Chapter 17
Seventeen
AUGUST CURRENT DAY (SATURDAY)
“W here are we going so early?” Warren yawns as we get into my car.
After we left the bar last night, we stopped at the hotel to grab some of his stuff and then he spent the night at my place. We got very little sleep, but with how far we have to drive today, it has to be an early start.
“And when did you have time to make those?” He gestures to the strawberry yogurt muffins I packed safely into the back seat. When I pulled them out of the fridge he tried to grab one and I swatted his hand away, enjoying the tired, pouty face he made. He keeps eyeing them, but I made them specifically for the person we’re going to see. He’ll have to wait too.
I laugh. “You know I bake when I have a lot on my mind, and Thursday night I had a lot to think about.”
“Well, if what happened yesterday is the result of your thinking, maybe you should do it more often.” He reaches over to grab my chin and turns my face to look at him before I can put the car in gear. My eyes meet his just before he kisses me.
When he pulls away, I pull him back for another. “One for the road,” I whisper, and he laughs.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going now?” he asks as I pull out of the parking garage below my building. I don’t use my car often since I can walk to work, but it’s convenient to have on days like this.
“Nope.”
When I stop the car in front of Lola’s a few minutes later, his confusion only rises.
“Just wait here.” I smile as I leave the car running to pop inside.
It’s earlier than Lola’s is usually open, but today she’s up waiting for me.
“Oh, Analise.” Lola walks out from the back with a beautiful bouquet of pink tulips tied together with a white ribbon. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing well, Lola,” I say, taking the flowers. I wonder if he’ll figure it out just from these. He might, but I don’t think he’ll ever expect that it’s the truth . . . at least, until we get to Boston. “It’s been easier this year.”
She looks out the window and smiles at the car. “Because Warren’s back?”
“I heard you gave him quite the welcome home party.” I laugh when her smile grows. “Thanks for that by the way. It made my day when I heard.”
Her raspy laugh fills the space and she pats my arm. “He deserved something thrown at him, and I knew you weren’t going to do it.”
“If words count, I’ve thrown a lot of those at him.”
“Your body counts too.” She looks at me with raised brows and I look away as my cheeks heat. “I always knew you two would end up together.”
“We’re no—” The look she gives me stops the words in my throat, because I know they’re lies as much as she does. “I’ve always hoped we would too.”
“If there ever were two people meant to be,” she says, more serious than she’s ever been, “it’s you two. Take it from an old woman like me who’s seen a lot. What you two have is special.”
“You know, you’re not the first person to tell me that this week.” Does that make it true? “I’ll see you later, Lola. Thank you again.”
“Does he know?” she asks, hesitantly, when I’m almost out of the door. “Who you’re going to see and why? That you see her every year?” I shake my head, and she nods solemnly. “Good luck.”
I can see his brain working as I walk out with the bouquet of tulips, his face twisted in concentration. I take my time securing them into the backseat so they won’t get damaged on the drive. He doesn’t speak until I’m turning onto I-84 E.
“Muffins, tulips, and . . .” He looks around. “How long is the drive?”
“You’ll see,” I say, smiling. I think, in the back of his mind, he knows, but he doesn’t believe it’s actually what we’re doing.
I want to distract him from asking more questions, and I want to know more about what’s been going on in his life, so I ask the first thing that comes to mind. “Do you hear from your dad much?”
A smile stays on his face, despite the touchy subject, as he says, “No, not really. Mostly just around birthdays and holidays. He got remarried recently, and I think she’s been encouraging him to reach out more because he asked about coming to visit.”
He’s so calm, so much steadier in his emotions than I remember. I’m happy to see he’s not angry still, he always carried that with him even if he didn’t want to talk about it.
“What did you say to that?” I glance over quickly and catch him shrug.
“I think I’m going to take them up on it. It’s already progress that he offered to come to me instead of saying work was too busy and if I wanted to see him I’d have to go out to New York. I did that once and ended up exploring the city alone. If he’s wanting a better relationship, I’m open to it.”
“Wow,” I say before I can stop it from slipping out.
He laughs. “What?”
“That’s so different from how this conversation would’ve gone six years ago.”
I catch his smirk out of the corner of my eye as he says, “Please enlighten me on how it would’ve gone back then.”
“Well.” I laugh, nervously. “If your dad had reached out back then you probably would’ve masked your anger with some comment about how you survived without him so why would you need him now. You only ever told me the bare minimum about that whole situation, but I always knew there was more to it than you let on.”
“I told you more than just the bare minimum,” he says, but I hear the question in the words as he tries to remember how those conversations went.
“No.” I shake my head. “All you ever told me was that they got divorced. The first time you told me anything about why or how it affected you was yesterday, and even then, I don’t think you’ve told me everything about the situation.”
“Hm, I guess you’re rig—” He pauses. “Wait, but you weren’t surprised to hear the reason. You knew?”
I nod and try to fight my grin. “Someone told me about it a few years ago.”
“Who?”
“You’ll see.” My grin comes shining through and I laugh when he narrows his eyes at me.
“Fine,” he grumbles as he reaches over and laces our hands together on the center console. His voice is softer when he asks, “What about your mom and dad? Will you tell me more about what happened?”
I take a deep breath. “It was a heart attack. There were no warning signs, no issues with her health, we were just a family at lunch, laughing one second and the next she’d fallen out of her chair and wasn’t responsive. By the time she got to the hospital, it was too late to do anything. She was being kept alive by machines and my dad had to make the decision to unplug her . . . or not.”
He squeezes my hand, and I shoot him a grateful smile. It’s been long enough that it’s easy to talk about this part, even though I still miss her. What’s hard to talk about is the ongoing pain, the ongoing impact of what it turned my dad into.
“I’ve always wondered if having to make that decision made it worse for my dad, if he felt partially responsible for being the one to decide to let her go.” As far as I’m aware he didn’t start drinking until after that. “It was the right decision. We had the funeral a few days later and I didn’t think much of it when I picked him up and he was drunk—he’d just lost his wife. But as the days kept passing, he kept drinking. He wasn’t eating much, wasn’t moving. He was like a zombie—there but not really alive. Then his personality started changing and no matter what I did, nothing helped. Nothing made him stop. I’ve never felt so useless in my life. I tried everything I could think of, but he only grew more aggressive. So I started going less and less. I really only see him once a year now when I show up on the anniversary of her passing to check on him. I keep hoping, one of these times, he’ll be back to normal, that he’ll realize the harm he’s done and apologize. But it hasn’t happened yet.”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and I think I catch the glimmer of a tear dropping down his cheek. “I know how much you looked up to both your parents, and to lose them both in such a short time . . . I can’t even imagine how hard that was. I wish I had been there for you.”
I wished that for a long time too. He was who I wanted to talk to for so long, but he wasn’t there, and I still survived. I still made it through. “As much as I hated it, I think I needed to go through it alone. You were always the one telling me how strong I was, and I believed it because it was you saying it. I had to prove to myself that I was that strong. I needed to believe it for myself.”
“You are so strong, Analise.” His voice is firm but warm, and his thumb brushes across the back of my hand sending flutters through my stomach. “You always have been.”
“I know,” I tease, squeezing his hand and laughing when he sticks his tongue out at me like a little kid.
We continue talking the rest of the ride there, catching each other up on everything in our lives that happened over the past years.
But when I take the exit for Boston and toward his childhood neighborhood, he turns to stare at me. “What is going on?”
I don’t answer; I park the car in front of the brick house he grew up in and start grabbing the items from the back seat. Warren appears and takes the muffins out of my hands, following behind me as we walk up to the door.
I knock and a moment later a tall, thin woman who looks way younger than her age, answers the door.
“Analise.” She smiles and hugs me.
“I swear you look younger every time I see you, Cindy,” I say.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you so much.” She winks at me before addressing Warren who’s just been standing there, watching us with a confused expression. “And you got my son to come home, that’s a miracle.”
“Hi, Mom,” he says, still obviously confused as he turns toward me. “What’s going on?”
I smile and put my hand on his arm. “I’ll give you two a few minutes to catch up.” I take the muffins from him and start to head inside.
“I already got the vase out,” Cindy says, and I smile as I walk in the house and toward the kitchen.
Ever since I learned Warren hasn’t come to Boston in a while, and then learned it was because of the proximity to me, I’ve been planning a way to get him out here. That was my motive for inviting him to come today, but I would’ve been here even if he wasn’t. I’ve been coming to see Cindy yearly on the Saturday closest to the anniversary of the death of my mom since weekends are easier to make this trip. When my dad started drinking and I needed someone to talk to, she was the closest thing to the person I wanted to talk to, and she welcomed me with open arms when I showed up on her doorstep. That first time was out of desperation, but I kept coming back because it was nice to have someone older and wiser to talk to about life’s problems.
We’ve discussed everything over the years—everything except what happened between Warren and me. I wasn’t sure if she ever told him about my mom, or these visits, but by his reaction at The Dizzy Acorn when I told him she died, and now, it’s obvious she never did.
I’m setting out cups of coffee and plates of muffins on the coffee table when they head in, all smiles on their matching, sunny faces.
“I’ll just grab some milk and sugar,” I say, and Cindy stops me.
“I’ll grab it, dear.”
I sit down next to Warren on the couch, and he leans into me with a smile. “ This was the errand you had to run today?”
“I’ve been coming here every year since the weekend after my mom died. She helped me so much right after her death, so it kind of just became a tradition.” I shrug.
His eyes soften and he kisses my cheek. “I guess I know who told you about the reason for the divorce . . . and whose side she took in the breakup.”
“Well, if you bothered to visit,” Cindy says as she walks in, not bothering to hide that she was eavesdropping, “I might’ve taken your side.” She looks at me and smiles. “But probably not.”
“It was too tempting to come back—to be this close,” he says, looking over at me. His fingers reach out across the couch and gently pull my hand towards his. I lace our fingers together and squeeze.
Cindy eyes the movement and purses her lips. “How long did you make him grovel until you took him back?”
“Mom!” Warren exclaims, and I laugh.
“She’s like a daughter to me,” she says. “And I don’t care if you’re my son or not, I need to make sure you’re deserving of her. She’s been hurt too many times already. You know how mom’s like to say, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out? Hurt her again and you’ll find out just how accurate that statement can be.”
“Oh, I have no intention of hurting her again, and I have never been deserving of her,” he says.
“Stop.” I squeeze his hand and move our joined hands to hit him softly on the leg. “If we ignore the past, like, six and a half years, you’ve always been deserving. But when we factor those years in . . .” I grimace jokingly and tilt my head back and forth. “It could go either way.”
“All right.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me down on his lap, his hands tickling me as I squeal. “You guys are so funny. I know I was the biggest idiot for letting you go, am I going to have to hear about it the rest of my life?”
“If you plan on keeping me around that long,” I tease, hoping he does, “then, yes.”
“Hm,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss me. “I guess I could live with that.”
When we sit back up, Cindy is sipping her coffee and watching us with a smile.