Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Suni was waiting up for me when I got in. She was sitting on the sofa in the parlor, staring at the open fire, her lap full of sleeping kittens. She looked up when I came in, and I saw her face was pinched and drawn in the dancing lights of the Christmas tree.
“Everything okay?” she asked carefully.
And for the millionth time that night I burst into tears. I was amazed I had any tears left in me.
“Oh dear.” She sent the sleepy kittens tumbling sideways onto the sofa as she rose to comfort me. “Jake told us his cousin turned Tina in.” She took me in her arms. “Where is he? I thought he was bringing you home?”
“He followed me home but just went in to check on Hazel,” I managed to sniff. “He was worried she’d have ripped the place apart while he was gone. I told him not to rush. I need some processing time.”
Suni pulled away. “Okay. I’ll head up—”
“No,” I cut her off and pulled her back.
“I didn’t mean you.” I swallowed. “In fact, I wanted to see you.” I’d wanted to see her all night, I realized.
It had been a shadowy need in the back of my mind ever since I’d left the Nar-Anon family meeting.
It had grown when Tina had opened the door, reeking of meth, and then again when I’d seen Marly’s photo album.
“Suni,” I blurted. I had no grace. I wasn’t articulate. I just had a burning need to say what I had to say. “All day I’ve wanted my mom. I’ve been so hurt and so scared and so lost. And I just wanted my mom so badly.” The tears were streaming again. I was made of them.
“Oh, honey, I know,” she said sympathetically. “You’ve always wanted her. I’m so sorry she hasn’t been able to be the mom you needed.”
She didn’t understand me. I shook my head. “No. I mean, I wanted you.”
Her dark eyes widened.
“Suni, you’re my mom. And when life gets too real, and I’m hurting bad, and scared, and I can’t manage, you’re the one I want.
” I pressed my lips together, trying not to break into ugly sobs before I could get the words out.
“Tonight, I was looking at Jake’s family photo album,” I said, my throat tight, “and wishing so hard I’d had a childhood like his mom’s.
And then just now I came home and as soon as I saw the bare stalks of the lilacs I exhaled.
Like all the tension went out of me. And I realized that coming home to lilacs feels like coming home.
Because of you.” I drew an aching, shuddering breath.
“Ever since that case worker drove me up your drive, past all those flowering lilacs, they’ve meant home to me. ”
Now Suni was crying too.
“And I realized I did have a home and I did have love. It wasn’t with the person I thought I wanted, or in the way that I wanted, but I had it.
You were always there for me. You never forced love on me, never demanded it of me, you just gave me a place where I was safe when I needed it. And I needed it so badly.”
“What’s going on here?” Wayne appeared in the doorway in his sweatpants and Pirates T-shirt. He was alarmed by our ugly crying and the way we were clutching at each other. “What’s happened?”
Suni shook her head. She was crying too hard to speak.
Now Wayne looked really worried.
“It’s okay,” I promised him, aware my swallowed sobs weren’t reassuring. “I was just telling Suni how much you guys mean to me.” I hugged him. Fiercely. “I mean, I was telling her that I love you, both of you.”
“Well, we know that.” He gave me a bewildered pat on the back. “We love you too.”
Suni joined us, pressing a wet kiss to my cheek. “I love you as much as I love my own kids,” she whispered, stroking my face. “I hope you know that.”
“I do.” I was still blubbering. “And I should have introduced you to Flo as her grandparents. You should be Gran and Pop or Granny and Granddad or whatever.”
“We don’t need names to be her grandparents,” Wayne said, still sounding a touch baffled. “She’s always been ours.”
“Oh my God, who’s dead?” Alison appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking panicked.
“No one’s dead, baby,” Suni assured her. “We’re just having an ‘I love you’ moment.”
Alison looked like she didn’t believe us.
“Come join us,” I invited from inside Suni and Wayne’s hugs. “I love you too.”
“What’s all the noise?” Flo leaned over the banister of the landing. “And why are you all hugging like someone died?”
“That’s what I said,” Alison called up to her. “It’s weird to say ‘I love you’ like this, right? Unless someone died.”
“You can pretend someone died if it makes it easier,” Wayne rumbled. I pressed my wet face into his T-shirt to smother my giggle.
“How come you’re crying?” Flo asked suspiciously as she trotted downstairs.
“Sometimes people cry when they’re happy,” I told her, hooking her into the group hug.
“Not me,” she said firmly. She looked up at me, frowning. “You were gone a long time.”
“Sorry. I had to say goodbye to my mom.”
“She’s gone?” Flo brightened. Tina really had made her uneasy.
“She’s gone.” I sighed, my breath hitching. I felt Suni’s hand rubbing comforting circles on my back.
“Hey!” Lance’s disgruntled voice sounded from the stairs. “How come I wasn’t invited to this love-in?”
“You’re always invited,” Suni assured him, holding out her arm to beckon him. “Tash is welcome too if she’s awake.”
“We should get the kittens, like, if this is a whole family thing,” Flo said.
“Or we could go make some hot chocolate and break out those cookies I bought,” Wayne suggested.
“You guys go ahead,” Suni told him. “I’m going to hug Zoe a little longer.”
“You two are weird,” Flo told us, wriggling out of my grasp and heading for the promise of cookies.
When Jake turned up, Suni and I were curled up on the sofa under a blanket and she was stroking my hair. Flo let him in.
“Maybe she’ll tell you she loves you too,” I heard her whisper as she pushed him toward the parlor.
He was blushing when he appeared in the doorway. “Hi,” he said awkwardly. “I know it’s late, but I saw the lights on and just wanted to come say goodnight.”
“You know, Mom,” Flo said, peering around him, “you should go stay at Jake’s tonight and that way I can sleep in your bed instead of on the folding cot.”
“Hey,” Alison protested, on her way upstairs from the kitchen, “who says you get the big bed and not me?”
“It’s my house,” Flo told her blithely.
“I think Zoe might want to be in her own home tonight,” Jake said quietly, meeting my eye. “She’s had quite a day.”
“Why don’t I put Flo to bed and leave you two to talk,” Suni said, pressing a kiss on my forehead as she rose from the couch. She pointed at her empty spot. “There you go, Jake, I kept it warm for you.”
As soon as he lowered himself onto the sofa I leaned into him and his arms wrapped around me. Suni pulled the blanket up around us.
“Kiss your mom goodnight, Flo-bug.”
Flo rolled her eyes. “She’s had enough of that from you.” But she kissed me, a big smacking kiss on the top of my head. “Night, Mom. Love you.”
“Love you more,” I promised her. I smiled as I listened to her and Suni chattering as they climbed the stairs.
I felt Jake’s big hand stroking my hair. The room was quiet except for the pop of the log in the fire and the quiet murmur of Wayne and Lance talking in the kitchen.
“Marly was right,” I said softly. “I assumed the worst. I thought Freddie must be dead. He wasn’t at the play, and you never really talked about him.”
I felt Jake shift beneath me. I could hear his heartbeat under my ear, steady as a drum.
“I guess maybe I’ve been primed to always assume the worst. But he is alive. And they look happy.”
He frowned faintly. “Yeah, they are. I mean, except for being sad about Mom. He stayed with her so she wouldn’t be alone during the play.”
“You seem happy too. Even though you’re sad about your mom.”
“Well, one doesn’t cancel out the other. You can feel both at once.”
I nodded. “I guess I never realized it before.” I bit my lip. “I thought the story of this house must be a sad one. Because it was old and full of junk. But it hasn’t been a sad one, has it?”
“It’s had sad parts,” he said with a shrug. “Like every place.” He looked tired.
I kissed him softly. “Jake?”
“Yeah?” He sighed into my kiss.
“Thank you.”
“What for?”
“This. My home. I’m so glad you let me in.”
He laughed. “Me too. I almost didn’t.”
“I remember.” I kissed him again. “I need to warn you,” I whispered against his lips, “I’m not an easy person to love.”
“You’re not?” He seemed surprised.
I shook my head. “I’m the kid of an addict, who spent most of her life in and out of foster care. I have every abandonment issue you can think of. I tend to push people away…”
“I’m not feeling very pushed.” He smiled, looking down at our bodies entwined.
“You might eventually.”
He stroked my face. “You push all you need to, Zoe. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“That’s not an ‘I love you’!” Flo scolded from the darkness of the stairs.
“We’ll get there in our own time,” I called out. “Go to bed.”