Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Hannah made a face. “I have no idea. I came up from the basement, and Nana was telling Grandaunt Carmella to get her daughter and her friends out of our house.”
Oh God. “You don’t have to say grandaunt” I settled on instead of delving into the issue. “It’s not necessary.”
“Yeah, but if you don’t, how do you keep it straight?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said thoughtfully, squinting, “if you just say Aunt Carmella, how does that differentiate her from Aunt Jen or Aunt Rachel or…what was her name?”
“Your father’s cousin?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh…Barbara?”
“That’s right. But see, right there, she’s not my aunt, but it feels weird to call someone as old as my father either by her first name or by Cousin Barb.”
“Maybe don’t say Cousin Barb,” I teased her.
“But you get what I’m saying,” she pressed me.
“Dylan is my friend,” I reminded her, “and you call her Aunt Dyl and she’s not even related to you.”
“But I’ve known her all my life,” she countered, “and Barbara, who I just met, she’s Dad’s first cousin, so that makes her my second cousin, right?”
“You have a lot of cousins,” I remarked offhandedly.
She squinted at me. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I shrugged.
“You’re not invested in this conversation.”
“No.”
“Well, why don’t you go do something helpful, like figure out why Nana just threw everyone out?”
“Fine,” I agreed, walking by her through the laundry room and then out the back door to the porch where Regina Kage was pacing.
Watching her, I noted, as I always did, what a stunning woman she was. Over the years she had embraced her gray, and now she wore it short, wispy, very Helen Mirren, and it was fun to see men stop and stare at her. Sam’s father always came home from outings with his wife with a scowl on his face.
“The rock on her finger is as big as my thumb,” he would announce irritably.
Dane sounded the same when he showed up to events late, where his wife was being her normal charming self. He said often that he had to peel men from her side to claim his place. Both Sam’s father and my brother were ridiculous. As though their wives didn’t light up like Christmas trees just seeing them.
“Hi,” I said to Regina.
She growled.
I tried not to smile.
“How dare she!”
Righteous indignation about something. “You want to tell me?”
She did a few more back-and-forth laps before she suddenly stopped and leaned back on the railing of the deck. “Jane’s friends, you know they’ve known Sam forever, since they were all in elementary school.”
“Okay,” I replied, taking a seat at the picnic table, waiting for her to continue.
“Well, they were saying it was a shame that Sam never had any biological children, because ‘they would have been gorgeous like him.’”
It wasn’t a shame; Sam did, in fact, have two beautiful kids, inside and out.
“I told them all that my grandchildren are stunning,” she declared sharply, and her hand gestures, the cutting motions she was using, told me she was still really upset. “And then Barbara says, ‘But, Regina, you never got to see what Sam’s real kids would be like.’” She nearly snarled. “And still, Jory, I wasn’t mad.”
Yes, she was.
“Real kids, Jory, what is that?”
It wasn’t really a question she was putting to me. It was rhetorical.
“But she didn’t stop. She goes on to say that even though she adores you”—she shot me a murderous look—“it’s a shame Sam didn’t marry a woman.”
Sometimes, still, from some people, on some days…the comment was made. Not often, not after so long, but every now and then.
“By then I was mad,” she confessed.
I nodded. “We’ve heard that before,” I assured her. “You know that.”
“Not from my niece!” She wasn’t yelling, but it was a near thing. “And not in your beautiful home. I won’t allow that.”
No, she would not. It was certainly disrespectful, but after hearing it every so often over the years, I knew what Barbara actually meant. Or was pretty sure I did. To see Sam’s breathtaking features on another human being, to know, with just a glance, unequivocally, that his children were his, without thought, because there’s their stunning father and his kids look just like him—that was what she meant.
The thing was though, I could hear Sam in Hannah’s speech patterns, see him in the way Kola walked, scowled and crossed his arms when he wasn’t sure if someone knew what they were talking about. Both of them had internalized so much of him, of me as well, and that was what comforted me when people brought up the fact that Sam didn’t have biological children. It was the idea of having no one to carry on your name, but Kola would. I was betting that Hannah wasn’t going to change her name either. I just had a feeling. But this was 2021; did any of this even matter anymore? And yes, probably. Aaron thought about it, a child to carry the Sutter name, but also carry on how he was, how he wanted things done, and to remember him. I understood that. Memory was immortality. Dane had told me a million stories about his parents, and I felt like I knew them both. They were alive in his thoughts and recollections, young and beautiful, and that, I thought, was the greatest testament anyone could ever give them.