Page 40 of Shake the Habit

“I can’t imagine dropping off a child at college and telling him, ‘This is the final goodbye. You’re no longer welcome in my home,’” she continued.

“I don’t think she dropped him off. He had to get there himself.”

“The poor boy!”

“But he’s doing great now,” I reminded her. “He’s a wonderful person.”

“I like him a lot,” she said. “Daddy and I both do.”

I did, too. I got a funny feeling in my stomach and for a moment, I looked at Sir and terrible memories flooded back of when I’d seen his lunch for the second time. Was I going to puke, too?

But then I realized what it was: anticipation. What would happen next? It seemed like it might have been something good, that the blank pages of this year could fill up with something wonderful.

I rubbed the scratch on my arm, smiling. “Today was a great day,” I told my mother. It was an affirmation of the truth.

Chapter 9

Over the past one thousand, five hundred eighteen days, I’d learned that life was harder than I’d thought. Drinking (and pills, lines, and whatever else I’d put into myself) had rounded the corners and smoothed away sharp edges. Sure, stuff had bothered me. I remembered being sorry to lose a job, feeling bad that various guys had walked out, being upset when Aria had gotten married and moved away.

Now, without the buffers of legal and illegal substances, my emotions loomed larger. I’d been so happy in the moments before Caleb and I had fallen off his porch and into the bush—like, almost giddy with it. But it went the other way, too, because when things were bad? They felt worse and I didn’t have any liquid to pour on them, like the way you’d dampen a fire. This evening, I was mired in a mixture of anxiety, frustration, and general unhappiness, and there was nothing I could do except deal with it like everyone else had to, like an adult woman who was (supposed to be) in control of herself.

I stood at the window and looked out into my parents’ front yard, trying to be that woman. I tried to feel the way that I should have on this day: happy! Happy birthday to me. My relatives had gathered here and my mama had worked hard to make the house nice and to bake some beautiful cakes. They had all taken time out of their lives to come and celebrate with me, and I was appreciative even if I didn’t really want to be here myself. I didn’t really want to see anyone except for one person who hadn’t shown. Not yet.

“It’s not that late,” Aria told me. “I’m sure he’s on the way.”

I remembered saying the same things to her, but on the much more important day of her wedding. That had worked out great, because she and her husband Cain were very happy now. What did his tardiness matter, several years and a couple of kids later? And this little party didn’t matter either, which was what I told my cousin. “I’m not worried about it,” I answered confidently and that was definitely the way I should have felt. “Ari, can you do me a favor and see what’s wrong with Taygen? She went into the back yard and she’s sitting on the swing set, looking all tragic.”

“Oh, my word. Are they fighting again?” Aria shook her head and carried her baby into the back to check on Marc’s fiancée. I assumed that yes, they were fighting again. That particular situation hadn’t improved, but since he and I had our come-to-Jesus talk about asking for help, he had tried to make other changes. His dad, Johnnie, had come by the office a few times and the three of us had done some plotting. My uncle had also been out to the jobsite, where he had talked to Caleb. UncleJohnnie had said that he was consulting on the project, and the three of them had walked around the house, getting more ideas about what could be done in the future.

“You’ll want some insulation up there,” Johnnie had said as he’d descended from the attic. “I’m sweating like a sinner in church.” We’d been going through a warm spell. “Call my niece Dasia about HVAC and have her see what she can do.” Dasia had come and had gone crazy over the farmhouse—she had always loved the idea of living in an old-fashioned place the country, and this was definitely ancient and far away from everything. She’d mentioned to Caleb that she had also been up at his house on the mountain, under my direction, and further told him that some of our other relatives had been working on his electrical system there. He hadn’t been overly pleased about me taking on the repairs by myself, but I was still driving his car, wasn’t I?

Yes, I was. My Lord, it was hard to give up! The more time that Sir and I spent in it (with him on the blankets), the more I loved it. And my nana’s car still had an odor, no matter how hard everyone at the shop had worked to clean it, so it was back at the farm and airing out more. We hoped that time would work better than modern chemicals to solve the problem.

Caleb was driving the old truck, which couldn’t have been as reliable as either my stinky car or his beautiful vehicle with the Florida plates that now sat in my parents’ driveway. I hoped he hadn’t broken down somewhere, stranded. Of course, he had a phone…I checked mine again, but he hadn’t been in touch.

“He’s coming,” my mother reassured me. She took my arm and pulled me away from the window. “You have other guests, Kayleigh.”

Well, I didn’t—not really, because she had invited everyone, so they were her guests and not mine. I considered it a pretty ridiculous thing to have a birthday party for a woman as old as I was, but she had insisted. This was what happened when parents didn’t have grandchildren to dote over, I decided. They had to keep making do with their lot in life: a single daughter and a dog, who was great but was not the same as a baby. My mom had dressed Sir up for the occasion with a large bow on his collar that he was tolerating for now. Originally, it also had a streamer that said “Happy Birthday!” and trailed behind him as he ran, but he’d eaten it almost immediately.

Despite that lapse and despite not being a human grandchild, he actually was getting along nicely with my parents. When we’d arrived, we’d given all the guests a demonstration of what he’d learned lately in obedience school and they’d clapped and been very impressed. Fortunately, no squirrels had run past as we showed off.

Now, as per my mother’s instructions, I mingled. “Hi, Aunt Paula. Thank you for coming,” I told her, and she smiled and said I had a lot of sass, which she liked. She’d come because I’d given her a ride here and I would be driving her home later, too. Very reluctantly, Sir had surrendered his spot in the front seat after I’d given him a short lecture on manners. Midway through that, I’d stopped, horror-struck, because I’d realizedthat I sounded just like my aunt Amber. Aunt Paula had laughed her head off when I’d admitted that.

“Where’s that Woodson boy?” she asked me now.

“He’s on his way. He may have gotten stuck doing something for work.”

“It’s Saturday,” she pointed out, and I told her that Caleb worked very hard, every day.

“Like his mama,” she said, nodding.

“You told me before that Lara-Lee was a real scholar. I’ve been helping Caleb to box up her things, and there’s a lot of scientific stuff in there.” Her bedroom was full of academic-looking texts, cartons of papers, notebooks filled with symbols and words in cramped handwriting, and various laboratory instruments that I didn’t recognize. It must have been uncomfortable for her to sleep in that place, and it felt uncomfortable for me to be in there at all.

Aunt Paula nodded. “Science was what she was interested in. We were at school together on the North Shore, but she would get in a taxi to go across the river to take classes at the university. She was well ahead of the rest of us.”

“So was Caleb,” I said with pride. “He’s the smartest person I’ve ever met but he never brags about it.”

“Then he’s very different from his mama,” she answered, and I agreed that he was. Everything I’d learned about her made me believe that woman was selfish, stingy, and mean, but that wasn’t Caleb at all. You could tell by the way he treated Sir—youcould tell by the way he treated me, except that he still wasn’t here.

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