Only Saints

« ix. »

Aunt Etta has had cats for as long as I can remember. I don't know all their names; there have been more than I can count, and I don't see any of the ones I used to know winding through legs on her porch.

It's four of us gathered out in the dying light—me and Florie, a cigarette burning down between my fingers and a drink perched precariously in her hand, a laugh in the air between us; Aunt Angie with her permed blonde hair in a cloud around her face, bent over to scratch behind the ears of a fat gray tabby as he rubs against her legs; Aunt Etta with a frown on thin lips and a cold can of cheap beer on the arm rest of her chair, staring out at the driveway.

My mother's car has been missing since I got back from picking up lunch. I didn't ask where she went. I'm not sure I really care. As it is, I'm still shaking from what she told me earlier, and I want nothing more than to wipe today from my mind.

The screen door creaks open, and my cousin Imogen sets a few more beers on the glass coffee table that stays on the porch. "One for Paul," she says, and before I can protest she adds, "don't say no, you need a drink—one for Mom, one for Aunt E, you sure you don't want anything, Flor?"

"I'm good." Florie holds back another laugh and gestures into the air with her cup. Condensation is gathering on the glass between her fingers, and her drink sloshes up to the rim of the cup, almost-not-quite spilling over onto the porch. "So who's the boyfriend?" she asks with a soft giggle, leaning forward into the flood of the white porch light.

"Fiance," Jenna corrects. She sits in a folding chair next to Aunt Angie and hands one of the cans over to her. "I thought you met Cass?"

"Did I? Oh, did they have—the red hair?" Florie tugs at her own hair when she says it.

"Yeah, that was em. E changed it up a couple weeks ago," she says with a bright laugh. "It's platinum blond now. Lord knows what e's going to do next."

This is the kind of conversation that floats over my head, but I'm content to sit beneath the water line. This is the kind of conversation that's quiet enough I can breathe, I can crack open the can that Jenna brought for me and leave behind any protests. I can take a sip—it's foul—and lean my elbow on Florie's shoulder, and it's strange how we're adults now.

It doesn't feel like I should be able to do this. It doesn't feel like I should be smoking or drinking in front of my aunts, but even as I think about it, Aunt Angie reaches across the coffee table and asks if she can borrow my lighter. And maybe there's a part of me that misses being small, being coddled, being prayed over, but mostly there's a euphoria that comes with being recognized as an adult.

I still wake up and feel like I should be twelve, some days.

Aunt Etta raises her drink up to the old porch light and says, "For Mama."

"For Mama," Aunt Angie echoes, and then it's on us kids as we mumble our own small prayers for Old Mère. I don't have words for it, so I just follow Florie's lead and lower my head, staring down at the creases in my jeans. The light soaks into the denim there.

The light had been out that night. It still is. I can raise my head and look down the road and her porch will still be as dark as the night she died.

The night I couldn't save her.

My hand shakes where I curl it harder into the beer can. I tap the ash off the end of my cigarette with the other, fighting the tremble that threatens to run down my arm, the shiver in my jaw and spine.

The light had been out.

What cursed series of bad calls had brought me out here to begin with?

It had been out—