I pause, steady my breath, and say, “I wish I’d never left Hawaii.”
And then, unable to hold it together any longer, somehow hoping my mom can make it all better, I break down in front of her. And I’m not your mom, who’s probably the first person you want to cling to when you’re afraid because she’s your mom. No matter how old we get, when we get scared, we can become ten years old again just like that—he snapped his fingers—when Mama walks through the door. Luke’s spot-on words turn over in my mind as sobs roll through my body.
“Oh, Sienna, what is it?”
And through a thousand tears, I tell her everything, from the moment I met Luke on that beach, to the last time I saw him and the last words I said to him, and everything in between.
I hardly noticed when she left the recliner and sat down next to me on the sofa, wrapping me up in her arms.
“I shouldn’t have left,” I say with a tear-filled voice. “I should’ve tried to make him stay, begged him not to go to Norway—I should’ve been there for him and tried to help him cope with Landon’s death.”
“No, baby, no,” I hear her whisper; she tightens her arms around me. “You did the right thing; as hard as it is to accept, to believe, you did the only thing you could do.”
I lift my head from her chest and wipe my tears, but more fall in behind them.
“Look at me,” my mom says as she raises my chin with her thin fingers. “You were right, Sienna: Making peace with his brother’s death was something he needed to do on his own. Sure, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being there for him and helping him cope, but it sounds to me like he was going about it the wrong way—you said he still wanted to go to Norway even after you expressed your feelings about it?”
I nod, confirming.
“Well, from what you told me,” she goes on, “you tried to make him understand how deeply you felt about it or how much it scared you, but he just didn’t quite understand—or want to believe it. And he sounds like an intelligent young man, so the only thing that would make him not see that is being blinded by the guilt he feels for his brother, his unwavering need to do whatever he thinks it will take to make it right.”
She hugs me and adds, “He wants you in his life—that much is clear to me—but forgiveness for the guilt he feels is the most important thing in the world to him right now, and nothing you or anyone else can do or say to him is going to change that.”
I stare at my hands in my lap, letting my mother’s words sink in. Because she’s right, and as much as I harbor my own guilt for leaving, I know she is.
We sit together for a long time in the silence. I feel like maybe she wants to say so much more to me, but in a way, like I needed to let Luke figure things out on his own, she’s doing the same for me in this moment.
Finally I feel her hand on my knee, patting it gently, and then she says with a smile in her voice, “I’ll make a deal with you.”
I look up into her smiling brown eyes.
“If you promise me that you’ll stop spending your hard-earned money on us, I’ll talk your dad into selling the boat and I’ll take your advice and start making some changes so that we can spend more time together.”
A little smile manages to break through my sadness.
“That sounds like a deal,” I say. “But you have to promise me that you’ll go on a vacation by next summer”—I shake my finger at her—“and going to Oregon to see Aunt Jana doesn’t count.”
She nods. “I promise.”
Then she takes me into a hug.
“I just want you to be happy, Sienna,” she says, pulling away. Then she tilts her auburn head to one side and adds thoughtfully, “I think you may be onto something—I don’t regret working hard to give you a decent life, but I do miss your father; maybe now’s the time to change that.”
My smile slowly gets brighter.