Page 83 of A Life Imagined
“I’ve lost count.”
Mathias flipped the novel open, and it landed on a page with a slip of paper lodged against the spine.He knew Rayan kept markers in his books of his favorite passages and often returned to reread them.“What’s it about?”
Rayan seemed to consider the question.“A man who doesn’t belong.Camus likes to play with the idea of societal rejection as a form of rebellion.”
There was a thud at the front door, and Mathias snapped the book closed.He pulled himself up with a grumble.
“Go easy on him,” Rayan cautioned.
Mathias yanked open the front door to find the rolled-up newspaper lying on the top step and René nowhere to be found.That fucking kid.
He bent to retrieve it, and as he straightened, a taxi pulled up outside the house.The back door opened, and a woman stepped out.She wore sunglasses and a camel coat over her billowing paisley dress.Mathias’s stomach seized.Unthinking, he strode down the steps toward her, unsure whether the quickening of his pulse was from anger or fear.
“What are you doing here?”
His mother removed her sunglasses and blinked at him uncomprehendingly.“Mathias?What happened to your face?”She glanced around at the open front door and the car parked outside.“I came to see the old family house.What are… Do you live here?”
He hadn’t mentioned Calais on any of his visits, and she’d never asked where he was living.She probably assumed he had an apartment somewhere in Paris.By the vitriolic way she’d talked about her father, Mathias hadn’t pegged her for the type to make a nostalgic pilgrimage to her former childhood home.
His mother’s face furrowed in confusion.“How…?They told me it was sold after he died.”
“It was.I bought it.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why?Because both you and my father seemed intent on severing any claim to my heritage?”
At that moment, Rayan appeared on the front step, and Mathias watched the slow-motion collision of two separate worlds, two entirely different parts of himself.His mother’s eyes widened even further, and the three of them remained unmoving, part of some absurd tableau.
“This is Rayan,” Mathias said flatly.“I believe the two of you are acquainted.”
His mother nodded.Rayan raised his hand in greeting and threw Mathias a tense glance before mumbling something about coffee and disappearing into the house.
Mathias stared her down, trying to read her expression.Was it disappointment?No, that would assume she’d ever actually given a shit.
But none of that mattered now.He’d found what he needed.Or more accurately, it had found him—the thing he’d tried, despite his best efforts, to convince himself he’d never wanted.And she was left with their hopeless double act—she, the unwilling mother, and he, the accidental son.
Mathias let out a resigned sigh.“Well, you’re here.Might as well come in.”He turned back to the house, but his mother’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“Mathias…” she whispered.
He met her blue eyes, clouded and shiny, and Mathias felt a sharp stab in his chest.It wasn’t disappointment he saw.Instead, she looked at him like it was the first time she’d seen him.As though, after a life spent lurking in her periphery, he’d finally come into view.The stab turned into an ache, tight and pulsing, yet Mathias couldn’t bring himself to pull away.He hadn’t realized how painful it would feel to know just how much he’d missed.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Mathias was barely awake when Rayan left the house that morning.The man had kissed the crook of Mathias’s neck and murmured something in his ear about Laurent and the center, the words just touching the fog of half sleep.After he was gone, Mathias lay in bed and found his thoughts returning to his mother’s surprise appearance, not for the first time in the days that had followed it.
To Marguerite’s credit, after the initial shock had worn off, she’d become unusually animated.They’d sat at the kitchen table while Mathias smoked and Rayan made coffee, and she’d regaled them with tales of her father and their family growing up—spending summers at the sea as a little girl, breaking her wrist falling out of the tree in the backyard.Then she walked through the house room by room, making astonished exclamations and murmuring to herself.She showed them a hidden doorway to the attic that Mathias hadn’t known about and her name carved in a child’s scrawl on the inside of the wooden frame.
It was his mother as he’d never seen her, and Mathias didn’t know how to reconcile this one with the version of the woman he’d spent his life reviling.When she finished her impromptu tour, she made her way back downstairs and announced that she was leaving.True to form, she’d discussed nothing salient, but she did ask him if she could visit again.
Mathias shrugged.“We’ll see.”
And she beamed as if he’d issued her an open invitation.He remained by the door after she’d left, his fingers lingering on the handle.Rayan stood watching from the hallway.
“That was unexpected,” he said finally.
