Chapter 4Liem
4
Liem
“ My Liem . What are you doing calling me at this hour?”
I smiled at Aunt Ari’s voice as I made the short trek from cottage to gazebo with nothing but my sketch pad and a pouch full of freshly sharpened charcoal pencils.
“Good morning,” I replied softly. “Has retirement changed your early-rising habits? You know you’re the one who taught me the dire misfortune of a missed sunrise.”
“You charmer,” she chuckled, then sighed into the phone. “You are right, though. Your Uncle Gil has embraced the morning lie-ins, but I am too in love with this balcony to miss a morning on it.”
When Aunt Ari and Uncle Gil decided to retire from the restaurant business and my parents moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to take it over from them, a series of equally delightful and dreadful things followed. The net outcome of it all was my ability to bask in the warm, loving light of my brother being both happy and here . The darker side of it all for our family—Dad’s unexpected surgery and struggles, everything that happened with Bree, her grandmother, and Fortuna—was very much like what I was seeing now.
A quiet predawn that indicated a beautiful, clear spring day was coming, viewed with the visceral understanding that it wasn’t guaranteed.
But still, you hoped.
I hoped.
“Have you been painting?” I asked as I crossed the deserted intersection and the weathered white gazebo in the center of the town square came into view.
“No, actually. I’m planting. Gil built me these beautiful planter boxes for the deck, and it’s already warm enough for me to get my herbs and flowers started. I really should have wiped the soil off my hands before answering the phone, but what can you do?”
I laughed. “Not a thing now, but that does sound nice. Vinh is building some planters for our yard too.”
Uncle Gil may be a quiet, grumpy sort, but he always took the time to answer Vinh’s calls with questions about all things building, gardening, and maintenance, which had come in handy when we needed to make both the restaurant and Mom and Dad’s rental house accessible for Dad’s wheelchair.
“I’m always delighted to hear from you, regardless, my Liem. Is everyone and everything treating you well?”
I stepped up onto the gazebo and set my sketchbook on the bench. “Of course. The people of Bay Springs have been both warm and welcoming. I’m excited for the Mardi Gras parade in a couple of weeks. I tried to convince Mom to let us enter a float for Ari’s, but she said the restaurant would be too busy with all the tourists.”
“Oh dear, you should have told me. I could have come and helped with the restaurant and left you kids to the fun stuff.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled the salty breeze, almost tasting it on my tongue. “I’ve just made and filed a mental note for next year.”
“Perfect. Now, I know from our last phone call that your brother and the redhead are doing okay. I conned my brother into answering the phone on his birthday, and he said his prosthetic was…,” she trailed off, likely wondering if she needed to shield her twenty-one-year-old nephew from his dad’s unfiltered language.
“I can imagine what Dad said,” I supplied.
It was a complicated situation. We’d tried to get Dad into therapy a few times after his above-the-knee amputation, but he was resistant. He was terrified that he would never learn to walk well enough with the prosthetic to not be a burden and that he would feel that way for the rest of his life.
Of course, he hadn’t actually said that, instead swinging between heavy, brooding silences that lasted for days and making whatever the love child of dad jokes and amputee jokes was called to anyone who’d listen.
Vinh and I were the ones who had drawn that conclusion—that Monny Lott was constantly wrestling a number of fears and couldn’t yet voice them—every time we fell into a hushed conversation about it, which was about every five to seven business days.
Such was the nature of living close to—and working with—your family.
We were always riding the line between involving ourselves enough to be supportive while trying to respect the blurry, undefined boundary of our parents’ autonomy.
Which was a nugget I had learned from therapy.
Changing the subject to relatively happier topics, I sat on the bench beside my sketchbook and breathed, “Cody is back in town.”
“Oh, that beautiful boy I met at Thanksgiving? He was marvelous—and so broody.”
I smiled. “The same.” He just didn’t realize the former of her observations, the part of him that Ari had seen after only one meeting. Cody had only been by for a moment at Thanksgiving, but he made an impression on people instantly, usually without trying or any desire to do so. But the fact that he didn’t recognize the former of Ari’s observations of him was why his return wasn’t a purely joyous topic.
“Honey, I need to go pour my second cup of coffee, and I’m worried I’ll wake Gil early if he hears me on the phone. If he doesn’t sleep until 7:30 a.m., he considers the day a bust.” She sighed heavily. “Sometimes I wonder if retiring was the right thing for him.”
Worry snaked inside me, the feeling both so familiar and foreign that it almost felt like my secret spirit animal. “Why do you think that?”
She sighed again. “Don’t worry about us, dear. We’ll figure it out.”
I hummed before responding, “If you promise to take Uncle Gil to that community center. The one with the charming flyer I happened to glance at the condo when I visited at New Year’s.”
“The one for old people?” she asked, scandalized. “ Liem. ”
“ Aunt Ari,” I parroted back.
“Only for you, my sweet nephew. I will take Gil—who is old—to the Locc. Maybe he can volunteer or something. Yes,” she said, pleasure evident in her voice. “That could be a good idea, with his age and all.”
I smiled at her rambling. What Aunt Ari didn’t know was that I’d investigated the Live Oak Community Center—known to the locals in Gulf Shores, Alabama, as “the Locc”—by way of modest trespass during that visit and had snagged the flyer.
And then told a white lie about finding it in their mailbox.
I usually had no use for lying and believed that the truth reigned supreme, but that one was borne of love.
“Well, I look forward to hearing all about it during our next call,” I replied seriously.
“You are such a menace.”
“As a Libra should be.”
She laughed. “Love you, sweetie.”
My chest warmed. “I love you too.”
“Don’t miss the sunrise.”
“Never,” I vowed.
And I hadn’t, which was good. It was a glorious one.
So splendid that it almost made page after page of my sketches of grief, smoke, and shattered glass into something else. Something kinder, softer. Something other than devastating.
I closed the sketchbook, sealing away the dawn’s work, and then creaked across the floor to the gazebo’s opening. Leaning against it, I crossed my arms and ankles and practiced my breathing exercises while watching for several minutes as the sun rose higher and turned the green space from blue-green tones to warmer ones.
It never got old.
“Ahem.” Someone cleared their throat nearby. “I’ve, uh… been watching you.”
“That’s one way to start a conversation,” I said lightly, glancing at a guy in uniform to my right.
Ah. He was back.
“Hello, Jeremiah.”
He approached then, stepping into the light and causing me to fight—and lose—the urge to cringe away.
I didn’t feel good about the reaction, as it wasn’t his fault that he was connected to one of my worst memories—the sliding glass door of Bree’s grandmother’s house exploding—or that he’d shown up here so soon after I’d been working to exorcise them. He wore the same cloak of nervous energy now as he had when I’d first met him a few months back. On that day. That terrible day when he’d had the unfortunate job of being one of the first emergency responders on the scene of the fire.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he murmured so quietly that I could have easily feigned not catching it.
But I didn’t. Everyone deserved to be heard, even if they didn’t believe it.
“What was that?” I inquired as I stretched my limbs, shaking off the dregs of ill feeling and turning to face him fully.
He fidgeted with the belt of his uniform with one hand and gestured randomly with the other as he struggled to find his words. “Make that… face when you see me.”
I inclined my head to the side, my hair swinging freely and tickling my upper arm. “Oh dear. What’s wrong with my face, Jeremiah?”
He blanched and his mouth dropped open as I gestured to his EMT badge. “Surely you’ve seen more difficult visages in your line of work.”
He wet his lips and dropped his gaze to his work-issued boots for a moment, then glanced back at me hesitantly. “Do you think if we talked about that day, it maybe would, uh—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Help, or something?”
I studied him, taking him in more closely than I had on our brief previous encounters around town. He was around my age—early twenties—though with his bare face, short brown hair, and flighty demeanor, he could have easily passed for a teenager.
It really seemed like the universe was trying to constantly remind me of that day, even as I made conscious efforts in the same vein, just in healthier, more controlled ways.
Combined, it seemed excessive.
Jeremiah had been the EMT assigned the task of cleaning the superficial wounds on my arms and face inflicted by the sliding glass door exploding from the heat.
I’d been rather ornery with him then. Bree had just gotten hurt on my watch, and the pain of that was sharper than any shard of glass or first-degree burn could ever be.
And now I was being rather rude by doomsday reminiscing instead of answering his question, so I remedied that. With the truth.
“I do not.”
With dejected, slumpy shoulders, he toed the gazebo frame and muttered, “Okay.”
Oh dear.
“How long until your shift starts, Jeremiah?”
He grimaced. “I wish you’d call me Jeremy.”
“Hmm. How long until your shift starts, Jeremy?”
His eyes closed briefly as he gathered himself, something like a shiver taking him over. Frowning, I took stock of the elements. It was technically still winter, but it hadn’t even dipped below the mid-fifties this morning.
Perhaps he needed a jacket. Or a hot beverage.
And since offering clothing was, according to Bree, one of the official love languages of the Lott brothers, I could only help with one.
“I still have about ten minutes,” he answered solemnly.
I nodded and stepped off the gazebo. “I’ll go procure some coffees. Would you like a latte?”
He tracked my movement and nodded rather hesitantly.
I cocked my head to the side, wondering if I should encourage him to speak his mind, but perhaps this could be an exercise in expression for him. If he didn’t like the drink I brought back, he could speak up or drink the consequences.
The thought sat wrong with me, and I paused, frowning at myself.
There was no denying that I was in a zesty mood this morning.
Walking away from the indecisive EMT, I imagined leaving behind my nebulous mood with him. I counted seventy-seven steps and seventeen breaths to our new local coffee shop, 7th Street Coffee, and by then I felt more centered. More grounded.
I reached the antique door after braving several steep, brick steps—there was no accessibility ramp, which I mightn’t have noticed just a year ago— and tried to appreciate the way the sun reflected in the cloudy windowed top half of the door and absorbed into the wood of the hardwood of the bottom. 7th Street Coffee didn’t have the same ring to it as “Caffeina,” but another part of my own breakup ritual was to patronize new ones.
Striding into Bay Hall, a long corridor that housed multiple businesses, including the coffee shop, an ice cream parlor, a sandwich shop with a delightful ciabatta, and an empanada stand, I inhaled the scent of coffee and pastries. The line was only a couple patrons long, and I shared hellos with the staff before ordering, then a short time later was back out the heavy door and down the steep steps.
This made it the third time Jeremiah had shown up at the gazebo before his shift. The first two times, he hadn’t spoken, so I supposed by that standard, he was making some progress in his journey of… whatever it was he was hoping to achieve.
It was all very curious. I had only one idea about how to help him, and his questions this morning about talking gave it some merit.
The sun warmed my back as I reentered the gazebo, casting my shadow onto its chipped white floorboards.
Jeremiah eyed the drinks with a tentative smile as I walked over to the bench and set them down. I unzipped my pouch and found my black marker, then flicked my gaze up to him, hesitating for just a moment.
He was looking at me curiously, but still, he didn’t speak. Which somehow reaffirmed my confidence in the idea.
I bit down on the cap and held it between my lips as I pulled the marker free and wrote out the number I’d memorized onto the paper cup and then added a name below it.
Turning to Jeremiah I held out the latte to him. He took it with wide eyes, and I did my best to keep my body language casual. He was young in both age and spirit, with a physically and emotionally difficult job. All evidence pointed to someone who was struggling to cope.
I put the lid back on the marker and returned it to its brethren in the pouch, then scooped up my own coffee, giving him a moment to collect initial thoughts before I turned my attention back to him to explain and….
Oh no.
His face and ears were beet red, practically on fire.
I’d embarrassed him.
With a soft step forward, I explained, “It helped me greatly, speaking to someone. Not to be presumptuous about your circumstances, but even knowing nothing about them, I’m sure it could be helpful. Just give that number a call if you ever feel ready.”
His brows furrowed as he studied my therapist’s office number and name on the side of the cup. Then, in a move so abrupt that I nearly spilled my coffee in fright, he bolted off the gazebo steps and hightailed it across the town square.
I grimaced and turned my back to him, granting him the grace to flee without an audience.
I made a mental note to ask Vinh or Bree later where exactly I’d gone wrong.