Bring Me Back by Karen Booth

Author:Karen Booth [Booth, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Turquoise Morning Press
Published: 2013-01-18T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

We talked in the dark for hours. One time, we laughed so hard that the headboard banged against the wall and I couldn’t catch my breath. Even the bittersweet subject of Sam and Jean-Luc was tolerable. Chris worried that he should’ve done more, but I’d already had time to resign myself to the facts. It’d gone exactly as he’d predicted—they wanted to have sex and found a way.

“You know, I’ve wanted to ask about your mum.” He put his arm under my head. “You don’t talk about her a lot.”

He was right. I rarely talked about her. She and I were always discussing everything in my head. Some days it almost felt as if she was still around.

“Oh, well, her name was Sara. She was a great mom. She passed away when I was pregnant, about three weeks before Sam was born, from…” I choked back what had long been stuck in my throat, “ovarian cancer.”

“Claire, I’m so sorry. That’s awful. Were you two close?”

“We were.” My voice cracked. Seventeen years later, the pain was still tamped down inside me. My sister never wanted to talk about it and my dad simply wasn’t able. Worst of all, Sam had never known her. “We were a lot alike, emotional, but independent. Creative, she liked to write poetry. She looked out for me with my dad, because we never got along. He didn’t have a lot of patience for me when I was a kid. Especially when I was a teenager.”

I cleared my throat. “My mom thought my Banks Forest obsession was great, even though it drove my dad up a wall. She remembered what it was like to be a teenage girl.”

All I could think was that my mom would’ve adored Chris. She would’ve bragged about him to her sister and her friends and said something off-color about his butt after he left the room.

He caressed my arm. “It must’ve been hard losing her right before Sam was born.”

“It was.” My voice wobbled. “Things would get tough when Sam was a newborn and I’d reach for the phone and remember my mom wasn’t there anymore. It just hadn’t sunk in. I had no idea what I was doing and I was all by myself. I just remember being exhausted and frustrated all of the time. You add that when you’re still grieving for someone and it wasn’t pretty.”

“How did you get through it?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. Sam was barely crawling when I moved to Chapel Hill and I only knew a few people—I had no girlfriends, my sister was wrapped up in her own kids and my dad was dealing with his own grief. I used to hold up the line at the grocery store to have a conversation with the cashier, so I could talk to a grown-up. Babies are cute, but they’re incredibly draining.” I heard the words come out of my mouth, not believing I could be so insensitive.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“Oh, no, no.

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