Page 27 of In Every Lifetime
Fai
Sharing a bed with Sarah hadn’t been nearly as bad as I had expected. We both respected our sides of the bed, for the most part. I had woken once with her head resting on my shoulder as she slept soundly. I managed to push her back to her side without waking her. She had stayed on her side of the bed for the rest of the night.
I felt guilty knowing she was seeing someone new and I was sharing a bed with her. Another part of me wanted to flip off this new boyfriend and rub it in his face. I had never claimednotto be jealous. Hell, I was jealous of every person who had the privilege of laying eyes on her.
Fuck it. I was jealous of every person on this planet who got to breathe the same air and see the same sun as her. The idea that another man had all the parts of her that, for so long, only I knew… well, let’s just say I wasn’t handling it well.
“It’s a left just up ahead,” Gabriel called from behind me.
He had suggested the hike. Sarah wasn't the most enthusiastic about the outdoors, so it was just the two of us for the day, aseven-mile loop that Gabriel had assured me was an easy route he had done countless times.
I was grateful I had taken up running over the last few months to help manage sobriety. Without it, I would have been finished two miles back, and we still had three to go. Hiking at elevation was not for the faint of heart.
“Tell me about our mom,” I called over my shoulder.
We had briefly chatted about the investigation he went through to find me and the details on my father, but we hadn’t broached the subject of our mother thus far.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, his voice giving away that he was also out of breath.
Easy hike, my ass.
“Anything. Everything,” I explained. “How did she die?”
"A stroke, a few years back. Fast and painless, the doctors said. She didn't feel a thing."
"Was it here? Or in the town you grew up in?"
“She stayed there. I was already living here. By the time I got the call and made it to the hospital, she was already gone.” His voice dropped for a moment. I didn't turn around, giving him the space to gather himself. I hadn't known her, but even I felt the weight of it. "After she died, I started looking for you. She had always wanted to. The older she got, the more desperate she became."
My chest tightened at the thought that she had not only thought of me, but had wanted to find me. "How old was she when she passed?"
If it had been a few years back, she would have been around fifty, which was far too young.
“Umm… fifty-five.”
I stopped in my tracks, confused. I turned to Gabriel, who was looking at me with the same expression. “She couldn’t have been that old. If she were alive today, she would only be fifty-three.”
I didn’t know much about her, but I did know the year she was born and that she was fifteen when she had me. The math was simple enough.
Gabriel blinked, then laughed, shaking his head. "Mom would get a kick out of me not knowing her age even after she was gone. It was always a problem. I don't think I ever truly knew how old she was. She was just… Mom, you know?"
I nodded and turned back to the trail, as though I did know. But how could I? I hadn't had the luxury of taking her for granted, of knowing her so completely that her age stopped mattering. The only things I had were the numbers. The year she was born. How old she was when she had me. That was the whole of what I knew.
“What was she like?”
“She was a real hoot, honestly. Always cracking jokes, lighting up any room she went into,” Gabriel reminisced. “She was always trying to make the people around her smile. She had a saying, you know?”
He paused for a moment as we scrambled a steep section of the mountain, but I could see the elevation level out ahead and trudged through.
"Sorry," he managed between breaths. He was faring worse than I was at this point. "What was I saying? Right. Her motto." He steadied himself. "Deixe o ambiente mais agradável do que o encontrou."
“Is that Portuguese?” I asked, recognizing the language but unable to decipher the words. When that happened, my first thought was always Portuguese. I had learned Spanish in high school and college, trying to find ties to my Colombian roots.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “You don’t know it? It was her first language.”
“Really? I would have assumed Spanish or English,” I explained offhandedly.
“Why?” he asked, sounding farther back than before.
