The Hearts We Sold(31)

She left James in the car when they reached her house. She didn’t tell him the reason for this visit; that was one conversation she really did not need to have. “I’ll take the bus back to Brannigan—you don’t need to stay.”

She found her mother in the living room. She sat with her foot propped up on a stool, her left hand fallen into her lap. A cigarette burned between the fingers of her right hand, and it idled over the couch’s armrest, ash falling to the carpet. An empty glass tumbler sat on the coffee table, ice cubes melting into nothing.

“Dear,” said Mrs. Moreno. Her face lit with a kind of exuberance, and it was worse than anything because Dee knew it was genuine. She tried to stand and wobbled.

“What did you do?” Dee sighed and took her mother’s hand. The blood was mostly dried—it looked as if she’d neatly sliced open the side of her palm.

“I was making lunch,” said Mrs. Moreno, with all the dignity she could muster. It was rather difficult to take her seriously when her breath reeked of bourbon. The scent of it was nearly enough to make Dee dizzy. “There was a can—the lid—”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Dee quickly. “You stay here.”

The first-aid kit was indeed beneath the bathroom sink—behind a fresh bundle of toilet paper. Dee fished it out and strode through the kitchen. There was a can of tomato soup sitting on the counter, half-open. Several red splatters decorated the blue countertop. Dee wondered how much of it was actually soup.

Dee returned to her mother, sitting beside her. It was a simple matter to clean the wound, wipe it down with single packets of rubbing alcohol, then press fresh cotton to the cut. Dee covered it with tape, then sat back to survey her work. It was good enough.

“I miss you,” said her mother, a mournful note in her voice. “You should come home more often.”

Dee hated the word should. It implied all sorts of things, and every one of them hurt. Should was a measure of something she’d never live up to—comparisons to other parents’ children, report cards with not enough high marks, activities she’d never shown any real interest in. She should be more grateful, she should be a straight-A student, she should have more friends, she should have different friends, she should be—

She should not be here.

She rose to her feet. “I’ll make lunch, Mom.” It was a small gesture, but it helped soothe her conscience. She returned to the kitchen, dumped the can’s contents down the sink, and began rummaging around in the cupboards. She found a packet of instant noodles, flavored with herbs and chicken, and put on a pot of water for boiling.

Her parents had not always been this way. She’d seen them in pictures, decades ago, both bright-eyed and smiling and more alive than Dee had ever seen in real life. They’d met in their early twenties, when her father was just starting his landscaping business and her mother was taking poetry classes at a local college. He’d been assigned to work on the campus when they’d met; a leaf blower tore papers from her mother’s hand and she went scrambling after them, until the man turned off the machine and hastened to help. When he handed the crumpled papers back to her, she smiled and called him her knight in shining armor.

Dee had heard variations of this story over the years.

She wondered when the sweetness of their story had turned sour; she wondered if all happy endings turned out this way, if the Happily Ever After only lasted until there was a kid born, until the mother was laid off and the father worked harder to compensate, until there were bottles tucked away beneath the sink and bloodied napkins on the countertop and their child—not a child—trying to figure out how to hold things together.




She automatically turned in the direction of the bus stop as she left the house, but quickly stumbled to a halt.

There was a blue Mom Car still parked at the curb.

James was sitting on the trunk of his car. He swung his legs back and forth, oblivious to the stares of the neighbor kids.

Dee gaped at him, then hurried over. “I said you didn’t have to stay.”

James threw her a grin. “Yeah, I know. But what kind of gallant gentleman would I be to simply desert a friend when they still might need help?”

She opened her mouth to reply, then went silent. Because she didn’t know what to say. A wave of almost embarrassing gratitude swept over her.

“You want coffee?” she asked. “I could use coffee.”

He beamed at her.

They found a local cafe. There was no shortage of them in Portland, and there was a place with fresh baked goods and a glut of local college students—all with shadowed eyes, typing away on cheap laptops and sipping organic espresso. Fresh rain left a fog of condensation on the windows, and the air had a thick, damp quality to it.

When they ordered their drinks, James pointed at a multi-grain bagel, ordering two.

“What is it with you heartless and bagels?” asked Dee.

“You say that like you’re not one of us,” he replied. He gestured to a free table near a window and she went to claim it before any college students could. The chairs and tables were dented, heavy dark wood, and her chair squeaked when she pulled it back. A few minutes later, James appeared with the coffee and bagels. James pushed one toward her, along with a miniature packet of cream cheese.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Besides, food is one of life’s great pleasures. And we should live for the moment.”