Page 70 of Falling into Place
His sisters burst out laughing.
“She had the worst taste in food,” Sasha said, then shuddered. “Fruit doesn’t belong on pizza.”
“I didn’t mind it,” Macy said. “But only when we got it from Ralph’s.”
“So every Friday night, then,” Brooks said. It had been a family tradition to order pizza from the local joint every week for movie night. They’d stopped ordering it after she died, and as far as he knew, no one in the Martin family had gone back since.
They spent the next half hour eating and reminiscing, then Sasha stepped out to take a phone call, leaving Macy and Brooks alone in the office.
His eye caught on her wedding ring and, still on the two-foot-tall ottoman, he leaned forward to rest his forearms across his knees. “Can I ask you a question?”
Macy looked up from where she’d been tapping at her own phone and set it down to give him her full attention. “Sure.”
“Do you ever worry about what happened with Dad?”
“What do you mean?”
“You married Mark, so you obviously love him. You loved him enough to choose him to share your life and start a family with. But after watching how Dad all but disappeared when Mom died, do you ever worry about the same thing happening if anything ever happens to Mark? What if you couldn’t function for yourself or your kids?”
Rationally, he knew his dad’s situation wasn’t typical. Grief was expected, and it took time to restore a sense of normalcy after such a significant and shocking loss. The difference was most people found a new way to operate and move on, somehow.
His dad never had.
Brooks understood the medical side now, after learning about brain chemistry and various types of clinical depression in med school, and he knew his dad hadn’t received the proper help he probably should have. But during those teenage years when Brooks was just trying to make it through, he’d harbored some pretty serious resentment. Yeah, his dad was sad and grieving, but they all were. Had Mom really been the onlything his dad cared about in life? The only thing that made him happy? What about Brooks? What about Sasha and Macy? What about the friend group they met up with at least once a month for card games?
Did they cease to matter without his mom?
He’d needed his dad in those days more than ever. So even to this day it was still hard for Brooks to separate what he experienced back then—feeling the visceral loss of not only his mom but also basically his dad, too—and not associate that with what could happen when you fell in love.
“No, not really,” Macy said slowly. “I mean, sometimes I get in my head, like when Mark’s traveling or something, and I convince myself something terrible will happen and I’ll never see him again. I’ll call him in a panic and won’t settle down until he answers. Even though it doesn’t happen often, I worry more about something happening tohimrather than howI’dreact if it ever actually did.” She propped one elbow on the desk and put her chin in her hand. “I mean, no one really knows how they’ll respond to something like that, but I can’t fathom abandoning the boys. That’s when they’d need me the most.”
His first thought was,Exactly, so apparently he wasn’t completely resentment-free.
“Why do you ask? Do you worry about that?”
He had worried about it. After seeing the impact his mom’s death had on his dad, he’d basically decided he’d never be so dependent on another person that he’d risk being put in that situation. He’d successfully avoided thinking about it much after his dad passed away ... until Carly popped back into his life. There’d been a few times recently when he’d wondered if she had the potential to be that kind of person for him. Someone that, if he let himself become too attached to her, he wouldn’t be able to live without.
He definitely wasn’t ready to get into specifics, though. “Not a lot. Obviously it doesn’t really relate to me right now. But it crosses my mind sometimes.”
“Keep in mind I was sort of removed from the worst of it because I’d already moved out. So it makes sense his behavior affected you differently than it did me.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Do yo—” Macy started, but a thunder of footsteps tracked through the kitchen seconds before his nephews burst into the room.
“Uncle Brooks!”
Before he knew it, Brooks was on his back on the floor, laughing and wrestling and trying to protect his junk from sharp elbows and knobby knees.
“Boys!” Macy barked. “Haven’t we talked about staying out of Mommy’s office? Uncle Brooks and I were having a conversation.”
“It’s fi—oomph, easy buddy,” Brooks grunted. “Fine.”
More than fine, actually, because he probably shouldn’t have initiated that conversation in the first place. He’d started it but now he was done talking about it, and thankfully Sasha and Mark joining them in the office to watch the WWE match ensured Macy wouldn’t try to circle back to it. Tonight, anyway. She’d definitely pin him on it again someday, but he’d avoid it for as long as he possibly could.
After all, he’d gotten pretty good at that.
Chapter Eighteen
