29. Chapter 29
Lark
Somewhere over Colorado, smashed in the middle seat between a heavy breather and a kid who can’t be older than fourteen who looks nervous as hell, I remember Davey McMan, who somehow landed the role of Puck in Midsummer his freshman year.
He was also nervous all the time during that show, but he was short and sprightly.
When we slathered him in green face paint and an artfully torn sack of a costume, he somehow looked exactly right.
A ghost of a smile dances on my lips at the memory of Davey as Puck with a voice newly hit by puberty proclaiming to whoever played a blue-horned Oberon, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Mr. Jensen, the director, paused rehearsal once after Davey exclaimed the line a little too artificially. I was waiting in the wings for my entrance when he said, “Do you know what that line means, Davey?”
“No, sir,” Davey had responded with an exuberant innocence only a freshman could have. The rest of us would have made something up to try to impress Mr. Jensen, but Davey didn’t know enough to pretend.
“The lovers onstage, they’re pretty serious about this whole thing, right?
” Mr. Jensen asked. Davey nodded, and Mr. Jensen continued.
“And Puck is the one who caused this mess in the first place. Yet he still blames the mortals for all of it. It’s their foolishness that has prompted this whole plot, according to him.
But it’s Shakespeare’s way of saying that love turns mortals into fools. ”
I wish I had known at the time that Mr. Jensen was not only giving us an acting lesson but a life lesson.
Love does, indeed, turn mortals into fools.
Maybe Lennon was right in a way. Maybe my love for Devin has made me foolish enough to book a flight without knowing more about what was going on.
But I’ve never been so glad that I trusted my instincts as I was when Richard himself called me as I was waiting at the gate and told me Devin has appendicitis and they were taking her back for emergency surgery.
I suppose I was a fool for ever loving Richard, too. We were always so different, even from the start. But I won’t pretend I didn’t love him. I know Lennon would prefer I didn’t—he’s said as much over the years—but I did.
My jaw clenches against the inclination to admit that I was a fool to fall for Lennon. I shake my head to myself to fend off more of those thoughts. Loving Lennon is a given. As simple and necessary as breathing. Falling in love with Lennon was inevitable. Being in love with Lennon is a privilege.
I am in love with Lennon. I doubt I’ll ever love anyone as deeply and broadly as I do him. If that makes me a fool, so be it. I’d rather be a fool who has had a great love even for a short time than someone who’s kept their wits and never really loved at all.
The teenager next to me purses his lips and breathes out slowly. A quick glance tells me his knuckles are white and his foot is bouncing up and down erratically. I bend over to retrieve my bag from under my seat and pull out some gum. I take some for myself, then tip the pack to him.
“Need some?” I ask.
He smiles weakly up at me, takes a piece, then returns to staring out the window. I wish I could offer him something more, but gum and a reassuring smile are about all I can muster up. He’ll be okay. Hopefully we all will.
***
When we land, it’s about two-fifteen in New York, even though my stomach is suggesting it’s closer to lunchtime.
Devin was going into surgery when I boarded the plane, so she’s probably out by now.
As soon as I can, I power up my phone and check my messages.
There are three from Richard, but nothing else.
My heart falls, but I don’t know what I expected.
Only that it’s weird not to have any reassurances from Lennon.
He has always gone through the hard stuff with me.
I guess I’ll just have to do this one alone.
Gritting my teeth, I tap on Richard’s messages.
Richard: She’s going back for surgery now. The surgeon says it should be over in an hour. Will update.
Richard: I’m in the recovery room with her. She’s not awake yet, but everything went fine.
Richard: She’s pretty groggy, but she seems okay. They’re moving us to room 405. See you soon.
He attached a picture of a sleepy Devin flashing a goofy smile and a thumbs-up to the last one. If I were alone, I’d burst into relieved tears, but I don’t have time for that. Getting to the hospital as quickly as possible is my top priority.
I check the time stamp on the last message to see it was sent at almost noon. She’s probably been moved into her room by now, so I quickly get my suitcase from baggage claim and jump into one of the cabs waiting outside the airport.
It doesn’t take me very long to find Devin’s room when I get to the hospital. When I get to the wing where she is, one of the nurses stops me and asks who I’m here to see and if I’m family. She checks my ID and waves me through.
The scene that greets me when I arrive is one of the sweetest I’ve seen in a while.
Devin is lying in her hospital bed playing a card game with Richard and Rachel’s five-year-old son, RJ.
He’s giggling and smacking cards, and she’s rolling her eyes and pretending she didn’t just let him win.
Richard and Rachel are sitting on a small couch underneath the one window in the room, smiling at the two of them.
I have flown with Devin out here and come back to get her, but she and Richard and I have only ever had lunch before I’ve left them to have their time, usually flying back home to teach during the summer term.
I know Rachel, of course, but in the more recent years since Devin has been in high school, I have come out here less and less, opting instead to stay home and tutor or teach and save up as much as I can to cover some of her college tuition.
I haven’t ever seen the four of them interact like this.
It equally warms my heart and throws me off.
They look like a family. Devin’s easy rapport with RJ is obvious. Richard’s adoration of both of them is painted right there on his face. And Rachel leaning on his arm, correcting RJ’s behavior when he gets a little too rowdy completes the picture.
I’m on the verge of feeling like a true outsider here when Devin glances up from the card game and breaks into a huge grin. “Mom!” she exclaims. “You came!”
“I told her as she was heading back into surgery.” Richard stands and hugs me. “She must not have remembered.”
“Oh yeah.” Devin squints like she’s recalling it. “You did say something about her.” She shrugs at me. “It’s been a long day.”
“No kidding.” I let out a short laugh. “How are you feeling?” I place my suitcase in the corner of the room as far out of the way as possible and sit on the edge of the bed opposite RJ. He climbs off and sits in his mom’s lap.
“Better now. Appendicitis is no joke.” Her eyes go wide, and she shakes her head. “That hurt .”
I pat her hand where it lies on top of the hospital blanket. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you,” I whisper, the tears I’ve been holding back all morning threatening to break through.
Richard clears his throat from where he’s standing next to the couch. “It’s about time we got RJ home. How about we give you and your mom some time, and I’ll be back later. Where are you staying, Lark?”
Eyeing my full suitcase in the corner, I shrug. “I hadn’t gotten that far.”
He nods as if he assumed that much. “They want to keep her here tonight, so how about you stay in her room at our place until she’s discharged, and we can go from there?”
I shoot him a grateful look. “Thank you. That would be great.”
Rachel collects RJ’s things. He gives Devin a quick fist bump on their way out. As Richard passes me, he squeezes me on the shoulder. And then, the room is silent except for the humming and beeping of all the machines Devin is hooked up to.
“So,” she hedges. “Are you missing the end of your audiobook for this?”
“No. We finished primary recording yesterday. I just have some corrections left, but that’s easy. I can do that from anywhere.” I move over to the couch to give her some more room.
She frowns down at me. “Wouldn’t you go back to do it?”
“Oh, honey,” I say on a sigh. “I don’t think so. I’d have to turn right around and head back here to move you into your dorm and then to Ann Arbor anyway.”
Being a parent is so weird sometimes. You can see your kid for who they are, but you’re sort of always seeing a previous version of them overlaid in your mind.
Like now, when her face is scrunched up and one eye is squeezed shut, she’s both eighteen and ten, looking at me with a mixture of confusion and skepticism.
“So you are going to stay here for a few weeks?”
“I really don’t know, kiddo.” I smile weakly. “I got on the first flight out of LA to be here, and I didn’t think much past that.”
A nurse comes in then to ask her a few questions and check her vitals. She makes a joke about me being Devin’s sister, which we get all the time, so we both politely smile and make some small talk before the nurse leaves again.
After a few moments of painful silence, Devin asks, “How’s Lennon?”
“Good,” I say a little too quickly. “Good. Good, good.”
“Mom.” She sounds annoyed. “You’re being weird. What is going on?”
“Nothing!” I insist. “I’m tired. I’ve been up since Rachel called me at two-something this morning.”
Devin’s unimpressed face is a thing of legend.
She’s been perfecting it since she was a tween.
Sometimes I’d tease her about it, trying to make light of her hormonal tendency to be completely irritated with pretty much everything I said or did.
But when she pins me with it now, my heart skips a beat in trepidation. I almost feel like I’m in trouble.
“Can we skip the part where you try to hide whatever it is you’re hiding from me and you just tell me like the adult I am?” Her eyebrow ticks up at the end of her sentence as her lips form a tight line that leaves zero space for objections.
I gape at her. “Stop doing that. It’s creepy.”
“Doing what? Reading you like a book? It’s not that hard.”
“It’s like you can see into my soul, and I don’t like it.”
She flashes me a tight smile. “I learned from the best.” She pauses, then says, “That’s you, in case that wasn’t clear.”
“Yeah, I got it. Thank you.” There’s probably no sense in hiding any of this from her. I was going to tell her eventually anyway. But I still pick at a loose thread on the couch to avoid looking at her. “LA was great. Working on that audiobook was… It was magical. I want to keep doing it.”
“You should.” She wiggles excitedly in her bed. “Oh my gosh, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’ve never been to LA. Real estate out there is super expensive, but I could come stay with you for a while on breaks, and—”
“Whoa. Hold your horses there. I’ve been looking into renting studio space in Ann Arbor. Maybe even soundproofing a room in the townhouse so I can work from home.”
“Pardon my French, Mom, but why the fuck would you do that?”
My eyes just about bug out of my head. “Watch it, young lady.”
She unsurprisingly doesn’t back down. “Seriously! Look at you! I mean, you look like crap because you’ve been worried since before dawn, and you smell like an airplane, but underneath that. I’ve never seen you seem so…what word am I looking for? Relaxed . Confident . Dare I say tan ?”
I open my mouth to respond, but all that comes out is an incredulous bark of a laugh.
“You’re practically glowing,” she adds. Her mouth twists into a cocky smirk. “So, let me ask you again. How’s Lennon?”
Frantically, I search my brain for something—anything—to tell her to get her off this train of conversation but come up empty.
I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been her and me for ten years.
I’ve tried to protect her from a lot, but we’ve shared almost all of each other’s vulnerable moments for the past decade.
This isn’t all that different. And while I don’t want to shake up her entire world by telling her I’ve fallen in love with my best friend, she’s going to find out eventually. It might as well be now.
“Lennon and I have been… Well, we…” I sigh. Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought.
Devin tries to come to my rescue. “Did you go out there and finally fall in love with him?”
“What do you mean, ‘finally’?” I blurt out.
She gives me her epic eye roll, and I realize just how much I had missed her, because I even missed that, of all things.
“Mom. Please. I’m your kid, but I’m not a kid.
So, what? He’s not here, so I’m guessing you had some kind of fallout, and now you’re trying to pretend you don’t want to run back to him in LA now that you know I’m okay? ”
“What the hell?” I mutter under my breath. “I’ve got to say, this is really throwing me off.”
Her face softens. “I want you to be happy, Mom. You’ve done so much for me, but it’s your turn now. Lennon makes you happy. He always has. Go be with him.”
“What about your home in Ann Arbor? You said you already couldn’t wait to be home for break.” It’s a feeble protest, but I have to know. That text from her really made me reconsider some things.
“You’re my home,” she says simply. As if that single sentence isn’t meant to fill me with joy. As if it doesn’t change my entire life.
I’ve done a pretty decent job of holding back the waterworks. Until now. Silent tears stream down my face as Devin sits in her hospital bed with a dopey smile on her face.
“Don’t get all emotional,” she deadpans. “I already told you I want to visit you in LA. This is mostly selfish on my part.”
I stare at her in awe. “How did I get such a great kid?”
She shrugs. “You basically made me. Must be that thing about the apple and the tree. So”—she claps her hands together and rests them in her lap—“are you going to patch things up with Lennon and move out there and live happily ever after?”
I wish it were that easy. But I can’t get past the look on his face when I said I had to go.
The suggestion that I should ignore my instincts about my kid for his benefit.
The fact that I was scared and he didn’t offer to come with me.
And that nagging knowledge that he has never really told me he loves me.
What if he doesn’t, really? What if this is too much too soon?
What if we can’t ever figure out how to fit our lives together?
It’s crystal clear to me that this is more convoluted than just picking a place to live.
But Devin doesn’t need to know all that, so I tilt my head, sigh, and say, “It’s complicated right now, kiddo. Let’s get you healthy, and then I can worry about the rest of it.”