When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys 2)

“They’re Russian nesting dolls, doofus, and you’d have to do my homework all through college before I’d even consider letting you put your huge, grimy hands on them.”

We exchanged playful, challenging looks. I knew perfectly well what they were called, and she knew it. The shelves in Amelia’s room were lined with the brightly painted wooden dolls, each holding a small doll inside the other, smaller and smaller, until the smallest was the size of a thimble. She saved her allowance to buy sets from different sellers all over the world and received them as gifts at every birthday and Christmas. They were her prized possessions.

“You sure?” I asked. “You’re passing up a pretty sweet deal.”

“Touch them and die, lunkhead.”

I laughed and she grudgingly laughed with me, grateful for the small moment of levity.

“Is it true that you’re something of a math whiz, River?” Dazia said, coming to the table with a bowl of bread.

“Math nerd is more like it,” Amelia said. “River’s the nerdiest jock in school.”

I gave a lock of her raven hair a tweak. She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Is that so?” Dazia laughed, then discreetly removed one of the table settings I’d put down. “Your mom isn’t coming down for dinner tonight, darling. She’s a bit tired today.”

“Oh.”

The light moment crashed to the ground like an anvil. My father stared at Mom’s empty chair, his eyes heavy. Amelia retreated behind her hair with her phone.

That’s some math for you: We were a family of four. Subtract one mom, and what did you have left?

I don’t know who we’ll be when she’s gone…

“I’ll go up and say hello,” I said.

“Good boy,” Dazia said. “She will love that.”

I strode through our big house quickly and took the stairs up two at a time. Not because I was in a hurry to further witness what cancer had done to my beautiful mother, but to prove I wasn’t as scared as I felt.

I knocked on the master bedroom door softly. “Mom? It’s me.”

“Come in, love,” came the faint reply.

The shades were up and the window open to let in the fresh air and golden twilight. Mom lay in the center of the king-sized bed, looking small and frail, swimming in man-style silk pajamas. A scarf covered her head and she set down the book she was reading to smile at me.

She’s still beautiful, I thought fiercely. Fuck cancer.

“Hey, Mom.” I kissed her on the forehead. “How do you feel?”

Not that I’d get a real answer. She’d finished a course of chemo and targeted radiation last week that left her weak, nauseated, and exhausted. But she never complained. Not once.

I wish I were as brave.

“I’m fine, sweetheart. Just a little tired today.” She reached up to cup my cheek as I sat down on the edge of the bed. “You look tired too. How was practice?”

“Fine. Same as yesterday. Coach is aiming for another championship.”

“I’m sure he is. What about you? What are you aiming for this year? Your senior year.”

To somehow survive if you don’t.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Look good in front of the scouts. Get into Alabama, I guess.”

“And make your father proud.” Mom pursed her lips. “I’ve been thinking a lot about his football dreams and yours. Sometimes I get the feeling they’re not the same.”

It should’ve been so easy to tell her the truth, but I’d been boxing up my emotions and putting them away for years. Stuffing them in the attic where they were growing dust, so that Dad could be happy. He’d been a star quarterback for Alabama, almost assuredly a first-round draft pick to the NFL. Until disaster.