excitedly and mouth back, My mom!
He walks over to squeeze my shoulder and I can tell he’s just as happy as I am. After he showers, he comes back to play a video game while I talk. There’s no doubt he’s listening, but I’m comforted by the fact he’s here if I need him. He hasn’t stopped since I came to live with him.
“Beau came by the hospital this morning,” Mama says.
I sit up straighter at his name. His goodness doesn’t surprise me and it’s comforting that he was there for them when I wasn’t. We haven’t mentioned him. We’ve been dancing around the subject of my non-existent love life, hoping the other would bring it up first. She must have gotten tired of waiting.
“Did he? That was…nice.” I land on the lamest word possible and rub at my temple.
“He looks good.”
“Oh, you’re suddenly fine with his long hair?”
“God, no. But he cut it and it suits him.”
That shouldn’t hurt to hear, but it does. I sigh. “Mama, does he look… I don’t know. Nevermind.”
“Happy?” she asks, not making me say it. When I make a noise of agreement, she says, “I don’t really know, you’d be a better judge.”
“Not anymore,” I say with more than a little regret. “How did you know with Daddy? That he was the one, I mean.” I never got around to asking her when Beau and I were together, but it’s something I’ve always wondered. If the past year has taught me anything, it’s to say the things on my mind instead of waiting until it’s too late.
She answers immediately. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I wanted to be near him all the time, no matter what he was doing.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
I don’t tell her I’ve been dreaming of Beau lately. That I’ve been pulled from a dead sleep more than a few times to an ache that’s bone deep. Since seeing him, the longing is getting worse and that’s how I know the dreams are about him, though I can’t remember any of the details once I wake. Maybe one day I will, but this truce between us is too fragile and somehow I know it would only cause her pain. She’s got so much on her plate already and there’s no reason to add to her trouble.
She tentatively asks, “Have you thought about coming home for Christmas?”
Of course I have, but the thought terrifies me as much as it excites me. “Would I be welcome?”
“Let me worry about your daddy.” She huffs a short laugh. “I’m afraid you inherited your stubbornness from him.”
“I thought that came from you?” The quip rolls off my tongue quicker than I can blink and it feels so good to share a little of the closeness we once had, when we could joke about anything.
“No, I only passed on good qualities. You know that.” I can practically hear the tilt of her lips through the phone.
“Oh, that’s right. I’ll talk to Shep and see if he’s up for a visit.”
“As much as I’d love to see him, you think it’s wise to bring him with you?” She doesn’t have to spell out that she’s asking about my chances with Beau. Leave it to Ella to keep her informed.
“I think going home is going to require all the support I can get.” Shep glances over from his corner of the couch with a smirk.
“I’m surprised at you,” she says.
“Why?”
“You don’t want to do this on your own?”
We may not have spoken in almost a year, but my mom still knows me, down to my core. “A lot has changed since I left.”
“Yeah, I think I’m starting to see that.”
The words hang in the air and I hope she’s as comforted by them as I am.
When I hang up a few minutes later, Shep pauses his game and looks at me expectantly.
“What?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
My first thought is to deny it, to tell him I’m just going home for a visit, but an idea has been taking shape for a while now. The old Tessa would have hidden her plans until she was absolutely sure, but I had to come all the way to Houston to outrun her and her self-destructive habits. I take my time answering before settling on something simple. “I think so.”
He nods down at his lap and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “I guess we’re going home for Christmas.”