Page 53 of All In
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like my mother’s not telling me something about my dad. When I was a kid, still living at home, he could hardy look at me. Like it hurt his eyes. And sometimes I’d catch Mom staring at me like the way you do an old photograph. With nostalgia.” She shook her head. “I know that makes no sense at all, but I get thisvibefrom her. As if she missed me…even though I was right there the whole time.”
“Maybe she was feeling shitty for not standing up for you,” I said.
“Maybe.” She smiled a little, turned on her side to face me. “You and I are a lot alike, Teddy.”
I stared at the TV where the movie was playing without an audience. Baby trying to learn the steps to that first dance with Johnny, nervous and faltering. “We both have a parent we can’t please,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“And we both miss Jonah.”
“God, yes, I do. It comes over me in waves. Unpredictable. It ambushes me when I’m with my friends in New Orleans, or when I was recording that album…Oh my God. I’d be singing one track, and I think, ‘This is getting easier. Our time together was so short, but instead of feeling bad that it ended, I’m just happy it happened.’ Like my heart was healing after all. And then I’d ruin the next track completely with a total sniveling ugly cry, and I’d think, ‘I’m never going to get over this. I’m never going to keep that promise I made to him.’”
I jerked my head in her direction. “What promise?”
Her blue eyes shone like glass. “He was extracting promises at the end. Remember?”
“I remember,” I said quietly.
Kacey’s smile was heartbreaking as she dropped her gaze to the blanket. “Mine was to promise to love someone else.”
My heart began to jackhammer, and the blood rushed to my ears. Her promise and mine linked themselves in my mind. In my goddamn heart.
“I promised,” she was saying softly. “I said yes. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t mean it. It felt impossible. But he was so tired…” The tears were coming again, and her voice turned weak and watery. “He was so tired. But then I promised and he was happy.”
A thousand different emotions were boiling in me. My guts churned as if I’d eaten and then jumped on a roller coaster.
He asked her to love again.
He asked me to love her.
What the fuck, Jonah?
Kacey wiped her face on the pillowcase. “My hope is someday the promise will stop feeling so impossible to keep. But whether or not I do, at least it made him happy at the end. That's all that matters.” She looked up at me. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, like a croak. Then louder, “Yes, that's the most important thing.”
She became engrossed in the movie, while I stared straight through the TV. Lost in my head, unable to fathom the depth of my brother’s heart. A man who told the love of his life, at the moment of goodbye, to love someone else.
And to his brother, a promise to love her…
The movie ended. Kacey had fallen asleep. I slipped out of the bed I was lying on, put on my shoes, grabbed my jacket and tie. The door squeaked like a goddamn hyena, but Kacey only stirred and slept on. I closed it tight, making sure it locked behind me.
In the silent hallway to my own room, our promises—Kacey’s and mine—linked themselves again in my mind, around and around, like dancers at a wedding.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
I came home to a wet and rainy New Orleans. No sooner had I trundled my suitcase into my living room and shrugged off my jacket than I heard Yvonne shouting for me. I went to the kitchen and threw open the window.
“This came for you,” she said. “Two days ago.” She tossed a small, flat, square package wrapped in brown paper across the small divide between our houses. “The rain was coming down fierce, so I rescued it.”
“Thanks, Yvonne.” I knew what it was—a CD—and my heart skipped a beat.
“How was the wedding?” she asked over the light rain smattering against our roofs.
“It was nice,” I said, “but I’m glad to be home.”
