Page 86 of Inseverable (Carolina Beach)

My thumb skims over the handle of the chipped ceramic mug Momma mixed me some Sanka in. I’m not sure why I’m here. I guess I simply needed to leave, to feel like I still had someplace where I belonged. But who am I kidding? I’ve never felt like I belonged with my mother, my family, or anyone else.

Except maybe with Trin.

Cassie perks up, her attention fixed on the screen of her phone. “Is this her? Oh, my God, Uncle Callahan, is thatyou?”

I glance at the screen when she shows it to me. It’s a picture of me and Trin at a veteran fundraiser her daddy asked me to attend. I didn’t want to go. But I knew he wanted me there and that it was important to Trin. So I went, and spent more time with her daddy than I did with her.

Owen is a good man. We made the rounds with him introducing me to men who had served in Vietnam, Dessert Storm, and Iraq. Yet the one thing that he did what really struck me was what he did the morning of the fundraiser.

He took me to a barbershop that belonged to a man whose father had served in the Korean War. Understanding that some men will always see their sins staring back at them in their reflections, he purposely didn’t hang mirrors in his shop, and only offers small handheld ones when asked.

I had my first haircut in a long while, and my first shave with a straight razor. I also had my first real look in the mirror in what seemed like forever. I couldn’t recognize the young man staring back at me, and neither could Trin.

She answered the door when I knocked, smiling politely. She started to say, hello, until I winked at her and she realized it was me beneath that clean-cut face and Army blues. Her eyes flew open, half a second before she launched herself into my arms.

“Damn,baby,” she’d squealed.

I was thinking the same thing when I saw her in that dark purple dress and her hair all done up. She laughed when I couldn’t stop staring at her. “Didn’t know I could clean up so well, did you?” she had teased.

No, I did. But like always, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Her father was being honored for his work with U.S. vets. But somehow, Trin and I ended up with our picture in the paper. It was the same photo Cassie’s showing me now, the one the photographer took of us while we were dancing. Trin’s smiling in my arms and resting her head against my chest as I hold her close.

“Yeah. That’s her,” I answer.

Cassie clears her throat and reads the caption out loud. “Socialite Trinity Summers dancing at the Charleston County Veteran’s fundraiser with Iraq war hero, Callahan Sawyer?”

“Socialite?” Momma mashes out her cigarette and snatches the phone from Cassie’s hand. She scowls as she takes in the picture. “You went out with a rich girl?”

The way she asks is more of an accusation than a question. Her scowl deepens when I don’t answer. “Shit, Callahan. You could’ve been set for life. Instead you’re here, taking up space in my kitchen.”

“I wasn’t with her because she comes from money,” I snap.

She raises her eyebrows. “So then what was it? Love?” She huffs. “Love doesn’t pay the bills, Callahan. It just leaves you knocked up with a bunch of kids you can’t afford.”

Yeah, like me and my sisters were to her.

She shakes her head, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe you should’ve knocked her up. Then you’d be in a big fancy house, with big fancy servants, and not with those sofarbeneath you.”

I push away from the table, taking my cup with me and dumping it out in the sink. At my house, or Trin’s, I would’ve washed it by hand, or set it in the dishwasher. Here, I just add it to the pile between the baby bottles and plates caked with leftover SpaghettiOs.

My mother’s words hit me hard. It’s not that I think I’m better than her or anyone in my family. It’s more like I know I don’t belong with them.

I reach in my wallet and drop a few hundred dollars in front of her.

“You’re leaving?” she asks, her eyes fixed ahead where Perry’s begun to snore.

“Yeah, I am,” I answer.

She reaches for another cigarette and pops it in her mouth. “You’re not coming back. Are you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m not.”

She huffs again. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” she says, lighting the cigarette and taking a long drag.

Regardless of what she says, and the way that she says it, I think she knows I’m better off without them and away from this life they’ve carved out for themselves. But my mother and I have never been close enough for me to ask. So I’ll do what I’ve always done: send her money, and keep my distance. Like I said, for change to happen, you have to want it. And looking at her, and my sisters, I know I don’t want this.

What I want, I’m no longer sure I can have.

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