Twenty-Four

Liz

Halloween came and went, and just like that, we were a week away from Thanksgiving. Elle was so excited to have an excuse to cook a large traditional Thanksgiving feast this year. I was worried about how she would be feeling with it being her first turkey day without Lane. It was my first without Lyle, killing me inside every time I thought of his jokes or his all-too-alluring smile.

It's that smile that really gets me. Anytime I think of it I feel like my heart is going to explode, lodging its shards into my rib cage. The memory of him sliced at me, tearing me up a thousand different ways until I felt like nothing more than a pile of shattered glass, reflecting a once-whole soul. Half of me was missing, leaving me feeling like I had a big hole that could never be whole again.

Brian was slowly helping me fill it back up, but there would never be a time when it would be fully sealed. No matter how many years passed, I would always miss Lyle, his smile, his laughter. I would miss the way he made me feel and reflect on our memories with a need to relive them, to feel him close. Unintentionally, a sigh left my lips, one so heavy it could crack the world in two.

Last year

"Lyle!" I yelled his name for the millionth time. He promised he would help me today after volunteering me to cook a whole damn feast for us and our neighbors who weren't traveling to see family. He did this every year. He'd get ahead of himself and then leave me with all the work.

When he didn't answer again, I lost my cool, throwing the spoon in my hand down on the counter and marching my way to the living room, where I expected to find him with his feet up and a beer in hand. But when I reached our living room, all I saw was Milo and Lil laying flat on their stomachs with their legs up while they watched the Charlie Brown special.

"Have you guys seen your father?"

"Nope." Milo popped the p while he absentmindedly swung his feet behind him.

"I think he went upstairs," Lil offered with a sympathetic smile. "Want me to come help?"

"Would you just keep an eye on the food for a moment while I find your father?" She nodded, being the amazing daughter she was. "Thank you."

I ran up the stairs, undoing the bow on my back to get out of this ridiculous apron he bought me last year. He said it would be festive and he'd love to see me in it as I cooked a turkey with cooked turkeys all over me, but he hadn't even seen me in it with how absent he'd been today. I took the steps two at a time, feeling ready to bite his head off and demand help. He knew how I felt about him doing this shit to me every time.

"Lyle, I swear to god if you don't answer me I'm going to WWE smackdown your ass when I find you!" I yelled out, but it wasn't Lyle's voice that answered.

"I heard that!" Milo yelled from the bottom of the steps, all too happy to get up now that payment was involved.

"Dammit," I murmured under my breath. "We'll talk about payment later, Milo. I'm on a mission right now."

He smiled happily, eyes twinkling with excitement as he yelled, "Okay!"

Lyle's laughter rang through the hall, alerting me to his location. Sonababitch is in our room. I marched my way down the hall to our white door with stains around the knob from car oil I had forgotten to clean off when I changed the oil in Lyle's truck. My feet stomped with each step, wanting him to know I was coming, to feel some sort of dread as I approached.

"Lyle I swear you always–" My words cut off as I caught sight of him, trying hard not to laugh. Damn him and his goofy self. I can never stay mad at him like this.

"I'm ready to be basted." He stretched his wings out, looking even more comical as he wiggled his ass in this ridiculous inflated turkey costume.

I lost it, unable to hold back the laughter. My laugh was loud as I clutched my stomach, struggling to breathe. He wiggled over to me, dancing all around me like an idiot. An idiot I absolutely love. I slapped that inflated ass, to which he placed his wing over his rounded mouth.

"Careful now, sweets. I might get too excited and juice everywhere."

He kicked my laughter back up just as I had started to calm down. "You're so stupid. Stop."

"You love it."

I wiped a tear at the corner of my eye as I looked at him. "I love you."

"Thought you might say that." He winked at me as he wiggled his butt one more time. "Okay, enough fooling around. Let's go annoy the kids, and then I'll do what I said I would and help you in the kitchen."

"I like the sound of that."

Present

A tear slowly slid down my cheek as I thought back to how happy we were just last year. Slowly I placed my metaphorical brick wall back up, trying my best to keep the memories away today. Wiping away the evidence of my sadness, I stared at myself in the mirror over my sink, looking at the speckled green that floated in my eyes today.

"One: You got this. Two: You can do this. Three: Fuck anyone who says you can't," I repeated the mantra to myself, needing to stay strong today.

I knew the holidays would be hard without him, but I guess I didn't realize just how hard they would be. Taking a deep breath, I splashed my face with cold water, drying off before pivoting on my heel and turning to leave my room…to face the world.

The moment I opened the door, the delightful smell of Elle's cooking wafted to my nose. It was odd not being the one to have to worry about the cooking this year, especially when last year I had done so much of it. Knowing how taxing it could be to cook this dinner by yourself, I made my way towards the stairs, looking into the kids' rooms along the way to find them still sleeping. I smiled to myself, glad that they were enjoying their break from school, having stayed up late last night playing games. We played the new Mario game together until about two in the morning.

It was our tradition to play video games the night before Thanksgiving, something I started with Lyle by accident when we were in college. I learned he had never played many video games because of his mom and I wanted to get him to play with me. So we stayed up in my dorm with controls in hand and blue light illuminating our faces. I think that was the night we conceived Lily, which led to me staying home with her and Lyle finishing college. I still didn't know what I wanted to do, so when he asked me what we wanted to do, I told him to finish school and I'd stay home with the baby. Without family to help, it was impossible for both of us to finish school.

I never went back, nor did I want to. College was something I thought I had to do to live a better life, but it turned out it wasn't. I never regretted my choice to stay home with the kids. Lyle gave me the opportunity to do so, and I loved him for it. He helped at home and with the kids after work, and he'd let me unload how heathenly our children had been that day. Lyle was the perfect husband, the perfect man, and knowing he was gone — that I had that and lost it — was a living hell on earth.

As I stepped down from the last step, I could hear talking in the kitchen, followed by Elle's delightful giggle. Curiously, I quietly crept towards the kitchen, smiling as I took in the sight of my sister, with Brian at her side. He came early. He bumped Elle's elbow, which she hip-checked him for. His body went one way while his feet were still stuck to the floor, causing him to almost fall over, catching himself on the counter. I laughed at that, alerting the pair to my presence.

"Some things don't change, do they?" I asked them both, having seen Elle and Brian form this sibling bond over the years. It was something I used to be jealous of growing up, not having realized that I was feeling that way because I loved Brian in a different way.

"No kidding, sleepy head." Brian gave one quick wiggle of his brows as he lifted his chin towards me. "Come help your sister while I get music going. I know how you work."

I smiled, making my way to Elle's side as Brian walked to the sound system in the living room, plugging his phone in with a mischievous smile.

"Get to peeling." Elle handed me the bag of potatoes as she peeled the shells from the hard-boiled eggs she would devil later.

I began my task as the strum of a guitar accompanied by a choir of children singing Happy Thanksgiving Day invaded my ears. "What the hell did you put on?" I asked him as he entered the kitchen again.

A man suddenly began to sing in Spanish in what sounded like country music but in another language. I had always hated country music, but for some reason this song was bringing a smile to my face.

"It's called Happy Thanksgiving Day by Antonio Zamora," Brian explained, his eyes holding a memory I was clearly not a part of. "After my dad died, I had to come back and go through everything in the house, and I found mom's old mp3 player, which had a lot of songs by this man. So I started to listen to his music, and when he came out with this song, I made sure to play it every Thanksgiving day."

"That's sweet, Brian." Elle gave him a sympathetic smile, knowing how much Brian loved his mother.

Her death changed him — changed us. After she died, he and I were even more inseparable, which was hard to imagine. He had fallen into a depression and a fuck-the-world kind of attitude. It was hard to motivate him, but things got better when Lyle joined our group. Brian had another friend to unload to, only now I know that Junior year must have killed him. It explained why he suddenly got more quiet with us.

"Thanks."

"Come be useful and help me peel these," I ordered him, knowing he didn't want to dwell on it.

He smiled, dragging the trash can over for me and taking his spot on the other side. We peeled our potatoes as Brian sang. His Spanish had improved over the years, I could hear it in the way the words naturally flowed out of his mouth. He arched his brow as he noticed me staring.

"What?" he asked, curving his lips beautifully over his teeth.

"Nothing," I shook my head, looking back down at the vegetable in my hand. "Your Spanish sounds good."

"Oh, yeah? Does it sound sexy?" he sang, wiggling his eyebrows at me again. He brought that stupid grin back to my face, the one that made me feel like a teenager flirting again.

"Shut up." I threw a piece of the potato skin at him. He chuckled, stirring my insides up in a delightful way.

"I've been practicing. Mom always wanted me to learn, and after Dad passed, I had to see so many family members who kept trying to talk to me in Spanish. They gave me grief for not knowing my own language when I would respond in English." Brian was deep in thought as he focused a little too hard on the oddly-shaped spud. "So, since I had so much time on my hands, I took a few classes." He shrugged like it was no big deal, but it was. He learned a whole other language, one his mother spoke to him often.

"That's amazing."

"Eh."

I bothered him about it and made him say a million different things in Spanish for me until he admitted that it was a big deal and he should be proud of himself. He would just roll his eyes at me, but he smiled every time. The kids later joined us, eating breakfast as they watched us all cook. When they finished eating, they came and helped too, until all that was left to do was wait for the things in the oven to finish cooking.

"Brian, at what time did you tell everyone to be here?"

"Five, like you said."

"Good man." Elle patted his cheek the way a mother would do to her son as she walked by, stirring the pot on the stove.

"I'm sorry." I pulled my head back with a crooked brow. "Who is coming?"

"Mason and Zayden. They don't have family around here, so the three of us have gotten together for a kind of friendsgiving every year. Elle offered to have them over when she invited me," Brian explained, looking at me with amusement as if he expected me to react badly to the news.

"Oh great." I sighed, my sarcastic tone very evident.

Before I knew it, five o'clock rolled around and the ding at the doorbell told me Zayden was punctual. Brian opened the door to let that mess of dark hair inside. He sported a sweet smile as he held out a platter of corn on the cob covered in tin foil. I found Zayden to be adorable, but I was warned not to let his innocent face fool me. Zayden was apparently quite the prankster.

Mason arrived thirty minutes later with an apologetic smile and a bottle of wine. I crossed my arms at him and narrowed my eyes, to which he only raised his hands in surrender, placing the bottle behind me on the kitchen island.

"Careful, she might bite," Brian warned him, trying to be playful, and having had him by my side all day, I was actually feeling light and happy at the moment. So I played along and bit at the air in front of me in warning as Mason backed away.

Elle called us all to the table, having added the two extra leaves to extend it. Everyone took their spots at random, ending up with me having Brian on one side, Milo on the other, and Addie and Lil across from me, while Elle sat at the head and Mason at the other, leaving Zayden to the right of Addie. Elle said grace as she always did when we gathered around the table.

"Milo, wanna help me carve the turkey?" Brian asked him, to which of course my ten-year-old was quick to say yes. I watched as Brian helped Milo glide the knife across the large bird. It should've been a sweet sight, but instead, it tore the hole in me wide open. My eyes misted, as I felt that this was something that Milo should have experienced with his father. I couldn't help it as a tear slid out of my eye. Trying not to full-on sob in front of everyone, I got up quickly.

"Excuse me for a moment," I said, before racing to the bathroom down the hall, under the stairs. The door shut behind me, and I locked it as I sat on the lid of the toilet and began to sob.

"It's okay, sweets. I am right here."