Page 18 of Egotistical Jerk
I wasn't sure how long the embrace lasted, all I knew was by the time she pulled away and curled her fingers around my shoulders, something inside of me had shifted. A deep sense of belonging had risen above anything else I was feeling.
"Sorry for just showing up," I finally croaked out.
Aunt Vera waved a hand through the air, her eyes smiling along with her mouth. "Nonsense. You're always welcome here."
That little ball of guilt nudged at me again. "I know. I'm sorry it's taken me so long—"
"No." She cut me off with a sharp shake of her head, the ends of her hair furiously brushing over her shoulders. Linking our arms together, she pulled me inside and closed the door behind us. "No more apologies, okay? You're here now and that's all that matters."
I trailed behind her as she made her way to her open-plan kitchen. It was all so bright and colorful, and weirdly enough, it didn't clash at all. Everything, from her bright yellow couches topped with lime green throw pillows to the orange art pieces, simply went together. In the kitchen, it wasn't any different. The orange blended into pink, which again, seemed to just work.
"You still love your coffee so much?"
Still taking in the walls and the bright picture frames adorning them, I nodded. "I do."
Aunt Vera busied herself with starting the coffee machine when I slipped into one of the kitchenette chairs. Toying with the edges of the daisy-shaped placemat, I watched her move about.
I hadn't seen her in almost a year, and once I got over the initial shock of seeing my dad's twin, I regretted it. Aunt Vera was the closest thing I had to a mother. She was also the only family I had left.
My mom had left this earth before I'd been out of my diapers, and in a very sad twist of fate, Aunt Vera's husband of three months had died only a short time later. She never remarried, swearing she didn't want to love ever again.
She'd packed up everything and moved to Providence to help my dad raise me. Just like his sister, my dad hadn't wanted anything to do with love after my mom. When I got older and began to understand, I'd told him that I was okay with him dating. That I wanted him to be happy and not lonely.
He'd always just shrug those big shoulders and say, "How can I be sad or lonely when I have you, Mimi?"
The strong smell of coffee pulled me from my thoughts in time to see Aunt Vera slip onto the chair beside me. A steaming cup of coffee already sat in the center of the daisy with a big plate of lemon bars in the middle of the table.
She was looking at me like she was seeing me for the first time. In a way, she probably was.
"Do you have any idea how much you look like her?" Aunt Vera's voice had a whimsical tone to it.
"My mom?"
She nodded, her eyes welling up with tears. I shifted in my seat.
"I don't have any photos of her anymore. We lost them all when the water pipe burst… right before Dad got sick." I added that last part in a whisper.
I could still hear my dad's broken sobs when we came home after dinner to find our house flooded. Pictures, documents, and keepsakes were all floating around. My dad had stooped to pick up a photo of him and my mom on their first date and the paper crumbled to nothingness between his fingers.
What little was left of him broke that day. I was so convinced of it, for years I'd believed that was the reason my dad had gotten sick in the first place. It hadn't been cancer, but rather a broken heart.
"You know… I think I might have—" Without bothering to finish her thought, Aunt Vera jumped up and rushed down the hall. I could hear drawers being opened and shut, then she was hurrying back to me with an arm full of books.
Once she settled back into her seat, I noted that they weren't books at all. Photo albums. She scooted closer and flipped to the first page of one of them. A little boy, who couldn't have been older than six, beamed at the camera with a gap in his toothy grin.
"Dad?"
Next to me, she nodded furiously. "And don't let that sweet smile fool you, he was a little hellraiser."
"He was?" I couldn't even hide the surprise in my voice.
Aunt Vera's laugh was so sudden, instead of filling me with the sadness I thought it would, warmth seeped through me and settled inside my chest. My own smile tugged at my lips while I listened to her recount stories of my dad's shenanigans.
By the time we closed the fifth album an hour later, my stomach ached in the best way. We laughed so much, tears rolled down our cheeks.
"Ah," Aunt Vera exclaimed. "This is the one I was looking for."
She flipped through the first couple of pages before sliding the album in front of me. I almost swallowed my tongue. If I had bigger hair with a giant polka-dot bow slipped into the side, fewer freckles on my nose, and if my eyes were more round than their almond shape, I might have been looking at a photograph of myself.
