My hands are coated in cinnamon sugar.
I'm tempted to lick a bit from the back of my hand but temper the thought when Lily lifts her gaze from the apples she's slicing to smile at me. She hasn't stopped smiling since Micah and I arrived an hour ago — Micah with his hands in his pockets and an uncomfortable grimace on his face, and me with a smile that mirrored the excitement of his mother's.
She pulled him into a hug the second he stepped inside, and I smiled at him over her shoulder when he slid his hands from his pockets to return her embrace, pulling her softly against his chest as he bent down to her height. He rolled his eyes when she refused to unlatch her arms from around his neck, but I smiled encouragingly at him, watching as his eyes dipped to my lips and his shoulders slowly untensed to allow his mother to hold him for as long as she wished.
Based on the tears in her eyes when she finally let him go, I have a feeling he hasn't willingly shown affection to her in a long time, and when she turned on her heel and wrapped her arms around me next, I didn't hesitate to return her warmth.
My mouth watered the second we stepped further into the house and the savory aroma met us head-on. It smelled divine, the notes of each dish mixing together as they baked — the quintessential Thanksgiving feast nearly ready. She'd been cooking for hours by the time we arrived, and when Micah tried to pull me into the living room to go watch the football game with his brothers — and father, who was surrounded by wires and oxygen tubes, even out of the hospital —, I slipped my hand from his and opted to stay in the kitchen with his mother to finish cooking.
Her brows rose in surprise, but she didn't fight my offer to help as she ushered me inside the small kitchen, leading me toward the counter where a sack of apples were sitting beside the sink. I've been slicing apples for the past thirty minutes, tossing the pieces in the mixture of cinnamon sugar before sliding the bowl over to Lily to fill the pie crusts with.
"This must be what it's like to have a daughter." Lily muses faintly beside me, watching me toss the apples in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. I smile at the thought, glancing up at her as she blushes as if realizing that she'd said that aloud. "I love my boys, please don't misunderstand me. I love them more than life itself. But can't deny that I've always wondered what it would have been like to have a daughter. A little girl." Her cheeks warm a little more. "The dresses and bows, tea parties, dolls, and ballet. It's a very different reality than the one with four boys — sports practices — hockey, football, basketball, wrestling," she ticked them off as if lost in a memory. "The roughhousing in the house, the wrestling on my couch, the dirt stains on my rugs, the number of glass vases shattered — " she blinks, smiling at me with gentle mirth. "You wouldn't believe the number of vases those boys have broken."
I smile at my hands, imagining the younger version of Micah and his brothers that are running through her thoughts. I try to imagine a younger Micah — a little boy lit with laughter, cheeks flushed with excitement as he tears through the house with his brothers, a book tucked under his arm, perhaps.
My smile falters when I realize that version of Micah would also be covered in bruises, his smile more reserved, his eyes darker than they should be as they learned to see the world in darker shades than any child ever should.
I tried to shake the image of a younger Micah as Lily pulled the dishes from the oven, lining them on the counter before putting the pies in the oven. I tried not to think about the moment his childhood was torn from his small fingers as I helped her carry the dishes in the dining room. I tried not to think of the little boy who only felt safe in the open arms of a desolate forest, desperate to lose himself in the pages of a book as I walked into the dining room with the final dish in my hands and looked up to see him walking in from the living room, his youngest brother thrown over his shoulder.
He brought his beer to his lips and winked at me as he took a long pull before leaning over and depositing Mac into the chair near the head of the table. Mac beamed up at Micah, his cheeks still flushed from being upside down, and I smiled at the small interaction. At the clear admiration shining in the young boy's eyes. The love. The undiluted adoration. The eyes of a boy who hasn't been tarnished by pain, violence, or abuse.
Jordan rustles Mac's hair as he passes, dropping down in the seat beside him, and when Micah holds out his hand for me to take I don't hesitate to tell him pull me to him. He presses a quick kiss to the crown of my head before pulling out my chair beside Mac. I take it, smiling at the young boy whose tongue is peaking through his lips as he focuses intensely on scooping a much too large portion of mashed potatoes onto his plate without spilling.
Micah settles onto the seat on my other side, grabbing my plate and filling it with a bit of everything. Mac's bony elbow knocks me in the rib and I glance over to see him smiling sheepishly up at me as he tries to pull his knees underneath him on the seat so he can prop himself up and reach further on the table.
"I can help you with that," I offer, reaching for the gravy boat just out of his reach. Jordan nods a silent thank you to me as he piles a few slices of thick turkey onto Mac's plate, and I smile back, happy to help as I douse his potatoes with the brown gravy.
"Hey, Josie?" His voice is soft as he nudges his glasses up his nose nervously.
"Hmm?" I gesture to his turkey with the lip of the gravy boat and he nods. He watches me pour gravy over his food, his hands clasping and unclasping in his lap.
"Do you think, after dinner, you'd want to build my Legos with me?"
The casual buzz of conversation at the table goes silent at the question, and I look down to watch his cheeks go red at the sound of Micah's laugh turned choked cough. Jordan's lip quirks as he drops a roll onto Mac's plate, his own laugh hidden by him clearing his throat.
"I'd love to." I nod, offering him a reassuring smile.
His brothers might have found the offer hilarious, but I think it's adorable, and I smile a little brighter at the little boy for extending the invitation.
"Mackie's a certified genius with those things, isn't he honey? He can build anything." Cliff smiles proudly at his youngest son before looking to his wife for confirmation. Lily eyes her youngest with soft eyes, her smile growing at the clear excitement radiating from Mac at being praised so publicly by his father. "And those Lego sets are so intricate nowadays. Much more complicated than when the boys were young. I can barely keep up with Mac when we're building them. Not as good as I used to be, that's for sure."
I catch the pause in Micah's breathing, the near imperceptible tensing of his arm, but I'm not sure what might have triggered the reaction until Jordan leans forward and pops the top of the wine bottle in front of him, pouring himself a glass with practiced ease as he says, "Yeah, I'm sure they're much harder nowadays, Pops. Not that you'd know the difference, seeing as that's a Lego set from when Trey was a kid." His father stills, his previous smile falling slightly at the jab. "Hard to spot, I'm sure when you've never actually touched one before today."
"I — I'm sure I built one or two sets with you boys — "
"Mmm — you didn't, though." Jordan takes a sip of the red wine, his eyes humorless as he eyes his dad over the top of his wine glass. "Oh, well, fuck, there was that one time. The day after Christmas when I was four. Do you remember Mikey?"
Micah slid his tongue across the front of his teeth, clearly trying not to laugh as he nodded and poured his own glass of wine, his brow raising in amusement as he watched his little brother, his eyes lit with dark mirth.
"How could I forget?"
Jordan grinned at his brother, his lighthearted smile obviously a mask as he looked back to their father, his eyes deadly. "The Christmas that grandma got me that Star Wars Lego set. Me, Mikey, and Trey spent all night trying to build it — almost had it completed too before we passed out on the living room floor. When I woke up it was to you cursing me out because you'd stepped on a stray piece."
I blink back the surprise, glancing over at Cliff to watch the color drain from his face.
"Not sure destroying our half-built spaceship really counts as helping, but I'll give it to you, Pops. Plus, we can't forget the hour you spent screaming at us about not wasting time playing with unless fucking toys while you made us crawl on our hands and knees to pick up every piece that exploded on the floor when you threw it against the wall. Most time you ever spent with us outside of a ring, that's for damn sure."
Mac looks down at his plate, his cheeks a much paler color than they were before as he nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand. When he finally looks back up, his father meets his curious gaze with a sad smile. Cliff looks back up at his other boys and shakes his head, his eyes hollowed with anguish.
"I shouldn't have done that. You have no idea how ashamed I am of myself — of how I treated you boys, of the kind of father I was." His hands have stilled on the table, his silverware long forgotten. My own stomach rolls and any appetite I had before has seemed to evaporate as I try to escape the memory Jordan just painted for us all.
"I wish I could go back and change that for you, and it kills me to know that I can't." Cliff sits back in his chair, his hands ashen as he raises them again the readjust the tubes behind his ears. A nervous habit, I realize.
Micah's humorless snort cuts through the silence. "I'm sure it does, Pops."
My chest tightens as I watch him down the rest of his wine, his eyes set straight ahead, staring at the wall as his eyes flicker with emotion that I try desperately to decipher.
One thing is clear, though.
He's surrounded by ghosts.
I can see them in his eyes — haunting him with memories he's tried desperately to forget. Memories he's spent most of his life running from. Memories that have left a map of scars on his soul, deep, unhealed, black as the ink decorating his skin.
My heart sinks at the realization that even though I know he's suffering right now, the same stoic, apathetic mask I always knew him to have before I met him is securely fastened, not allowing anyone to see past the steel layers of practiced indifference.
But I do. I see past it. I see the flash of panic in his eyes; there one second and gone the next, a strike of lightning within the unusually stormy gray of his eyes.
Cliff hesitates for a moment before adjusting the Oxygen tube behind his ear again. "I do, Micah. Genuinely, I do. And I know it might be difficult to believe after this long, but I...I truly do wish I could go back and do it all over again, different this time. So much different."
"So...what? What happened, exactly? You're sober for the first time in fuck knows how long and decided to take a trip down memory lane with your fucking therapist? Realized that beating the fuck out of your sons wasn't the best father-son bonding activity? Or did you finally accept that none of us will ever give you what you actually wanted from us — that all of us will always, always be disappointments to you because we refuse, we fucking refuse, to give you the only thing you've ever wanted from us."
Cliff winces as if he's just been slapped, and Lily's fork falls from her hand, clattering roughly against her plate. Her eyes — a familiar shade of gray — are filling as she watches Micah stand, his eyes deathly calm as he holds his father's gaze.
"Next time you decide to braid your hair and paint your nails with your fucking therapist while exploring your fucking feelings, why don't you tell him the fucking truth — tell yourself the truth. You never wanted us. You didn't see us as kids, as children, as your family. You saw us as a means to an end — as a way to get back the life you lost. The respect, the honor, the money, fame, and fucking glory. You didn't want a son, you wanted a legacy. Well, you know what, Pops? You might not have wanted sons — but we deserved a father."
Micah's expression, severe enough to slice stone, doesn't falter as he steps behind me and softly pulls my chair out, holding his hand out for me. It happens so fast — the rush of his mother's chair pushing back, the front door tearing open, the controlled pacing of his steps, slow enough that I can keep up even though I can feel his hand shaking with the need to disappear as fast as he can.
"You've been drinking." I realize as he slides the helmet on my head and clips it under my chin. I can see his mother standing at the open front door, but I don't have the heart to look at her and not grimace. To not shake my head and ask her how she could stand by the man who painted mine in every shade of gray.
I don't have the strength to not blame her, and since I know I shouldn't get involved in this, I keep my eyes averted as Micah curses under his breath, realizing that I'm right. He's been drinking since we got here, and while I have a sneaking suspicion that he would drive regardless if I weren't here, I don't want to think about that as I exhale nervously and nod toward the bike.
"Come on, let's just go."
I don't think about it for too long as I hike my leg over the bike and slide onto the seat, wondering how dangerous this really is as I eye the gray clouds lingering above wearily.
But we don't have any other choice. I can't ask him to stay here any longer — and definitely not the time it would take him to sober up. The ghosts that have haunted him since we arrived are only growing louder, pulling him deeper into their embrace, and I can't watch them pull him under.
Not for this.
Not for me.
He doesn't argue as he throws his leg over the bike, and I close my eyes, saying a wayward prayer before thinking back to our lesson in the grassy flower-lined field.
My hands seem to move of their own volition, and when I finally open my eyes, I relax back into his embrace as I let the bike come to a crawl before smoothly adding a little more gas and driving us out of Creek View.
Away from his family.
Away from the memories.
Away from the ghosts.