Chapter 25
The hollow hoot of an owl wafted through Zander’s window as he rolled over in bed again.
It wasn’t his first sleepless night in this room, not by a long shot.
His very first night there, fifteen years old and scared as hell about why his mom had shipped him away, and if she would be okay without him, he’d kept himself awake in this little room for hours, listening to his papou move about the house.
He’d studied the peeling paint on the ceiling and watched the blinking colon on the digital clock. Finally, he’d thrown his worn black backpack over one shoulder and tiptoed down the street, ready to take off.
He hadn’t made it far, of course. Papou drove up behind him after about ten minutes.
Zander could still see the long shadow his adolescent body cast against the road as his grandfather parked behind him before storming out of the car, cursing in his mother tongue, which Zander had never learned, and yelling at him to get into the passenger seat.
Later, he’d sometimes read all night, holding his book beneath the bedside lamp that had appeared in his room one June. Sometimes he stayed up all night just to have an excuse to sleep well into the next day, minimizing time spent with his papou.
After another hoot from his friend outside, Zander abandoned his bed and took a few creaky steps to the window to stare out into the darkness.
In retrospect, the last two summers there hadn’t been too bad.
His grandfather had managed to secure jobs for Zander here and there, and he and Papou had reached a detente, wherein they lived in the same house while ignoring each other as much as possible.
Papou still mustered up an occasional lecture, especially when word filtered through town that Zander had been seen sneaking around with Mallory.
Leave that nice girl alone, he’d said. You don’t want her to end up like your mother.
Zander’s fingers curled into tight fists at the memory, so he took a long, calming breath and grabbed his phone from the nightstand for a distraction. He clicked on his messages with Penny automatically, smiling at their exchange of good-nights a few hours ago.
ZANDER I miss you in my bed.
PENNY It’s probably good I couldn’t stay. I need some actual sleep so I can work tomorrow
ZANDER and why wouldn’t you get enough sleep with me?
PENNY you know the answer to that
ZANDER mmm, maybe I need you to tell me, though
PENNY good night, Zander
ZANDER good night Penny Becker. Sweet dreams
They’d moved on from the argument at the honey shed, though there was an extra thickness between them now, something unsaid. She had asked him to go over the culinary station details again, and together they agreed to a scaled-down version where local chefs, RJ included, could show their skills.
They were just over a week out from the festival, which meant three weeks until he packed up to return to Boston.
Three weeks out, and he still hadn’t accomplished his goal for the summer of selling the house.
Cursing himself, he swiped to his messages with Monica, his real estate agent. They’d been piling up for a few days.
MONICA Good afternoon! I dropped the For Sale sign at your house since you said you wanted to put it in yourself at the end of the driveway. Have you been able to get it up?
MONICA Good morning, wanted to check in about the sign. Also, the listing went live today! I’m feeling good about this!
MONICA Good afternoon! I spoke to my friend today and he said you never called about the fence installation. Wanted to let you know that’s totally fine. I think we’ll have enough interest anyway, and the new owner can always alter the property as they see fit.
MONICA Good morning, Zander! I hope these messages are coming through. I have great news! I already have a bite on the listing! It’s a couple from the city looking for a good getaway spot. They’d love to tour the house ASAP. Let me know if there’s a window tomorrow. Thanks!
MONICA Following up about tomorrow. My calls went to voicemail. We don’t want to miss this!
Now, bleary-eyed, he finally typed a reply:
Sorry, Monica. I got wrapped up in some things. Unfortunately, tomorrow won’t work, the house is a mess from some projects I’ve been doing. I’ll let you know about timing later this weekend.
Monica was trying to do her job, and Zander was no help at all.
The sign was still leaning against the front porch, the fence idea all but forgotten.
His papou’s room was still untouched; how Monica had made it work for the photos, he didn’t know, but she’d probably be horrified to show the house with a dead man’s coat still hanging over a chair upstairs.
And now he had people excited to see the house.
Wasn’t that exactly what he wanted? Getting this place off his hands was supposed to be the silver lining of his summer in Sullivan’s Glen.
So why did he cringe to think of strangers walking through the house—assessing, measuring, standing in the kitchen where he’d made souvlaki with Winter, where he’d laid Penny on the table their first full night together?
Would they stand in this room and look out at the field below, planning a fence or another building?
Hell, maybe they’d knock the whole thing down and start fresh.
The idea made him wildly, irrationally angry.
At the sound of a long creak in the hallway, Zander’s eyes flew to the door. Winter peeked in, his face swollen with the signs of sleep, hair smushed down on one side. He was in athletic shorts and a T-shirt from last summer’s science camp, and it was stretching at the shoulders.
“Dad?”
“Buddy, what’s up?”
Winter stepped in, rubbing at his eyes “I, uh, couldn’t sleep. I’m… it’s…”
“Come here.” Zander returned to his bed, where he folded himself to a sitting position on the mattress, wishing he’d splurged on a bed frame, too.
Winter sat several inches away, hands cupping his bouncing knees.
“What’s going on?”
“You don’t talk to your mom anymore.”
“Um, no. No, not right now.”
Winter had been given a cursory explanation of the situation: Zander’s mom was sick and not able to have a healthy relationship with him, and while Zander loved her, for his own sake he needed some space.
And keeping this boundary now helped protect her from her tendencies to sabotage relationships when she wasn’t doing well.
“Do you think you will, ever again?”
Zander asked himself that question all the time. “I hope so.”
Winter’s attention stayed glued to the floor. “You didn’t talk to your grandfather, either.”
“No, I didn’t. We didn’t have a great relationship, and I didn’t think he wanted to hear from me.”
That’s what he’d told himself all those years. That he’d been doing his papou a favor by not bothering him anymore, and that the old man had been stuck with Zander long enough and just wanted to be free of him.
He never allowed himself much time to wonder if it was true.
Winter’s body stayed slumped over his knees, but he looked over to Zander. “What if we don’t talk?”
“Who?” Something inside Zander cracked. “You and me? Bud, that won’t happen.”
“It happened with your mom. And your grandpa. I never even got to meet him.”
It was one thing to answer to his own conscience, another completely to answer to his kid.
“I know, and that’s on me.” He sighed, swallowing hard as he kept his eyes on his son.
“When you and your mom started coming back, she offered to reach out to him so you could meet him. But I told her not to.”
“Why?”
Zander steadied his voice. “I was afraid he wouldn’t want to meet you, and that would have made me so angry I wouldn’t even have known what to do with the feelings. And I tried to put that anger away a long time ago. I chose to ignore the situation altogether, which was not the brave thing to do.”
He scooted back on the bed to sit cross-legged. When Winter did the same, Zander nudged his son with one foot. “Where’s this coming from?”
Winter shrugged, but his chin trembled. “What if that happens to us? What if we stop talking?” he asked again.
“That’s not going to happen to us.”
Winter’s eyes widened, looking almost pleading. “How do you know? What if it does?”
Zander closed a hand on his son’s knee, squeezing hard. “Because I’m going to make sure I am always there for you.”
“But you can’t always be there! What about when you die? Or Mom dies? Because you will, you both will. And what will I do then?”
“What has you thinking about that, buddy? We’re fine, we’re all totally fine and healthy.”
“But you won’t always be!” His voice cracked. In his lap, his hands twisted together. “You won’t always be, and then I’ll be alone!”
One tear spilled out, then another. Jesus, this was a lot. These were the kinds of questions that kept Zander up at night. It hadn’t occurred to him that Winter’s angst would cut this deep.
But his kid was smart and sensitive and observant, and he was growing into a person.
A real person in his own right, who slammed doors and played with bubbles and worried about losing his parents.
He was processing a world that always seemed to be spinning out of control, and his father—fifty percent of Winter’s family until not so long ago—didn’t exactly provide a model of how to keep people in your life as you grew up.
His instinct was to bundle Winter up, pull him to his chest, and promise him that everything would be okay. They would never ever fight, and Zander would defy the laws of human existence to stay in his life forever.
But he wasn’t about to make promises he couldn’t keep.
Instead, he tipped his head down to catch Winter’s eye. “Hey. I understand, okay? Living is so scary. I feel that in my bones every day. It’s really normal to feel like this.”
After Winter was born, sometimes Zander stayed awake at night just watching him, making sure he was breathing, until Mallory dragged him away to make him sleep.
“There are some things about life we can’t change, like how it ends. But we can do a lot in the meantime. Make sure we love each other as much as we can, make beautiful things, see beautiful places.”
“But what is the point?”
“Bud, that is the major question of human existence,” Zander admitted with a light laugh. “And I don’t know the answer. But right here”—he tapped his chest—“I still feel like there’s a point, you know?”
Winter shrugged. “I guess.”
“And there are a ton of belief systems out there you can explore if that helps. Your mom and I never did the formal church thing with you, but a lot of people find meaning and answers in that, and that’s valid, too. There’s a ton out there to explore.”
Winter raised an eyebrow wryly. “You’d take me to church?”
The church would have to be super liberal and queer-friendly, but they were out there.
“I’ll take you wherever you feel like you need to go, Winter, whether that’s church or counseling or meditation class.”
“Meditation?” Winter sneered.
“Don’t knock it till you try it. The point isn’t for you to turn out just like me or your mom, but for you to be you. And we’re here to support that.”
Winter yawned. “Life is weird.”
Zander slung an arm around him. “Dude. It is so weird. But so amazing, too, right? I mean, have you heard about how bees mate?”
“Dad—”
“The male bee’s you-know-what gets ripped off, bro.”
“Dad!” Winter laughed, then yawned again as he eyed the open bedroom door.
“You want to lie down in here?” Zander asked tentatively. It had been almost a year since Winter climbed into his bed in the middle of the night—not that he was keeping track. “See if you can get some more sleep?”
Winter shrugged, not meeting Zander’s eyes. “I guess.”
Zander climbed to the other side of the bed and crawled under the light blanket as Winter stretched out beside him on his stomach, facing the other way.
“You want me to scratch your back like the good old days?”
Another shrug. “I guess.”
Slowing his own breathing, Zander ran his short nails along the back of Winter’s T-shirt, moving over his bony shoulder blades and down his spine.
“Is this what’s been on your mind lately? When you’ve been… upset? Worrying about your mom and me being gone?”
His son answered quietly. “A little. I’ve been thinking about it, I guess. And just… I feel strange. Like, all over. And really sad sometimes for no reason.”
“That’s all normal.” And something Zander and Mallory would keep an eye on, especially the sadness. “If you want support beyond your mom and me, you know we’ll find it for you, okay?”
“Okay.”
Zander scratched up and down, then in slow, shrinking spirals.
“It’s hard to imagine now,” he said softly, “but your life is going to get bigger and bigger. You’ll have people you love and who love you, and a whole life outside your parents. You have so much amazing stuff ahead of you.”
Zander knew how a life could transform, how it was possible to move forward from one set of circumstances and build up the next. How, even at thirty-five, surprising things could happen.
His son was still, but Zander kept up the movement of his fingers along his back. “And for as long as we can, your mom and I will love you so fiercely that you’ll think we’re so annoying.”
Winter shook with laughter beneath Zander’s hand. “I know.”
Then Winter’s body twitched in the last surrender to sleep, and sometime later, with his hand still on his son’s warm back, Zander’s did too.