As we drove back to his apartment, Landon chuckled. “You just got yourself three newspaper subscriptions.”
“Just the thing to make a new wife happy.” I squeezed his fingers. “You just got your own personal avocado peeler, spot-in-the-middle-of-your-back scratcher, and expert tea steeper.”
“I can steep my own tea,” he teased.
I reached over into his lap, rubbing in between his legs. “That may be true. But can you steep this?”
I laugh now at that memory as Landon pulls our second suitcase from the carousel.
“What was that,” he murmurs as we start toward the rental car counter.
“I was just remembering when we got married.”
He chuckles. “Way back when, eh?”
I nod, smiling. “When you were still a young’un.”
After we’re settled in our car and headed toward our destination in the suburbs, Landon slides his gaze to mine. “Do you wish that had happened?” he asks quietly.
“What had happened?”
“Earlier, you said something about us getting married when I was a young’un.” He smirks slightly at my wording, but his mouth gets stuck in a frown. “Do you ever think about what might have happened if I hadn’t left the group home?”
I swallow. “Yes,” I whisper honestly. “And when I do, it scares me.”
I watch his mouth move, supple with emotion. His hand covers mine. “Thank you.”
“For being happy that you saved yourself?”
He shakes his head. “For being mine.”
That’s what I am when we stop the car in front of the split-level, wood-and-brick house. I’m his, so one glance at the place snatches my stomach into a knot of nerves.
We walk down the driveway and up to the porch, still holding hands, and Landon knocks.
“Remember,” I say, as we hear footsteps, “you might want her, but you don’t need her. You have a family now.”
His shoulders rise and fall. His fingers squeeze mine. “I’m okay,” he says. And then the door opens.
It’s her. I know it must be her, because her hair is red and gray, and she has Landon’s eyes. When her gray eyes take in his face, they pop open wider than I’ve ever seen a person’s eyes, and then she starts to sob.
She knows him on first sight, and what’s more—she grabs his shoulders.
The woman—Laura—sobs so loudly, I soon hear more footsteps, see more gray eyes. And then a pair of brown ones behind glasses: her husband. I look at their shocked faces, then at Landon, with his chin atop his mother’s head, his arms around her back, and I start crying, too.
Her husband ushers us inside and hugs me. Then he wraps his arms around his wife—and Landon. I watch her hands rub up and down Landon’s back, and see his back and shoulders start shaking. The three kids—older teens—are waved away by the man I guess is Landon’s stepfather. I stand there in the foyer, my eyes glued to my husband…and his mother.
His eyes are red and wet when he steps slightly back. He looks at her with his brows knitted, and her face crumples.
“I’m sorry!” She sobs louder. “I’m so very, very sorry that I left you there…”
I can see his thoughts on his face, see the moment that he puts it behind him. He hugs her.
“I had no more money,” she cries against his chest. “We had been crossing…a street…and I had gotten hit. I didn’t even know where we were…but we got a ride to that hospital. When we got there,” she says, tilting her head up to look at him, “there was this doctor…who saw you crying—you were hungry,” she says, in a voice that cracks, “and she brought you a popsicle.”
She shakes her head and starts to weep again, her cheek on Landon’s chest, and his palm rubs her back as he nods.
“It was cool that day. You didn’t have a coat…or anything. I was in withdrawal, and we’d just…gotten evicted—from the place I rented.” Her back shakes as she looks up at Landon—but he’s nodding, and I think that reassures her.
“I loved you. I loved being your mother. You were my gray-eyed baby. I just…wasn’t giving you the best…” She starts to cry again, and I cry with her—because I understand those words. I understand this stranger so much better than I ever thought I could.
Landon, without fully separating from her, reaches for me, brings me up against his side.
“I wasn’t going to leave you…but I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she weeps. “Once I left and I came back…you weren’t there. There was this woman at the desk, and she told me they’d taken you.” Laura rubs her tear-drenched face, squeezing her eyes shut as she wipes her tears and sniffs. “That was the day I started trying to get clean.”
She takes a few deep breaths as Landon peers down at her with the softest eyes I’ve ever seen on him.
“I’m sorry…” She shakes her head, laughing awkwardly. “What a greeting. I just—I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
Fresh tears fill her eyes, and her husband reappears to stand beside her.
“I’m Bobby.” He smiles politely. “You must know this is Laura, my other half.” She waves us more fully into their modest foyer, and I catch her staring awe-struck at Landon. He notices it, too; I see his face go neutral with his nervousness. His mother laughs. “I’m sorry. I just…know your face. You look just like my father.” Her mouth quivers as she nods.
“I looked for you, for a while…but I was in and out of rehab. I loved you, but I hated myself. I made…a lot of awful choices.”
Her husband murmurs something near her ear. She shakes her head—and then she pulls away from him.
She wipes her face and shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually a crier.” She chuckles, even as she wipes her swollen eyes again. “Anyway, I’m Laura. And…your name now?” she asks Landon. She looks like she’s braced for something.
“Landon.”
Fresh tears flood her eyes. “You’re still named Landon?”
For a moment, he looks confused.
“You jotted it down,” I murmur automatically.
“Did I?” She looks at me, then Landon.
Something loosens on my husband’s face—a kind of understanding.
“You don’t remember?” he asks quietly.
She shakes her head. “That’s the worst part,” she says hoarsely. “I remember nothing. Well—not much, beyond arriving there with you.”
Landon’s Adam’s apple bobs, and in a low voice, he says, “That’s the worst part for me, too.”
Then she’s hugging him again, and I’m observing. She’s almost as tall as him. She’s wearing a flowing, green dress. On a hall end table, there are stacked editions of the New York Times Magazine, I note with amusement.
After a few more minutes mostly occupied with Laura staring at Landon, and him at her, we step into a little library with a well-loved leather couch, and Landon sits between the two of us: his mom and me. She holds his hand between hers, and I listen as she tells him things she does remember. She seems eager—over-eager—to connect with him. So shaken that it seems as if she only left him there last year.