23. McKenzie
TWENTY-THREE
McKenzie
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” I said, touching Luca’s arm as we started up the path to my mother’s house about a week before Christmas. “My mom’s easygoing. You’ll love her, I promise.”
“Yeah, but she’s your mom ,” he insisted. “I’m almost forty years old, and I’ve never met anyone’s parents before. Because I’ve never been in a relationship before.”
“Ah, that’s right.” I gave him an exaggerated wince. “Yeah, you’re screwed.”
He stopped me from reaching for the doorknob, grabbing my shoulder with one hand, the holiday-colored bouquet he’d picked out for my mom in the other.
“I don’t want to mess this up.” His throat bobbed as it worked to swallow. “She’s the most important person in your life. I want her to like me. What can I do to make her like me?”
The sincerity in his words made my heart melt into a puddle.
“Luca,” I said, gripping his arms. “She’s going to like you. Just be yourself.”
“Have you met me?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “That’s terrible advice.”
“My mom is like me, but with more back pain and orthopedic shoes. She’s going to love you,” I repeated with a laugh.
“Like you, huh?” he asked, raising his brows. “So, she’s hot?”
“I hate you.” I rolled my eyes and reached for the handle again, but he stopped me, sliding his hand around my neck and turning me toward him for a kiss.
“You love me,” he whispered.
“I do,” I said with a mischievous grin. “By the way, my mom is more of a Dallas girl.”
“Wait, what?” he asked as I flung open the door and stepped inside, calling out to my mother. “Mom, we’re here.”
“In the kitchen,” she shouted back, but I already knew that from the scent of garlic and homemade marinara wafting through the air. She’d made her lasagna, which was my favorite.
I reached for Luca’s hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze as I led him toward the source of the aroma. There, in her pink “Just Fucking Eat It” apron, was my mother with her hair twisted into a claw clip.
“Hi, sweetie,” she greeted me, wiping her hands on the apron as she smiled up at Luca.
He held out the flowers to her. “These are for you.”
“Well, aren’t you a doll?” she replied, taking them and burying her nose in the blooms.
“They’re so pretty. Thank you.”
“Here, Mom,” I said, reaching for the bouquet. “Let me put those in a vase for you.”
She kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Kenz. I want to get a look at your man candy here.”
I snorted. “Oh my God, Mom. If you keep that up, he’s gonna break up with me on the spot.”
Luca chuckled. “Nah, I’ve been called worse.”
“I’ve heard so much about you, Luca,” she said, pulling him into a hug. “Between McKenzie and your Midnight in Dallas music, I feel like I know you already.”
“I told him you’re a Dallas fan,” I teased as I pulled a vase from the cupboard beside the fridge and moved to the sink to fill it.
“My condolences,” Luca joked.
“Not anymore,” she said. “He’s my second favorite.”
“Since when?” I asked, unwrapping the flowers to place them in water.
She gestured toward Luca with her thumb. “Since this one came along and made my daughter so happy.”
I cleared my throat, my cheeks burning.
She folded her arms over her chest, inspecting Luca through squinted eyes. “Plus, he looks like he could be one of those Twilight vampire guys if they’d lived a little longer before they were bitten.”
Luca burst into laughter. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it, Ms. James? Wait…is it James?” His eyes went wide with panic.
My mom cringed. “It is, but please call me Laurel. Ms. James makes me feel like I’m one bad trip away from a Life Alert bracelet, and I’m nowhere near that.”
Luca grinned. “Well, then. I like your apron, Laurel .”
“Thank you,” she said, grabbing her hand-knitted potholders and taking the lasagna out of the oven. “It’s only a suggestion, but please be advised that if you don’t at least pretend to love my cooking, I will guilt-trip you about it for the foreseeable future.”
“It’s true,” I sang, fiddling with the blooms in the vase. “But you’re in luck because she’s actually a pretty good cook. Unless she tries to make Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon, in which case, run.”
“Hey! It wasn’t that bad.” She plopped the lasagna on some hot pads, then pulled out the garlic bread and nudged the stove closed with her hip.
“Maybe if you had the jaw of a werewolf or wolverine,” I said, placing the flowers at the center of the already set table in the connecting dining room. “Let’s just say it was very well done.”
“Kenz definitely didn’t get her cooking skills from me, but I’m not half bad.” She plunked the garlic rolls in the bread basket waiting on the counter. “And what I can’t make, this prodigy daughter of mine can figure out.”
“How did you get started cooking, anyway?” Luca asked me.
“That was all Brennan,” my mom answered, leaning against the counter.
I nodded. “He used to cook a lot. He made dinner most nights when we were younger.”
“I was a single mom, and I have fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain condition. Being on your own with two kids is already a job in and of itself, but then you factor in something like that…It was a lot. But I always wanted my children to have home-cooked meals.” My mom gave him a wistful smile. “Brennan saw how tired I was and wanted to help, so he took it upon himself to learn how to cook.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I thought about his early kitchen experiments.
“Surprisingly, we only had to call the fire department once,” I said. “He got pretty good. By the time he was ten, he’d started making things like meatloaf and beef Stroganoff.”
“Then he started teaching McKenzie, and it became a team effort,” my mom added. “I’d find the two of them joking around in the kitchen while they made supper. Coming home to a meal was a treat, but nothing compared to hearing their laughter when I walked through the door.”
Her eyes turned misty as she held my gaze, and a lump formed in my throat before Luca’s arm curled around my shoulders.
“I’d love to hear more about Brennan,” he said softly. “About him and McKenzie both as kids.”
My mother beamed as though Luca had just presented her a million dollars and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas.
“I’ll go get the photo albums,” she said, removing her apron and placing it on the hook inside the pantry.
Luca was about to get a front row seat to every single awkward moment of my life from birth, but after seeing how happy it made my mom, I couldn’t bring myself to mind.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“What for?” he asked.
Before I could answer, my mother returned with a stack of five albums.
“This only covers through elementary school,” she said, plunking them on the dining table. “But we’ve got to start somewhere.”
She served up the lasagna, and we all sat at the table together as my mom opened one of the oversized albums. I watched as she pointed at pictures and recounted stories I’d heard dozens of times before, while Luca listened with rapt attention. He didn’t mind the tangents she went on that spiderwebbed out into tales woven together by the threads of our lives. Including one that was cut impossibly short. He encouraged her to keep talking and sharing.
That was something most didn’t do. In the early days after Brennan’s passing, people were happy to hear about him. The first few days were an acceptable time to grieve. But after the first few months , people tended to get weird about it. It was like they thought death was contagious. Like chicken pox or the flu. Or maybe it just forced them to confront their own mortality and acknowledge that one day, they too would become memories that would make people uncomfortable, until one day people stopped talking about them at all.
Luca didn’t realize the magnitude of what he did that night—the gift he gave us both. The freedom to reminisce and remember minus the risk of making someone uncomfortable. Not once did he give us a pitying stare. He sat with us in our love and grief for my brother without empty platitudes or forced positivity. For one evening, it was as though Brennan was seated at the table alongside the three of us. And to me…that was everything.
“The Fainting Goat Coffee Shop.” My mom read the name printed on the gray shirt to Luca and me in the nearly empty aisles of The Thrift Stop the last Thursday of January. Luca had started joining us on some of our weekly thrift store outings since I’d introduced them. We’d had dinner together a few times too, listening to records and playing games. After Mom opened up to him about Brennan, he’d begun to feel safe sharing pieces of his own life, his troubled upbringing, and the future he now held hope for.
“That can’t be a real place, right?” Luca asked, inspecting the illustrated goats.
“It says Spring Hill, Tennessee,” she replied, tossing it in our cart. “Sounds like we need to check it out.”
I wasn’t sure what warmed my heart more—how much my mother adored Luca or the way he took to her. Over the last month, I’d witnessed the man I loved get to become a boy again. He hadn’t had parents that loved him the way they should have, but my mother did. She welcomed him with open arms, and there was something healing about their relationship—a void they filled for each other. He was the son she didn’t get to see grow up, and she became the mother he’d always deserved.
“So, how are you feeling about your show at The Bluebird?” my mom asked as we continued to peruse the shirts. “Are you getting excited?”
He blew out a breath. “I’m actually nervous as hell.”
“You’re going to be great.” I gave his arm an encouraging squeeze. “The world won’t know what hit ’em.”
“You’re biased,” he said, hooking his arm over my shoulder and kissing the top of my head.
I grinned up at him. “Maybe, but it also happens to be true.”
They had finished the album the week before, and the first thing he’d done was play it for me and my mom in its entirety. She wept through multiple songs like “Death Row” and the title track “Coming Home.” When she found out he wrote it for me, she cried even harder.
“What if my stuff is too different for Midnight in Dallas fans?” he asked.
“Then you’ll find new ones,” Mom answered with unshakable confidence as she continued to sift through the shirts. “Your music is going to mean so much to so many, Luca. I just think about all the people out there like you, like Brennan. People who need to know they’re not alone, and you’re going to tell them that.”
“She’s right, you know,” I agreed. “You’re going to bring hope to a lot of people. Not only with your music but with your life . Look how much you’ve overcome…the work you’ve done to get where you are now.”
My mom nodded. “You’re going to show everyone it's never too late to start over. That it’s okay to ask for help.”
“I feel like I’m the last person anyone should be looking up to,” he admitted, sliding a hanger along the rack.
“That’s not true,” I insisted, but my mother touched my arm as if to say I’ve got this .
She gripped his shoulders and turned him to face her.
“I want you to listen to me,” she said, her voice soft and sincere. “You don’t even realize how special you are, Luca Sterling. What a miracle it is that you’re still here. I know what you’ve fought through—what you’re still fighting through—hasn’t been easy, but you’re here, in spite of it all. There are so many who aren’t. Every day we lose more and more people…people who don’t stay because they can’t ask for help. Because they think they’re beyond help.”
Tears filled her eyes and mine. I knew she was picturing my brother—one of the beautiful souls who hadn’t been able to stay. Not because he wasn’t strong enough. Not because his life mattered less. We just didn’t know how to spot the signs that he needed extra support, and he didn’t have people, especially men, he could look to for guidance. Mental health was still stigmatized, but it was far worse when Brennan and I were growing up. Back then, it was even more frowned upon for men to show any signs of softness or emotion.
“You are exactly the person others should be looking up to,” she continued. “Because you can show them vulnerability isn’t a flaw. You’ve taken yours and created something beautiful with it. And I’m not just talking about your music. I’m talking about your life.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek, emotion misting his eyes.
“Look at this beautiful life you’re making for yourself, sweetheart.” She cupped his face in her hands. “You got knocked down, time and time again, but baby, you’re still swinging. And you’re gonna show others they can keep swinging too.”
He wrapped her small frame into a bear hug, nearly swallowing her whole, then he drew me in too. The three of us stood there, holding each other in the aisle. There was no one around to see, but I wouldn’t have cared if there was.
“You’re still coming, right, Mama Laurel?” he asked, using the nickname he’d affectionately given her as he pulled away.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she answered with a proud smile as she returned to browsing.
We continued our treasure hunt until my mother squealed with delight.
“Look at this!” She wrenched a black shirt from the metal rack and held it out for us to inspect. The message “Hope is Defiant” was printed across the front.
A square on the side held the logo “To Write Love on Her Arms.”
“I’ve heard of them,” I said, checking the label to see what size it was. “They’re a nonprofit that connects people with resources to help with things like addiction and depression. I’ve read some pieces on their blog before. Their platform is all about finding hope.”
“And so is yours,” my mom said, pointing the hanger in Luca’s direction. “I’m getting it for you.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to do that. I can get it.”
“Nonsense,” she declared in a way that let him know this wasn’t up for debate. “I’m getting it because I want it to serve as a reminder of how much I believe in you.”
He gave her a soft smile. “Thank you.”
“You just get on that stage next Friday and sing your ass off,” she said. “That’s all the thanks I need.”
His gaze fell slightly as my mother turned her focus back to the shirts lining the wall, and I knew he was still feeling insecure about the show. But I hoped once he got up there it would feel like riding a bike. That he’d remember all the reasons he’d loved performing to begin with.
“It’s going to be amazing,” I whispered, looping my arm around his waist.
I was so proud of him for all he’d accomplished, and I’d put together a surprise to show him just how much. With Jo’s help, I’d managed to secure the attendance of a couple of important people from Luca’s past. He’d been so busy with the album and rehearsals, he hadn’t even noticed the extra time I’d spent on my phone concocting my plan, making sure everything was set.
This was going to be a big moment for him, and I wanted the place to be packed with people who believed in him, both past and present.