Page 12 of Presley's Christmas Catch
“Yet.” Mom wiggles her eyebrows.
I let out a long sigh. “I hope so.”
Mom leans back in the upholstered chair she’s sitting in. Her kitchen chairs are so fancy. She says it’s because I’m finally out of the house and she can have nice things.
“It must be something,” she says. “Shan basically set you up with him.” She nods at my necklace, which I’ve been wearing every day since I met Brock.
“Yeah,” I say in a soft voice, reaching up to hold it.
Mom looks just like her sister. She was older than Aunt Shannon by two years, but they were super close. Most people mistook them for twins. They had the same chestnut brown hair and gray-blue eyes, which I inherited from them. I have my dad’s full lips and thick, unruly eyebrows, which require a lot of upkeep.
But sometimes, looking at Mom is like looking at Aunt Shannon, and it makes my breath catch. I wonder if it’s ever hard for her to look in the mirror and see her sister in the reflection. I know she misses her with the same ache I do. Their closeness is the reasonIwas close to Aunt Shannon. She was like my second mom. When Mom married Dad twenty-five years ago and moved out to LA with him, Aunt Shannon followed from Arizona, where they’d grown up. They lost their parents when I was little, so sometimes Aunt Shannon even took on the role of grandma to me, making sure someone spoiled me and teased Mom when she protested.
“I opened my box,” I say after the silence has stretched on too long.
Mom reaches out and takes my hand again, holding it in hers. “What was in it?” She wears a soft smile.
“Did she write you letters?” I ask. Mom nods, the smile growing, and I lean my elbows on the table, continuing. “When did she tell you to open them?”
Mom tilts her head in thought. “The first one is for the anniversary of her death. Then there’s one for when you get married. When I get to be a grandma. My sixtieth birthday. One for if Steven dies first. I think that’s it. What about yours?” Her eyes shine, but Mom likes to talk about Aunt Shannon, even when it makes her emotional. It helps her hang on to her sister, hearing the stories.
I tell her all the labels on mine, and like me, she catches her breath when I mention she wrote one for me for when Mom dies.
“Probably thought she was going to be here for you,” Mom says with a hiccupping laugh. “We were only two years apart! I could have outlived her.” She huffs. I lean out of my chair toward Mom, enveloping her in a hug.
I think of what Thomas texted me earlier. “She wrote them for Dad and Thomas too?” I ask.
“Yeah. Steven’s are like mine, although she did write him a letter for when you meet the guy he knows is the one. And one when he’s a grandpa, and if I die first.”
“And Thomas’s?”
“I only know about one, and only because she told me about it. I don’t think Thomas has looked at them.” She taps her fingers absently on the table. “When he meets someone new and it’s real.” Then she laughs.
“What?”
“She didn’t want him to move on.” Mom’s teasing expression is a shade sad, her eyes dancing. “I mean, she did, but in the moment it made her crazy. She said she wrote up a whole letter about how she wanted him to love just her his whole life and then tore it up.” We share a look with each other about how feisty Aunt Shannon was.
“I couldn’t go through everything,” I say because what I want to say is how unfair it is that Aunt Shannon was robbed of half her life, even more so than the five to ten years of life she should’ve had after her diagnosis. We were all supposed to haveplenty of time to say goodbye, but in the end, her accident took her far too quickly.
Mom hums in understanding but doesn’t talk. Probably taking a minute to settle her emotions back down.
“Well,” she says after a moment, “what do we know about Brock Hunter?”
I let out a breath, glad she changed the subject. “He plays left-tackle for the Denver Devils. You’ve probably seen a few memes of him. His temper gets played up.” I open my phone to show Mom the helmet one. Dad turns down the TV in the family room, scoffing as he tunes into our conversation. My mom has loved the open concept layout of the kitchen and family room of their house for this exact reason. When she was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, she didn’t want to be cut off from whatever Dad and I were doing. I have memories of a lot of conversations where the three of us were split between these two rooms—the four of us when Aunt Shannon was around, which was a lot.
“I met him a few years back at a big pro-football charity event. What was it again?” He looks to my mom to help him remember, but she shrugs.
“You’ve done a million of those,” she says.
“Hmmm.” He frowns as he ponders. “I think we were putting together packages of some kind. Anyway, he worked harder than anyone and never complained.” He chuckles to himself. “I remember he did call out some guys that weren’t helping out, a couple rookies, you know? But from what I saw? Good guy. I’d play with him any day.” He holds up a finger. “And Trent Foster, the Pumas’ strength and conditioning coach, has only good things to say about him.”
“Pumas?” Mom says.
“He signed with them after college,” I explain.
“Undrafted!” Dad pipes up, in his impressed voice. I’m not surprised he admires the hard work Brock had to put in to play pro football. “Got traded for some linebacker the Pumas wanted a few years ago.”
“Unfortunate for Brock,” I say with a sigh. “The Devils don’t seem to know what they’ve got.”
