10
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Mitch
A week later and I’ve almost grown used to the smell of antiseptic in the house.
As quietly as possible, I walk downstairs, but the last steps squeak under my weight.
The living room feels cold, almost sterile, and I realize the house is in a losing battle against the morbid tang of cancer that clings to everything.
It all seems tired, like even the walls are giving up.
Or it could be that I am projecting how I feel after a shitty night’s sleep.
Turns out everyone’s already awake. Dad sits slumped in his recliner, oxygen tubing hooked under his nose, chest rattling with every breath. His hands tremble when he lifts his mug, and half of it sloshes back into the saucer when he puts it down.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters when he spots me standing in the doorway. “Can’t even drink anymore.”
“Doctor said small sips,” I say, wanting to help, but knowing he’ll tell me not to bother.
“I know what the doctor said.” He glares at me, but says nothing and turns his attention outside, to the rising sun, his eyes sharp despite the gray creeping into them.
We lapse into the kind of silence that I’ve only ever found around him. We’ve never been good at talking, and the years apart have only made it worse. For me, too many things lay buried that my pride won’t let me say. For him, I’m sure those things are buried under deep disappointment.
I adjust his blanket anyway, and he actually lets me without criticism or comment, then I feel Mom hovering in the doorway.
She’s hugging herself tight as if she’s holding herself together.
I offer her a smile that she returns, albeit weakly.
Every day she looks thinner than the last, and today’s no different with her hair pulled back in a no-nonsense knot and her eyes red-rimmed but dry.
“Why don’t you let him rest,” she whispers, but Dad waves her off.
“I’ll rest when I’m dead.” His meek attempt at a laugh is met with a glare from Mom and me. “Tough crowd,” he adds, then nods. “Go talk to your mother.”
I leave him grumbling and follow Mom into the kitchen.
As if for the first time since I’ve been back home, I finally take it all in.
The chipped white cabinets and the loose door handles from decades of use.
Mom’s standing on the same braided rug by the sink that Maxine and I spilled grape juice on.
She never replaced it, only scoured it until the stain faded.
Like so many things from my past we’ve attempted to scrub clean, but failed.
A flash of Maxine comes to mind, of her sitting on the counter, stealing chocolate chips while my mom made pancakes.
Sunlight filters through the narrow window over the sink, dancing across the counter, catching dust motes. It hits a photo on the fridge of me and the boys, and Max, grinning like idiots, arms slung around each other. I was fifteen.
I rub a hand down my face as Mom pulls out two mugs. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
I lean against the counter. “Why her?” I ask bluntly.
She doesn’t flinch. “Sit,” she orders.
I take a seat at the table and remember where Max used to sit with her knees tucked under her, chewing on the tip of her pencil while she tutored me in algebra.
I can almost hear her bright, unhindered laugh.
That laugh I used to hear constantly before things got complicated.
Before betrayal became the word I use when the word hurt is insufficient.
“She’s earned it,” Mom answers, pouring coffee into the mismatched cups. “More than you realize.”
“She lied,” I say. “She knew about the affair and didn’t tell us.”
Mom stills, then puts the coffeepot down. “She was a child.”
“I was too. That’s not an excuse.”
Slowly, she brings the cups to the table.
“Maxine carried that secret as if it was somehow her fault. She did what she thought was best. I don’t blame her, so neither should you.
” She sits beside me. “After all, that mess affected me more than it ever did you,” she adds with an unusually sharp glare.
“And she’s been paying for that secret every day since. ”
“Well, Mom, we all paid for it, didn’t we?”
My hands sting from the burn of gripping the mug too tightly, but I don’t let go.
She tilts her head. “What’s actually going on here, because that’s not what this is about.” She searches my eyes, reading my thoughts like only a mother could. “You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry,” I retort.
“But not about what Max kept from you. Not really.”
I laugh, sharp and humorless. “You’re splitting the inn with her like she’s family.”
“She is family,” Mom says. “Maybe not by blood, but they all are.” She glances over her shoulder at the picture on the fridge.
“You don’t owe her anything, though.”
“We do. You just don’t see why,” she argues. “Maxine kept that place alive. Back when your father was too proud to admit it was failing. When I was too tired, or when he got sick. Everyone stopped believing in it a while ago. But she never did.”
“Until now,” I say quietly. “It’s a job to her. She works there. It doesn’t mean—”
“No, Mitchell, she runs it,” Mom cuts in, still gentle but firm.
“That girl is amazing. She fixes the boiler at midnight. She organizes fundraisers and hosts fun evenings for locals. She’s given people jobs when no one else would.
And she thinks I’m not aware, but she’s even covered payroll out of her own pocket when money’s been short.
She didn’t stay because she lacked ambition or felt some sort of twisted guilt, Mitchell," she adds. “She stayed because no one else would, and she didn’t want to give up on it like everyone else clearly had. She’s always had a thing for the underdogs.”
Her words settle heavy in my chest, but a wave of revelation hits me, as if a window’s been opened in a stuffy room. That’s exactly what Max said that day in the front yard.
Mom reaches across the table to cover my hand with hers. “You left, Chi-Chi. You ran as fast and as hard as you could to get away from it all.”
That stings, and I wince. “I had to. I had a chance,” I say defensively.
“And I’m not blaming you. I’ve never held that against you. I’m only explaining how since then Max has kept the inn alive when your father and I couldn’t.”
Maxine had dreams. Big ones.
“You’re giving her too much credit. She could’ve left,” I mutter.
“Oh, don’t think she didn’t try. She wanted to go,” Mom adds.
“But every time she got close, something pulled her back. Something broke. People needed her. The fact is Maxine stayed when she had every reason to leave. Even when this family, and her own, fell apart. She faced it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Staring into my untouched cup of coffee, I think of Max behind the front desk, a polite smile in place, shoulders squared like armor. The fearless and determined girl who used to race me down the beach and tackle me, a guy twice her size.
“You’re both so angry,” Mom continues. “Maxine because she was never free to choose. And you—” She pauses, releasing a sad exhale. “You’re angry because you were.”
I picture college in Michigan, the ice rinks, and how I put as much distance as I could between me and this town, and everything. I remember Maxine’s emails and phone calls that went unanswered.
“I wanted to forget,” I admit softly. “What happened and what she did. What he did.”
“I know, Chi-Chi. And you both have every reason to be pissed off. But life has a funny way of reminding us that in the grand scheme of things, the little things don’t matter.
” She glances over my shoulder toward the living room, her eyes growing distant before returning to meet mine.
“But she’s still the girl you loved way back then, she’s just buried under years of hard work and being let down. ”
She pokes me gently in the chest. My heart skips a beat beneath her finger, and I swallow hard. I never told her about my feelings, but I guess they were always obvious to my mom.
Dad coughs from the other room, deep and wet. The sound makes me cringe, reminding me that time is running out. For him. For all of us.
“You don’t have to forgive her,” Mom says, standing. “But you have to see her.”
I nod, my jaw tight. My anger simmers, not entirely with Maxine, but with myself because I didn’t just leave town; I left her to carry everything alone.
For the first time since coming home, something finally makes sense. Maxine didn’t fail to leave. She chose to stay. And her reasons for staying remind me why I used to adore her. They remind me why she was always the strongest person I’ve ever known, even when she doubted that strength.
She was the trusty port where I could always weather any storm. Her resilience and damn stubbornness are what drew me to her. She wasn’t weak for sticking around and not following her dreams. She made a choice, a fucking big one, to do what she could to help others.
And that’s why she’s still so much better a person than I’ll ever be.
Max
Some mornings, when the inn is silent and the guests are still asleep, I like to come in early and sit on the veranda with a hot cup of coffee.
I shut my eyes and let the quiet spread over me and erase the loneliness, the regrets, the hurt.
I exist in the contentment of the peaceful room and pretend I’m in my dream home by the sea, letting the sunrise’s promise of a new day heal all my wounds.
This nearly two-hundred-year-old house has witnessed so many generations come and go, and sometimes I hear the whispers of ghosts cradling me in their collective love.
And on other mornings, like today, the inn is silent not because of sleeping guests, but because of the lack thereof. There are no whispers of the past. Only the sound of me sipping my coffee and putting the cup down on the wooden table. There are no ghosts keeping me company, only my anxiety.