Page 84 of Moving Forward

This is not what I expected. I hug her back, noting how tiny she is. I’m almost afraid if I hug her too hard, I’ll break her. I loosen my hold, but she only squeezes me harder.

“You’re absolutely perfect,” she tells me. “Just what we need.”

Cain’s mouth had fallen wide open, but it pulls into a pleased, almost proud, smile.

She kisses my cheeks, then asks, “Do you like peaches, Max?”

I nod, unable to manage more than an awkward croak. Cain answers for me. “Yes.”

“Well, Cain, you go get us all a slice of pie with a scoop of ice cream on the side. Max, follow me.”

We both hustle to do as she says. She points me to a couch. I sit on the edge, royally freaked out.

She walks over to a decorative box beside her TV and begins searching through it. She finds what she’s looking for—a photo blue photo album—and comes back to sit down beside me. She cracks the album open and pats it. “My grandson is not going to react well when he gets back,” she explains. “But it’s important to me you see his life through the years.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “And how adorable he was.”

I smile weakly at her. The first page is cream-colored with a tiny little green handprint in the middle. Cain’s hand. I snap out of my daze and compare my hand to it. It’s barely as big as my palm. Touching the handprint, thinking about him at that age, brings tears to my eyes. This is the hand of a child who still had his innocence—no one had died, no one had disappointed him, and he hadn’t lost himself yet. At this point, he had no idea of what was to come, he was just living. Everything was new to him, bright, full of possibilities.

Cain walks in then, plates balanced on his forearms. The swagger as he walks toward me dries up my tears. He’s still that boy at heart, even if he doesn’t see it. He says he’s broken, but I’ve only seen him mending. He might not be exactly who he was when he placed that green handprint on the paper, but time changes people. He isn’t the same man I met a month ago, and in a year he’ll be different from who he is now.

His eyes flash dark as he notices the photo album. He grits his teeth and hands us our plates. “I don’t want to look through these,” he tells Ruth tightly.

“Then leave the room,” Ruth answers in her pretty southern drawl.

He falls down beside me, shaking his head. “You can tell her stories . . . just don’t show these to her Grams. Not today.”

“Will today be any different from tomorrow or the next day or the next?”

Cain doesn’t say anything, but I hear his teeth grind. The sound makes me flinch. He lets out a harsh gust of air. “Fine,” he agrees, trying to gauge my reaction.

I know he thinks he’s going to misstep and scare me away—maybe he even wants to sometimes—but I know how he is. As long he’s clenching his jaw and not punching things or cutting himself, I don’t have a problem. He’ll get help and he’ll find healthier ways to cope.

Ruth’s chin juts out about a mile as she wiggles closer to me, setting the book on my knees, page already flipped.

Staring up at me is one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen. She has long blond hair hanging over her shoulder in a loose braid, framing a pixie-like face that holds a warm, inviting smile. Her nose is dotted with pale freckles. She’s sitting on a tree swing with a baby on her lap. The baby is chubby, with a bright smile and little arms reaching toward the sky.

“That’s Skylar,” Ruth tells me.

Cain stiffens. “My mom.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“She was. My son did a lot of things wrong in his lifetime, but he chose well in Skylar. If only he would’ve stayed . . .”

“We were—are—better off without him,” Cain mutters.

“A mother is never better off without her son—I miss him every day. If he showed up today, I would love him despite all of his wrongdoing. Just like I’ve loved you,” she says sternly. “The only reason your grandfather and I ever cut him off was because we knew it was best for you.”

She signals the end of the conversation by flipping to the next page. It’s a picture of Cain as a toddler, on a little potty chair with his hands pressed in his lap, his face all contorted and red.

Ruth cheers beside me. “His first poop!”

“Ah, shit,” Cain mutters.

“Language,” Ruth reprimands. She taps the page. “He started months before all the other kids. Skylar used to think he was a prodigy, what for I don’t know. Really, his grandpa was giving him sweets on the side if he went to the bathroom. Just like training a dog!”

There are tens of pages filled with pictures, from his first bike ride to his high school baseball games. There are also a few pictures of him and Conner, which shocks me because they’re both laughing like they don’t have a care in the world. That’s not a Cain I’ve seen. Even with me he still seems guarded, as though too strong of an emotion might send the whole world crashing down around him. That doesn’t stop me from hoping someday I’ll get to meet his completely carefree side.

Next is a picture of him and Erin. In this picture his eyes are dead, his body stiff, and his expression exhausted. Erin has her arms around him like she’s trying to brace him or force her excited energy into him.

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