Honey Girl(63)

Mom finally pulls back. Her eyes are a little red, too. “What do you take me for? It’s always your room, whether you’re here or not.” She pulls her toward the house. “Come in,” she says. “Enough standing around out in this heat. Come in here, my beautiful Sunshine Girl.”

In the house, Grace sits while Mom works at the stove. She peers at the oven. “What did you make?”

“Started getting it together when you called,” she says. “That’s why I sent Kelly to the airport. Easier to let him do that then mess with my recipe.” She pulls out a pan. “Made some good ole-fashioned lasagna. Used to be your favorite thing to eat when you were feeling down.” She looks over, hesitant. “It still is, right?”

Maw Maw, Colonel’s mom, taught Mom how to cook. You can’t give my grandbaby that bland-ass food. Mom got really good at lasagna. She made it when Grace brought home grades that were less than stellar. She ate it the night she broke her arm falling out of a grove tree, and the night she whispered, voice trembling, There was a girl at school, Mom. She’s really nice, and she has pretty clothes, and we held hands at recess. Mom cooked lasagna that night, while Grace hiccupped over her plate, and even Colonel had some.

She remembers Mom making lasagna the last time she was here. Grace was working on a project; she doesn’t remember which one. She kept her head buried in her textbooks the entire time. Mom made lasagna for her the last night, and it was the first meal they shared the whole visit.

In the time between, whenever she had a bad day, she had other things. She curled up at one of the tables in the tea room and split gulab jamun with Meera until they had to get back to work.

She had wine, and movie nights, and tearful confessions on their little rusting balcony. She had a voice on the radio telling her stories of scary things. But no lasagna. None of Maw Maw’s cooking passed down.

“Yeah,” she says, voice strained. “It’s still my favorite.”

Mom sits across the table as Grace tucks in. It tastes good. It tastes like warm nights and full bellies and comfort.

You’re going to ruin that girl, Colonel used to say. She’ll be soft, and then what? She’s got to face the world one day, Mel.

Those were whispered arguments in the living room. They were unaware that Grace lurked in the doorway, fingers clenched around the frame.

Mom had asked, What’s so bad about being soft?

Grace waited, but she never heard Colonel’s answer.

Now there’s just Mom, blond-haired and brown-eyed and tanned from being outside. There is just Grace, swollen-eyed and summer-freckled. There is a ball cap that does not belong to her, but she can’t take it off, not yet.

She opens her phone and scrolls past all the messages until she gets to just one.

Yuki
1:34 a.m.
i didn’t know when you said
you didn’t believe in monsters
you meant you didn’t believe in me too
Grace bites her tongue. It could be easy, Yuki said. As if Grace hasn’t worked over a decade to get here. It could have been easy, if Grace’s perfect plan had worked the way it should. But it didn’t, and it wasn’t.

Yuki knows that things are not easy, not for either of them. Not for girls like them. All things cannot be as easy as their summer was, hidden from reality. Grace believes in them, believes in Yuki, but she does not know how to believe in the world around them.

“You wanna talk about it?” Mom asks.

Grace looks up. She’s being looked at with patience and kindness she doesn’t feel she deserves. “Not really,” she mumbles, shoving food in her mouth.

Mom sighs. “Wanna tell me why Sharone and Colonel had no idea you were flying down here until I called them?”

She swallows. “Not really. Not yet.” Grace has been ignoring those calls.

“Shit, kid. You’re really gunning for me to win Parent of the Year, huh?”

She shrugs. Mom could send her home. Home, back to drizzling Portland. Grace isn’t really in a position to argue.

“So,” Mom says. “You don’t wanna talk about it, and your father doesn’t know anything.” She stares at Grace, looks at her long and hard. “How about we really lean into this, then?”

Grace looks up. “What do you mean?”

“It was your birthday yesterday.” She smiles at Grace’s shocked look. “I’ve never forgotten your birthday, even if I’m in a different country for it.”

“Okay,” Grace says quietly. Okay, sometimes I thought you did. Okay, I did not think my birthday was as interesting to you as Prague and Auckland and Madrid. “So, what?”

Mom exhales heavily. “You might as well take advantage of me being the cool, laid-back parent,” she says. Grace follows her toward the cellar stairs. “Wanna split a bottle of wine and forget all our problems for a little bit?”

“Yes,” Grace says, shoulders loosening. “I really want to do that.”

“Tomorrow,” Mom says, pointing a finger at her, “you fess up. Today, we drink. Fair?”

The freedom is a welcome reprieve. “Fair,” she says.

None of it is fair, not for her or the girl she left behind, but Grace picks out a bottle of red and pops the cork. Everything else can wait for now.

Mom wakes Grace up just before dawn hits. She was dozing lightly anyway. There are no glow-in-the-dark stars for her to count, and she has grown used to the constant, rhythmic sounds of New York City. Here in the groves, there is no city noise. There is just a bit of a breeze through the windows if you’re lucky, and the bugs chirping all night.