Chapter Eight
H e was a fool. Maybe. It was entirely possible. She had been offering him what he wanted more than anything else in the entire world. At least, what he had wanted at one time. She had been offering him everything. And he...
He’d said no.
He could feel it. It was so close that his fingertips tingled with the desire to touch it, but he hadn’t let himself.
He wanted her. He wanted that version of happy she seemed to think they could have, but the truth of it was... He was so tired. He was so tired of hoping. Hoping and not having. And what was the point of snow on the beach or fucking Christmas if you just felt this raw? He couldn’t drive home, because the roads were closed. But he could drive back to Portland. He could go stay with Beth for a little bit. He could get a little...time away.
He showed up, and Beth answered the door, looking sleepy. “What are you doing here? I thought you were doing family Christmas.”
“Yeah. I was. But do you have room for a guy with unresolved trauma?”
“Always,” she said.
“Thanks.”
He stepped inside and looked around the apartment, which was put together, just like Beth. Which made him wonder, not for the first time, if she had the right of it. If dealing with your trauma was the only way to really live.
“What happened?” she asked.
“How do you know something happened?”
“Because you are normally with your family on Christmas Eve, and now you’re not.”
“Yeah I... It’s complicated. In a way that you probably don’t want to hear.”
“I love complicated. But Luna will also want to hear this.”
“Great. You might as well have a show out of my trauma. Did I tell you that I used to date my stepsister?”
“Luna!” Beth shouted. “You have to come hear Colton’s batshit story.”
“Yeah. It really is batshit.”
He told both of them everything. The whole spiel.
“In fairness,” Beth said, “that’s not really dating your stepsister. I mean, you were with her first.”
“That is true,” he said. “I was. My dad poached on my territory.”
“That’s how I see it,” Luna said. “So I think you have to take that out of the equation.”
“But I can’t. It’s impossible. I still have to see her all the time. And if something goes wrong, it’s going to screw up everything.”
“But something already went wrong.”
“I mean, if something goes wrong and...”
“You get your heart broken,” Beth said. “That’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not even that. My heart is broken. What I’m worried about is spending all those years waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’d rather just leave them dropped.”
“Trauma response,” said Beth.
“Well thank you very fucking much, Beth. What should I do about it?”
“Go to a therapist.”
“I need a quicker fix than that.”
“Maybe you need to go back further?”
“How?”
“Your childhood,” she said.
He thought about his mother. “I mean, I... I don’t really want to.”
“That’s the problem, Colton. If you don’t turn over the rocks inside your soul and start looking for the scorpions underneath, they’re just going to bite you when you don’t expect them to.”
“What am I supposed to do with that metaphor?” he asked.
“What’s the thing that scares you most?”
“Finding out my mom is dead.”
“Maybe you need to find out,” Luna said softly.
“But I... I want to be happy. I want to...pretend. I...”
“But it’s keeping you from being happy. Obviously. It is so clear that you’re in love with Lily. So whatever you have to do to fix this for yourself, you need to do it.”
“How?”
Luna sighed. “Well, I work in mental health. I can see if she’s passed through the system.”
“Are you allowed to do that?” he asked.
“For family? Yes.”
Luna disappeared and returned a few moments later. “She’s in a mental health facility and care home downtown.” She sat slowly and handed him a stack of papers. “She has some health issues, Colton. She requires a bit of care.”
He nodded. “Oh. Well. Yeah, I mean she...she had it really hard.”
“I think you did too.”
He nodded. Yeah. It had been a hard road. But a good one too, eventually. But this...this felt like hope. Hard-won hope.
He was ready to go see his mom. He was ready to hope.
It was insanely snowy outside and the traffic was nuts. He got in his truck and drove to downtown Portland. It was dark, icy. Cold. When he pulled up to the institutional-looking place and saw the lights shining through the windows, he knew a strange sense of trepidation. Was his mother really here? Was it really that easy?
You have not because you ask not.
That old saying resonated somewhere down inside of him, and he thought of Lily, his mother, all these things he had wanted that he...hadn’t reached out for.
Hadn’t asked for.
That was the problem with living without hope. You didn’t reach for the things you wanted most. You didn’t go after what you wanted best and most dearly.
He had limited himself. All this time.
Maybe hope was the answer.
Hope for strange miracles and for a life that worked out, even though he’d been through so much that hurt.
He parked against the curb and got out of his truck, his boots sinking down into the snow.
And hope was what drove him inside.
He walked up to the front desk. “I’m here to see Olivia Sheldon.”
“We only allow family to visit.”
“I’m her son.”
The woman behind the desk softened, and she looked at him with a strange sort of recognition.
“Colton?”
“How do you... How do you know?”
“Oh, Olivia talks about you. All the time.”
He felt like he had been stabbed straight through the heart.
“She does?” he asked, his throat going tight.
“Yes. She’s very proud of you.”
“How does she...know anything about me?”
The woman’s face softened. “Well, she doesn’t share any details about you, but she’s always said that you were the best son.”
He nodded slowly. And he followed the woman into a recreation room. He saw her right away. She looked prematurely aged, sitting in a folding chair with oxygen on. She looked like an old woman, and she wasn’t. She was just a woman whose body had lived several lifetimes, and who probably didn’t have the strength to keep going much longer.
But she was beautiful. Just like she always had been. He walked across the room slowly.
And she looked up. “Colton?”
“Mom,” he said, the word coming out strangled.
“How did you find me?”
“I looked up your name online. I... I miss you.”
She smiled. “I miss you.”
“Mom...” He sat down next to her in an empty folding chair. “I just want you to know something. I love you.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Why? You shouldn’t love me. I didn’t even raise you.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re my mom. You did your best. I know that you did.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “No one ever believed me when I said that. That I did the best I could. They just said it wasn’t good enough.”
It would be easy to get angry. To say it hadn’t been. After all, she had lost her parental rights. He had been on his own. In the system. He had gotten into trouble. He had felt lost and scared. But so had she. And what good would it do? To be angry. Why choose anger when you can choose hope? Hope was the thing that built new bridges, that built new roads into different lives. And he hadn’t been able to see that before. He had let his heartbreak with Lily, let his childhood become an excuse, a shield, so he could protect himself. So he didn’t have to face the more difficult feelings. So he didn’t have to risk. Looking at his mom, he could see that her years of drug use had ravaged her body. He didn’t know what else was wrong with her. Loving her would hurt. Letting her back into his life would hurt. But maybe that was okay. Maybe sometimes it was all right to choose the harder thing because it meant more.
“It was enough,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Yeah. I got adopted. I have a dad and stepmom. I have brothers.”
She nodded. “I’m happy for you.”
“I was taken care of. The whole time.”
“You aren’t on drugs,” she said.
“No.” He shook his head. “I went to college.”
She grabbed his hand and pressed her face against it, tears spilling down her face now. “I couldn’t have given you that.”
“You gave me life,” he said. “You were there for me when you could be.”
She reached into the pocket of the sweater she was wearing and took out a small picture. It was him. A school photo, probably from second grade. “I show everyone this. But I guess I need a new one. You’re grown-up.”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
He stayed the whole evening. He ate Christmas dinner with her. And he made a decision.
He did love Lily. He had the whole time. He needed to get back to her. To hope. To love.
To that strange phenomenon he had tried to dismiss. Because sometimes it snowed on the beach. And sometimes a man really could get everything he wanted. Everything he needed most.
“Hopefully I’ll be back soon to visit,” he told his mom. “But...right now I have somebody I need to go see.”
“Thank you for coming to visit me. It felt like a Christmas miracle.”
“Everybody’s allowed to have miracles,” he said.
Even him.