Chapter 28 Aubrey #2
“Whoa, hang on a sec,” Maxx said breathlessly, pulling back. His face was flushed, and his eyes were bright. “I don’t think getting you naked would endear me to your parents. And if you don’t stop right now, that’s exactly what will happen,” he warned lightly.
I smiled. “Okay, later though.” I kissed him one last time before taking a step back.
“We should go back downstairs, I guess,” I said, feeling the heaviness in my chest return.
“Yeah, we should,” Maxx agreed, giving my hand a squeeze.
My dad had come home in the few minutes I had been upstairs, and I wondered whether my mother had called him.
Dad looked as though he had aged twenty years. His hair had turned completely gray, and his face was lined and tired. Gone was the strong, always smiling man of my youth.
“Hi, Dad,” I said in a small voice. Dealing with my dad had in some ways been harder than dealing with my mother.
Maybe because the disapproval and shame were absent from him. From my dad, there was nothing.
After Jayme had died, he had retreated from me completely, and it was as though, for him, I no longer existed.
And that hurt, perhaps more than my mother’s coldness.
“Aubrey,” he said, with a gentleness I hadn’t heard in years. And then he did the most surprising thing. He walked across the kitchen and enfolded me in a tobacco-scented hug.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said quietly into my hair. It had been so long since I had been hugged by my father. And I had missed it. A lot.
I felt like crying, but wouldn’t. Not now.
I pulled back, putting some distance between myself and the man who had raised me. “Still smoking that pipe, I see,” I commented, trying to smile but finding that my mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
My dad’s smile was just as rusty. “Busted.”
“I keep telling him to quit. To try one of those e-smokers, but you know how stubborn he is,” my mom spoke up, fixing several cups of coffee.
I wanted to argue that I didn’t know how stubborn he was. Not anymore. The truth was that these people in front of me had become strangers.
Maxx came forward and held out his hand. “Hello, Mr. Duncan, I’m Maxx Demelo. Nice to meet you, sir,” he said politely.
My father looked surprised to see him but shook his hand. “And you are?” my father prompted, his brows furrowing.
I grabbed Maxx’s hand and pulled him close. “He’s my boyfriend,” I answered.
My dad’s smile slipped, and a silence rose between us.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or do.
“Let’s take our coffees into the living room,” my mother interjected, waving her hand toward the hallway. She handed me a steaming mug, and this time my smile came without effort.
“You kept it,” I mused, holding it up to see the faded blue writing. Maxx peered over my shoulder.
“That’s pretty funny,” he chuckled, indicating the OCD mug Jayme had given me all those years ago.
“Yeah, it is,” I said in agreement.
“Are you coming?” my mother asked, already in the hallway.
Maxx cleared his throat. “If it’s okay with you, I need to run to the store and grab some things I forgot to bring.” I frowned at him.
He met my eyes. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, and I felt a momentary panic at the thought of being left alone with my parents. Maxx was my buffer! He couldn’t leave!
“Of course. There’s a Target just off the highway,” my mom offered.
“I saw it as we came into town, I think I can get there.” Maxx smiled. My parents went on to the living room, and I rounded on my boyfriend.
“You can’t leave me here with them! What the hell, Maxx?” I demanded in an angry whisper.
Maxx kissed my forehead. “You need to talk to them . . . alone. Give yourself this time with your parents, Aubrey. Trust me when I say if you don’t you’ll regret it.” His eyes were filled with pain, and I knew he was thinking of his own parents, whom he’d never be able to talk to again.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do this for yourself.” He buried his nose in my hair and held me tightly for a moment before pulling away.
“Can I have your keys?” he asked, holding out his hand.
“Don’t drive over twenty-five miles an hour and make sure you brake for all stop signs,” I instructed, dropping the keys into his hands.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of your baby,” he laughed.
He kissed me one last time and gave me a slight push toward the living room. “Now go and talk to your parents.”
“We were cleaning out Jayme’s room and we’ve put some things aside that we thought you’d like to have,” my mother said after I joined them in the living room.
I felt awkward and uncomfortable sitting on the same sofa that had been there since I was a kid. The frayed arms had worn over the years.
My mom passed me a shoebox, which I took gingerly.
“It took us a long time to sort through her things. We had been putting it off, neither of us willing to do it,” my dad said, taking a sip of his coffee. After his initial hug, he now seemed almost reserved.
I took the lid off the box and looked down into the random treasures from my sister’s room that my parents had collected.
I pulled out a ratty, pale pink teddy bear that sat on top.
Why in the world would my parents give me Mr. Swizzle?
My sister had slept with this ugly thing until she went to high school.
And I suspected she hid him under her pillow after that, still holding him while she slept.
“Uh . . . thanks?” I held the bear in my hand, not sure what else to say.
My mother let out a tense laugh. “You don’t remember, do you?” she asked. I frowned.
“I don’t remember what?”
My parents exchanged a wistful look, and my mom shook her head.
“Of course you wouldn’t. You were so young.
But you picked that out for Jayme when she was a baby, just before we brought her home from the hospital.
Your dad took you shopping for a welcome-home gift for her, and you insisted on Mr. Swizzle.
Jayme slept with it every night after you gave it to her.
When she was in her crib, we’d put it in the corner and she’d stop crying.
It worked every single time,” my mother told me, and I stared down at the worn stuffed animal in my hands.
“How did I not know that I was the one to pick it out?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s yours now. I think she’d want you to have it.” Mom wiped at her eyes, and I knew she was getting weepy.
I put the bear down, and my fingers began to hesitantly sift through the remaining items in the box. I realized that my parents had carefully chosen things that they knew would be meaningful to me.
I saw the coral necklace I had helped her pick out when we went to the beach one summer during middle school.
We had argued over that particular necklace, but in the end I had let Jayme have it because she was my sister and I loved her more than a stupid piece of jewelry. Jayme had worn it all summer.
I found an old spiral notebook with a ripped cover, and I realized it was our “secret club” notebook. I thumbed through the pages to find my childlike scrawl and Jayme’s crude drawings as we detailed our secret missions and important secrets we didn’t want anyone else to know.
My mother leaned over me and reached into the box. “Do you remember this?” she asked, pulling something out and putting it in my hand.
“I knew she took it! That sneaky brat!” I gasped through a choked laugh. Lying in my palm was the silver locket on a chain my grandmother had given me for Christmas when I was ten. Jayme had pouted all day because she had wanted one, too.
Then two days later it had mysteriously disappeared, and I never saw it again. I had accused Jayme, but she denied it and I had gotten into trouble for insisting my sister was the culprit.
My mother shook her head. “I guess we owe you an apology for not believing you.” She smiled.
“I told you guys she took it! Where was it?” I asked, holding up the locket and attaching it around my neck.
“It was in a box at the back of her closet. I’m guessing she hid it and completely forgot about it. There were old Pokémon cards and chains made from Tootsie Pop wrappers as well,” my dad said.
“I can’t believe her. If she were here, I’d shake her silly,” I muttered. Our conversation died down, and we sat in heavy silence.
I put the lid back on the box and set it down at my feet. “Thanks for this. I appreciate it,” I said sincerely, surprised that they would think to do this for me, given our relationship the last few years.
“Aubrey, I know things have been hard since Jayme died—” my mother began.
“That’s a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?” I threw back at them, not able to keep the vicious spite out of my voice.
My mom bit down on her bottom lip and closed her eyes.
“What your mom is trying to say is we’ve been unfair to you. We haven’t been the parents that you needed us to be. It’s inexcusable and wrong. After Jayme died, we shut down, and in the process we lost not one but both of our daughters,” my dad said, leaning forward.
My eyes began to burn with unshed tears. How long had I thought about them with only resentment and bitterness at emotionally abandoning me when I needed them most?
“You hurt me, badly,” I whispered, staring down at my hands.
I startled at my mother’s hand touching mine. “We know. We were in so much pain, and it was easier to blame you than to accept our own culpability in what happened to Jayme.” I felt the first tears escape down my cheek, and I hurriedly wiped them away.
“But you weren’t wrong. I should have told you what was going on with Jayme. I should have done more to save her.” My voice was broken, and I could barely hear myself over the thudding of my heart.
My dad came to sit beside me, and my mother gripped my hand tightly between hers.
“That’s where we failed you, Aubrey. Because you were a child, too. We should never have put that sort of responsibility on you,” my father said firmly.
“But—” I began, but my mother cut me off.
“No! We were the parents. Not you. We should have seen what was going on with our daughter. That was our responsibility. And it was our guilt and shame that made it impossible for us to see how we were treating the only child we had left. I’m sorry, Aubrey.”
I let out a choked sob and couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
“Why now? Where did this sudden realization come from?” I demanded, feeling my tears mix with years of anger.
“We were in the kitchen drinking our coffee one Saturday morning and made the decision to go through Jayme’s things.
Neither one of us had been able to do it in all the years since she had been gone.
But something clicked that Saturday, and we grabbed a few bags and went up to her room,” my dad stated.
“Going through her things brought up the hurt and pain all over again. And as we cried and laughed with each new discovery of who our daughter had been, we realized that we weren’t just missing Jayme, we were missing you, too,” my dad finished softly.
“Then we heard from your school about your suspension from the counseling program, and we knew that all of it was our fault. That we hadn’t been the parents we should have been.
That we allowed you to go off to school only months after losing your sister, alone in your grief.
We should have helped you, but we didn’t, and we will never be able to forgive ourselves.
” My mom’s words were punctuated with her muffled sobs, and we cried together.
My mother and me. And our mutual tears began to heal the brokenness inside of me.
Tentatively, my mother wrapped her arm around me, and I let her hug me, unable to hold on to the anger I had felt for so long. I needed this. I needed to feel the love that only my parents had ever been able to give me.
I had been defined by my grief and regret for years. They had weighed me down and pulled me under. It was time to let some of that go.
My dad’s arms came up to encircle both my mother and me, and I felt warm from the inside out.
They held me for a long time, my mother and me continuing to cry and my dad holding us both.