Chapter Forty-Eight
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
Jae
We’re all sitting in the outside kitchen in the cabana.
Our plates are piled with food, our conversations brimming with laughter.
We heap praise on Ms. Rosette like she’s a Michelin chef, and she says the food would have tasted better if she’d used ingredients from back home.
Derek tells the real story of how he ended up in the club, which involves an embarrassing uniform and jumping over Mrs. Aldana’s gate.
I watch Uncle Rowan’s face for disapproval, but he only chuckles.
“That’s nothing. One of these days, I’ll tell you what kind of mess I got into. ”
I don’t eat. Tonight, my hands are for holding, my lips for cooing. I want to bottle up every waft from her curly hair, every giggle, every glint of light on her eyelashes. That little glimmer in your iris is the light from a half-gone star, I whisper to her. She cackles.
Everyone busies Anne and Jermaine in conversation so I can have Sarah June to myself. I decide that’s what I’ll call her. I can do Sarah June.
She’s standing on my lap and batting at my lips. I make a popping sound and it sends her into hysterics. Over and over again. Mom’s sitting beside us, taking us in, and her eyes are drowning in love and memories and lost things.
“We knew she’d love you,” Anne says. She looks tired, her straight brown hair in a messy bun, and I realize how much work she’s done taking care of our baby.
How she’s the strongest shoot of our banyan tree.
Jermaine places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.
I know it’s not easy for any of us. But this is us.
In the sky you can already see a few bold stars, and the moon spreading its Cheshire cat smile.
The wind is soft like velvet, and warm. It’s the kind of wind that wraps around memories and brings them back to you again and again in different seasons.
This day will come back when I least expect it.
The smell of it, the taste of it. The air.