Shrugging, I say, “No idea.” I hop up and run to the kitchen and come back with the plate of brownies. “Fresh baked!” I sing out. I shimmy over to Ash and Derek, and they take one and share it.
I come back to the couch and offer one to Alex, who accepts it. Then I put the plate back on the coffee table and sit down between him and Reeve. “So what are we watching? There are a few good things on demand—”
“You’re not even going to offer me a brownie?” Reeve interjects. “What kind of hostess are you?”
“You don’t eat sweets!” I know this about him, for a fact.
“I don’t eat sweets during the season,” he corrects. “And the season’s over. For me, anyway.” His green eyes glint as he opens his mouth and says, “Ahh.”
I slide the plate in his direction and he shakes his head. “Ahh,” he says, patiently.
I roll my eyes and pop a piece of brownie in his mouth. “Diva!”
With his mouth full Reeve says, “Delicious.” I give him another angelic smile as a reward.
“These brownies are awesome, Lillia,” Alex chimes in.
“I baked them myself,” I say. It’s not like they need to know they came from a box mix. Grabbing the remote, I say, “I vote we watch this French movie I heard about.”
Reeve groans and Alex says, “The one about the cat burglar? They were reviewing that on NPR yesterday. It’s supposed to be good.”
Reeve mutters, “Why don’t you two move into the retirement home already.”
“We don’t have to watch it,” I say. “Ash, Der, what do you guys want to watch?”
They are whispering to each other and feeding each other brownie crumbs and not even paying attention.
Reeve grabs the remote from me. “Let me see what’s on SportsCenter for a sec.”
Holding out my hand, I say, “Give it back, Reeve!”
“I want to check the score on the game,” he says.
“Reeve!” I keep reaching for the remote, but he keeps twisting away from me. “Oh my God, I feel sorry for whoever marries you,” I say, and then I fall back against the couch and take a tiny sip of wine. I almost spit it back out into the glass. It tastes like smoke to me. Like barbecued wood. I don’t know how adults drink the stuff.
I meant it as a joke, but Reeve obviously doesn’t take it that way, because without looking away from the TV he goes, “Likewise.”
“Come on, man, give her the remote,” Alex says.
Reeve tosses it to me and starts looking at his phone while I queue up the French movie and Alex turns on the surround sound.
“Should I dim the lights?” Alex asks me.
Reeve stands up. “I’m gonna get out of here.”
“Already?” Derek asks, turning around.
“Yeah. People are hanging out in the woods by Rennie’s. Wanna come?”
Derek looks at Ash and says, “Nah. Too cold.” Ashlin snuggles closer to him.
Reeve eyes Alex. “Al, I’m guessing you’re not going anywhere.”
“Yup, I’m good,” Alex says, stretching out on the couch.
“All right. I’ll hit you guys up after.” Reeve shrugs back into his coat and picks up his shoes. “Later.”
“Bye,” Alex says, settling back on the couch.
“Bye, Reevie,” Ash calls.
I can’t believe he’s leaving. Rennie snaps her fingers and he comes running?
Reeve heads toward the hallway and I follow him. “Why don’t you hang out a little while longer?” I ask him.
“No thanks,” he says over his shoulder. “Didn’t realize I was crashing a double date.”
“Don’t go,” I say, reaching out to touch the hem of his puffer vest. I drop my hand when he doesn’t turn around.
He steps back into his sneakers, and then he opens the door, and at first I think he’s going to go without saying bye or anything, but he stops and looks back at me. He hesitates, and then in a low, uncertain voice he says, “See you on Monday at the pool?”
Smiling slowly, I nod. Then he leaves, and I close the door behind him and lock it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I watch my alarm tick down, and a minute before it’s supposed to go buzz, I turn it off. I close the photo albums I pulled out last night and set them on my floor. Then I pull the blankets back up over me. My head finds the still-warm dent in my pillow, and I lie there for a minute.
Since she passed away five years ago, I’ve made it a habit to stay up the entire night before the anniversary of my mom’s death to think about her. I don’t sleep, not one minute. It’s like some depressing form of meditation, I guess, but it’s what I’ve always done. I think about her all through the night.
I can trace that whole last shitty year of her life back to the moment it started, to the day Mom had to drop me off at school early because she had to go off island for an appointment with some specialist doctor.
I think about the day she and Dad sat us down at the kitchen table to tell us. How it wasn’t good, but we still needed to have hope. Mom was calm and Dad cried so hard he couldn’t breathe, and Pat ran straight out the back door in his socks and didn’t come home for three whole days. I felt anything but hopeful.
I think about when I told Rennie, when we first got the diagnosis. I rode my bike over early, before she was even awake, and basically ambushed her. She sat in her bed, still half-asleep, while I knelt on her floor and cried and cried. There was a sick part of me that was happy to have such a sad story. By then she was already starting to pull away from me. She was completely obsessed with Lillia and creaming her pants over the fact that Lillia was moving to Jar Island full-time after next summer. It’s pathetic to admit, but I remember hoping that Rennie might pity me enough to be close with me again, at least while I went through this terrible shit, but my mom getting sick only made things weirder between us.
I think about how Mom was strong for so long, until she couldn’t be, and then over a single freaking week she evaporated. Cancer eats you from the inside out, and I watched her waste away to skin and bones, to a hollow body, in seven days. The last day, she only opened her eyes once, and I don’t know if she saw me standing there, at the foot of her bed. Dad called out her name and Pat said he loved her, but her eyes didn’t focus. It was like we all saw the door closing. I wanted to say something meaningful, but I couldn’t get it out before her eyes shut again. We brought a stereo into the room and played “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” on repeat.
