“Rent one for a day,” I tell her without flinching. “You could sell that boat and pay off the car at least, and then that once or twice a year he wants to go out on the water, rent a boat for a day—if it’s not something you do every day, you don’t need it.”
She shakes her head with uncertainty, already knowing that getting my dad to agree to sell the boat will take a lot of convincing.
I’m no expert, but it doesn’t take much to see that my parents need financial counseling. When they finally got on their feet and paid off their house after years of struggling, they thought, Hey, now that we’ve paid off the house, we can take out a loan for another vehicle so we don’t have to share one between us. Then later they went on to say, Hey, since we only have one large payment to make every month, why don’t we take out a loan to get that boat we’ve always wanted? And so they did. And then my dad’s health started failing and the hospital bills began to mount, and then, because they had no other choice, they refinanced the house to pay them. And now they’re stuck with more large payments every month and they’ve driven themselves right back into financial despair.
I take a seat on the sofa again, looking right at my mother with all of my adamant attention.
“I want you and Dad to be happy for once,” I say. “I want you to go on a vacation somewhere—and I don’t mean Texas. I mean somewhere you’ve never been, somewhere beautiful. And I want you to spend what life you have left enjoying it. Doing things you love. And spending time together. Because you deserve it more than anyone I know.”
My mom smirks. “What life we have left together?” she says in jest. “What are you tryin’ to say?” She chuckles and adjusts her glasses on the bridge of her nose.
“Mom, that’s not what I mean.” I smile at her, shaking my head, and then bring the importance of the moment back. “This money-is-the-most-important mind-set is an illusion, a scam. Half the stuff you work so hard to pay for, you don’t need as much as you and Dad need each other—in the end, having each other is all that matters and will be all that ever mattered.” Luke’s words, in a roundabout way, coming out of my mouth.
I pick up the envelope from the end table and retrieve the folded invoice from inside. It’s for one of two of my dad’s hospital bills I paid off with part of my savings. If Dad is upset about that, he’ll really be upset when he finds out I also paid his car payment for next month.
But it is what it is.
“Do you want to talk about it?” my mom asks suddenly, and I know right away she’s not on the financial subject anymore.
I barely look up from the invoice to see her; her long auburn hair, which is just like mine, is pinned behind her head by a black hair clamp; her small hands are folded down on her lap, glistening with the lotion she smoothed on them recently. Freckles are splashed across the tops of her fingers and hands and wrists—she’s where I inherited mine from.
I don’t answer. I look back down at the invoice, now only using it as a distraction.
“Sienna,” she says gently, “you haven’t been yourself since you got back from Hawaii; why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
The room gets really quiet for a long time; all I can hear is the clock ticking on the wall above the sofa and the occasional bird chirping outside the screened window by the front door.
I didn’t tell my mom too much about Luke when I was in Hawaii. I’ve always been able to tell her anything, but when it comes to guys, I tend to be vague. I never knew why until now: I’ve never really been serious about a guy before like I was with Luke, and unless a guy is important to me, I guess there’s little reason to involve my mom.
Finally I look into her eyes and say with a heavy heart, “You know that guy I met that I told you about?”
She nods slowly.
I pause, steady my breath, and say, “I wish I’d never left Hawaii.”
And then, unable to hold it together any longer, somehow hoping my mom can make it all better, I break down in front of her. And I’m not your mom, who’s probably the first person you want to cling to when you’re afraid because she’s your mom. No matter how old we get, when we get scared, we can become ten years old again just like that—he snapped his fingers—when Mama walks through the door. Luke’s spot-on words turn over in my mind as sobs roll through my body.
“Oh, Sienna, what is it?”
And through a thousand tears, I tell her everything, from the moment I met Luke on that beach, to the last time I saw him and the last words I said to him, and everything in between.
I hardly noticed when she left the recliner and sat down next to me on the sofa, wrapping me up in her arms.
“I shouldn’t have left,” I say with a tear-filled voice. “I should’ve tried to make him stay, begged him not to go to Norway—I should’ve been there for him and tried to help him cope with Landon’s death.”
“No, baby, no,” I hear her whisper; she tightens her arms around me. “You did the right thing; as hard as it is to accept, to believe, you did the only thing you could do.”
I lift my head from her chest and wipe my tears, but more fall in behind them.
“Look at me,” my mom says as she raises my chin with her thin fingers. “You were right, Sienna: Making peace with his brother’s death was something he needed to do on his own. Sure, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being there for him and helping him cope, but it sounds to me like he was going about it the wrong way—you said he still wanted to go to Norway even after you expressed your feelings about it?”