Chapter Six

Six

Lucas

My mind’s still on Shawn when I get to my parents’ house for dinner the next night. I haven’t heard from him since we had lunch at the diner, and I hate that I’m wishing he would get in touch with me. I left my number with him, but he never gave me his.

I wish I didn’t miss him so much. I wish he’d just tell me why he really left.

With a sigh, I get out of the car and climb the familiar porch steps to my parents’ house. They talked about moving out after Natalie died, but they never did. I think it was too hard for them to entertain the idea of living somewhere Natalie had never been.

It nearly killed me to move out after college. I had been terrified I would forget everything about my sister if I no longer lived in the room across the hall from hers.

The door opens before I’ve had the chance to ring the bell, and Mom envelops me in a hug. “Lucas, it’s so good to see you.”

She says it every time, as if I’ve been away for weeks. As if we don’t have dinner together every few days. But like every time, I just give her a smile and kiss her cheek and tell her it’s good to see her too.

Dad greets me at the entrance to the kitchen with a glass of scotch in hand. “It’s good to see you, son.”

“It’s good to see you too, Dad.”

Mom comes up behind me and pats my shoulder. “Dinner’s already on the table.”

“Sorry I’m late.” I move with them into the kitchen and pull out my usual chair at the old wooden table. Natalie’s initials are carved into the wood where she used to sit—something she did when we were children and arguing over who got to sit where. Even though I couldn’t have stopped her getting sick or dying, sometimes I catch myself wondering if I had given her more, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place.

“Lucas?” Mom calls my name, and from the tone of her voice, it doesn’t sound like it was the first time she tried to get my attention.

“Yeah?” I look up from my plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I don’t even remember serving myself this food. Sometimes that happens when I’m thinking about Natalie.

“You look different. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I just… I saw someone this week I hadn’t seen in a long time. Shawn Whittiker.”

Dad frowns. “That foster kid who stayed with us a while?”

Mom’s eyes turn sad. “I always wondered what happened to him. Why he left.”

“You know why he left,” Dad says, his voice cold. “He couldn’t handle what was happening.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I say, stirring my gravy around without taking a bite. “He seemed genuinely upset when he realized that’s why I thought he ran away.”

Mom tsks. “I can’t believe you said that to him. As if he hasn’t already been through enough.”

“He’s a man now,” Dad says. “Not a child anymore. He should be able to have an adult conversation.”

I glance up from my plate. “Jeez, Dad. Don’t hold anything back.”

He looks a little contrite, but says, “We opened up our home to him, gave him a good place to stay, and he ran away at the first sign of trouble.”

“You can’t really blame him. He’s only had himself to look out for all his life. He probably didn’t know what else to do,” Mom says before turning to me. “You should invite him over for dinner tomorrow.”

“I don’t know…I haven’t seen him since we bumped into each other.” It’s not strictly the truth since he came storming to the naval base to yell at me about his car, but I don’t want to get into all of that with my parents.

“Well, I’m sure he told you where he’s staying. At least go ask him. It’s not going to kill you.”

“All right, all right.” I lift my hands in a show of surrender. “I’ll ask him and text you about it.”

Dad doesn’t say anything, but I get the feeling he doesn’t want me bring Shawn by. It was never his idea for them to foster Shawn, but he went along with it pretty quickly. I think like Mom, he felt sorry for Shawn when they met. But when his leaving hurt Natalie, I think that was all that mattered to Dad.

I want Shawn back in my life so much that it hurts. But I’m scared that maybe there are just too many ghosts between us.

***

After I leave my parents’ house, I head to the cemetery. Although I want to see Shawn again, I’m hoping he won’t be at Natalie’s grave tonight. I just want to be alone with my sister.

Fortunately, when I get there, the place is pretty much deserted. I feel bad that I didn’t bring any flowers like I usually do, but I see that someone has already left some. Yellow petunias. Natalie’s favorites.

Shawn was already here. Mom and Dad never come here, so I know neither one of them left her flowers. All her friends stopped coming long ago; not that I blame them. They have their own lives to get to.

I sit on the warm ground and reach a hand to brush the petunias with my fingers. “Hey. Sorry it’s been a few days. I know if you were here, you’d tell me to be more like your friends and move on with my life. But this is so much fucking harder than I thought it would be.”

My throat tightens with a familiar ache, and I release the petunias so I can pull away from the tombstone. “I don’t know what to do. I feel like I should be angry with Shawn for leaving the way he did, but I also think…you wouldn’t want that either. You knew how we felt about each other. At least, how I felt about him. I don’t know; maybe he never felt anything.”

The wind blows, tousling my hair. It feels just like when Natalie would do it to me when we were teenagers. I used to pull away from it because it embarrassed me, even though it was one of her ultimate gestures of affection.

The first time she did it to Shawn, he’d ducked like he thought she might hit him. He tried to laugh it off like it wasn’t a big deal, but all Natalie and I had to do was look at each other to know what the other was thinking.

I close my eyes, wishing it were her fingers tousling my hair right now. I’d never pull away from her again. I wish I’d known how limited my time was with her. I would’ve tried harder to be a better brother. Even though it was obvious that she knew we loved her, it didn’t feel like enough. It still doesn’t.

And the logical part of me realizes it’s why I was so ready to hate Shawn for leaving. If that occupied my mind, I didn’t have to think about how much it hurt to lose Natalie.