Chapter 33
chapter thirty-three
Holy fuck.
It still looked the same. Everything looked the exact same, down to the welcome mat that said something about Christmas she’d never put back into storage because it was just too cute to hide away.
Well, there was one difference. There weren’t any chickens anymore. No sign of fleeting balls of energy and spite running around like they owned the place, dropping perfect, innocent white feathers. They were gone. Just gone, like I’d been all this time.
Callum had helped me with looking her name up.
He’d found out that she was still listed as an employee at the same job with the same title.
No obituaries. No tragedy for me to find out too late.
It should’ve been a relief. At least, I thought it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t.
Did that make me a bad person? I wanted to ask Callum, but I knew what his response would be.
Now that I knew she was alive, and I’d decided to finally face it—face this part of my life—it suddenly became a thousand times heavier.
A million quadrillion times fucking scarier.
There were what-ifs and what-abouts and possibilities I wasn’t ready to face, though I wasn’t ready not to, either.
I just missed my mom. That was it. I missed her, and it was eating me up inside.
I owed her an explanation. I owed her a reason. I owed her the truth after she’d fought so hard for me my whole life. She wasn’t perfect. I dared to think that not even God himself was actually perfect.
Callum reached across the center console, taking my hand in his. “You doing okay?”
I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it out of my mouth. “No. I’m not. I don’t know if being okay is even an option with something like this.”
“I think it makes complete sense to be so scared. You haven’t been back to Tiger Falls since you started working at The Arch, have you?”
“No.”
“How does it feel?”
The population hadn’t changed. The single gas station at the edge of town still had the same faded red roof and cut-up concrete parking lot, serving as the only building in city limits that wasn’t a house.
Every road had a view of someone’s cattle farm, fields stretching as far as the eye could see.
Just before turning down the road of what used to be my home, there were three abandoned cars that’d sat there since I was a kid.
They were still there, though a few more pieces of them had been taken.
I hadn’t missed it one bit. The loneliness it all facilitated, with the empty streets and cluttered woods that somehow made it all seem so desolate.
I could remember running into our neighbor’s field with Mason, giggling and giddy because I’d thought it was so fucking awesome to be playing with someone as cool as him.
I didn’t have time to go down memory lane. At least not this kind of memory lane. “I don’t know. I have no idea.” It all felt too vague and too much for me to pinpoint a single overall emotion. I simply didn’t have an answer, and maybe that was answer enough.
Callum turned the key, shutting the car off. I watched the front door, not really sure what I was waiting for. Maybe for Mom to come to us instead of me going to her? Maybe I was waiting for her to find me, like when we’d played hide-and-seek when I was a kid.
Instead of waiting any longer, I pulled on the door handle and finally stepped foot outside. We’d slept in a hotel last night in the city after our flight. The drive from there to here had proven exhausting, my legs weak like jelly.
Callum held my hand as we walked up the creaky, decrepit porch steps together.
They squeaked and echoed behind us, each moment passing us by so quickly, yet not quickly enough.
The universe had paused, but the earth kept moving.
My heart was hammering, but the throbbing in my head didn’t match my pulse.
I’d forgotten how humid it was here, finding myself dripping in sweat even though I wasn’t particularly hot.
After treating the front door like an enemy, I finally stepped forward and knocked. It was so loud among the quiet rush of the wind. There were no birds to sing songs to us, despite having seen so many on our drive over here. We even saw a bald eagle—Callum’s first introduction to them.
There wasn’t an immediate response, so I opted for the shitty, half-broken doorbell on the side. Instead of ringing like normal, it’d screech and groan throughout the house. Mom had put tape over it at one point, hoping it’d stop people from touching it.
Every second we waited felt like another eternity. But then the doorknob jiggled. And the door cracked open. Just a little bit—just enough for Mom to peek her eye through, looking straight at us.
She gasped, the sound getting stuck in her throat as she tore the door open the rest of the way. She stood in a pink robe, seemingly frozen. Stuck in a time that no longer existed.
I swallowed, wondering for a second if she even recognized me. Had it been so long that she no longer considered me her son?
Her eyes glossed over, tears rushing into them and down her cheeks in rivers and lakes. They could make their own ocean with how many dribbled down her chin, flowing down her neck. “Tobi.”
Fuck. Her voice had broken, coming out as little more than a whisper. “Hey, Mom.”
She stepped forward, barely placing her slippers on the porch. Her hands shook as she raised them, reaching for my face. I met her, placing my cheeks into her hands and closing my eyes. “My baby,” she whispered. “Oh, my baby. It’s actually you.”
“It’s me, Mom.”
“God, look at you. Look at you, my boy. My baby boy. Oh God, my boy. My boy.” She pulled me in, and I let her. I let her squeeze her arms around me, sobbing into my shoulder.
I let her wordlessly because if I’d said anything myself, I would’ve started to cry, too. I didn’t want to cry. All I’d done was cry. I was so sick and tired of crying. All I’d done for the first year that I’d stopped talking to her was cry.
I’d missed her, not the town.
I’d missed her voice, not the house.
I’d missed her touch, not the feathers I was enamored by.
She looked so much older, with mostly gray hair and wrinkles deepened and multiplied by age and years of worry. Worry about me, no doubt.
Mom took in a big, deep breath, her entire body shaking mine. “I thought you were dead.”
My eyes widened, the words burning themselves straight into my skin. Into my heart. Into my bones. I held her tighter.
“Jesus, child, I thought you’d died. I done prayed for your soul, and you know I ain’t the godly type.”
My lip started to tremble.
“I thought I’d done somethin’ wrong. I thought I’d deserved it. I thought I’d run you off ‘cause of me.”
My eyes slid shut, my lashes too weighed down with unshed tears.
“My baby boy wouldn’t do that to me. No, no, my boy wouldn’t just stop talkin’ to me for no good reason.”
There was a deep, heavy pressure sitting directly on my chest, and it was begging to be let out.
“I’m so fuckin’ glad you’re alive, Tobi baby. So fuckin’ glad. My one wish. My one miracle. You came back to me, baby.”
Her cries of pure relief tipped me over the edge with her. She wavered, and so did I. The wind pushed us together before knocking us down, our knees giving out as I melted into her hold.
Mama’s got me.
Mama’s here.
Ain’t nobody gonna hurt me no more.
“Mama,” I sobbed. I let go. I let the tears come because I couldn’t stop them. They wouldn’t stop. The weight of shame and fear my abusers had put on me finally lifted, clearing through my sober mind, and I could feel it. So deeply. So clearly. I wasn’t numb.
There was no distance.
She smelled just like she had when I was a kid. She held me just as tight, too. All those memories. All this time. All I’d ever wanted was for my mom to hold me and tell me that everything would be alright, but I’d been too scared. Too scared to confront the lies I’d been telling her and myself.
“My baby.” She rocked us back and forth on the ground, soothing me the best way she knew how. “It’s all gonna be okay now. You hear me? It’s all gonna be okay. Mama’s here.”
Mama’s here.
There was nothing that could ever compare to Mom’s ice-cold, sweet tea. I never could remember how much sugar she put in it or how she got just the right-strength brew, so I’d never made anything close to how she did it.
Callum, on the other hand, took one sip and coughed, looking away guiltily. Yeah, Southern sweet tea was nothing like they served in New York.
Mom and I were wearing matching red eyes and swollen noses, sitting across from each other in the living room. I felt for Callum, seeing as I’d had to awkwardly introduce him after he’d watched Mom and me collapse in on each other.
She was still wearing her robe, her elbows placed firmly on her knees as she looked at me. “So, y’all back together, huh? I never did get to meet you back then, Callum.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you, ma’am.”
Mom huffed, waving her hand in front of her face. “Just call me Mom. I’d assume you’re gonna be family in no time.” She leaned back in the raggedy loveseat I knew she’d never get rid of. “Speaking of time… Not that I ain’t grateful, but why now? Why’d it take you this long to come back and see me?”
Right. The question I’d been dreading the entire trip down here. “I’m sober.”
She smiled, big and bright. “Well, I could tell that. I’m proud of you, son. Real proud of you. You know how worried I was? Gosh, I thought I’d end up havin’ to settle with an urn to get you back here.”
“No, Mama. I’m a full month sober now. I, uh, needed some help findin’ the will, but… Callum found me, actually. He found me, and I finally got my shit together.”
She turned to Callum. “I liked you way back when, but I sure like you a lot more now. Thank you.”
“Oh, no reason to thank me.”
“Sure there is. You brought my son home to me. Even though it’s meant to be the other way around.”
Callum shook his head. “I’m just glad I’ve got him in my life again. He’s done all the work to get here.”