Page 68 of Elijah's Hope
My throat was tight, but I pushed the words out. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. I always knew you were going to grow up and have your own life, but I hoped I would be part of that life. Instead, you shut me out. I assumed it was because you were ashamed of me.”
I dropped my head. Is that what I had done? All this time believing she was the one to be better off without me, when really, I was the one leaving her behind.
“You’re right. It was wrong of me. So wrong. I was fed, I was educated, I was clothed—”
“And you were loved, Elijah,” she reminded me. “The best way I knew how to love a little man like you.”
“Can I fix us?” I asked.
“You’re here, aren’t you? I would say that’s a pretty good start,” she said, smiling. Then she looked around and spotted another waitress working the tables. “Hey, Esther, come here and meet my son. He’ll be staying until the end of my shift and then he’s going to take me out to a fancy steak dinner.”
“I am, huh?”
My mother reached for my hand and squeezed it. “Yes, because you love me, and nothing is too good for your mother.”
I laid my hand on top of hers. “You’re right. Nothing is. I’m sorry, Mom.”
“You’re forgiven, Elijah.”
“Have you ever done something you needed to be forgiven for? I mean, a time when you were really wrong.”
“I suppose. Why are you asking?”
“It’s important to me. To have a man who has forgiveness in his heart. I think in order to have that, you have to know what it feels like to be forgiven.”
And that’s when I knew why I had come. Because if my mother couldn’t forgive me, I didn’t see how Shelby could, either. Now I knew. What real forgiveness felt like.
“Now,” she said, scooting out of the booth. “You sit here, and I’ll bring you some fresh coffee. Then we can talk about this girl of yours and how you’re going to win her back.”
She started to walk away from me, but I caught her around the wrist. “What if I don’t deserve it? What if this is my penance for being such a shit son to you?”
“Oh no. No one gets to say anything negative about my boy, only me. If this girl can’t see the man you’ve grown into, which the fact that you’re here now tells me everything I need to know, then she doesn’t deserve you.”
I let her go then and had this feeling of lightness in my chest. My mom brought me a slice of cherry pie and a cup coffee and afterward, I took her to the best steak house in Portland for dinner.
It wasn’t perfect. Still a little awkward. But it was a start.
* * *
Cicero’s Coffee House
Tacoma, Washington.
Shelby
The door to the shop opened and I glanced up from wiping a table to see an older, dark-haired woman enter. She was tall and very attractive.
“You can sit at any table,” I said. “I’ll be right over to take your order.”
She picked a table in the corner and I dropped off the cleaning rag behind the counter before heading over. I brought a pad because I was learning there was nothing simple about coffee in these parts. People here took their caffeine very seriously. Heck, they would even tell me the temperature it needed to be. As if anyone’s brother might know the difference between 110 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot was hot in my opinion.
“Okay, is it just going to be you today?”
“Actually no, I’m meeting my son here. But he said he would be here in a few minutes, so I thought I would get started without him.”
“And what would you like?”
