Page 109 of Shades of Grey & Gold

My mother’s face is a thing I have never seen before and hope to never see again.

She looks up when I come through the door. I swallow. Not prepared to handle any emotions besides the ones I’m currently keeping bottled up inside of me.

She’s on her feet before I can cross the room, her hands finding my face, my shoulders, my arms, checking me the way she has since I was a boy, running her hands over me like she might be able to feel damage through fabric.

No physical damage this time, just emotional.

“Calogero,” she says my name in relief with a sob in tandem.

I take her by the shoulders, a small squeeze of reassurance. “Not right now, Ma.”

“Yes.” Her hands tighten on my arms, and she looks up at me with eyes that will not be moved, not crying, just worn. “This is for right now.”

She pulls me down to her level and wraps both arms around me and I feel just for a moment the relief of being held by someone who loved you before you knew what love was.

My shoulders drop half an inch. My jaw unclenches. I breathe in the smell of her perfume, and I am briefly, impossibly, someone’s son for a single moment.

I look up beyond her shoulder and see Nico at the back door.

The moment is over. And now I need to be someone’s boss.

He tips his head toward the guest house. His face is doing something I haven’t seen it do in years—something careful and serious underneath his usual ease.

My mother feels me stiffen.

She pulls back and looks at my face and then at Nico and then back at my face. She lets go. She steps aside. She doesn’t say it, but I know she wishes she could stop it. She never wanted this for us, but she knew it would come one day.

Was there ever any other option than for us to get pulled in one way or another?

I look at my sisters.

Sophia has tears streaming straight down both cheeks, not bothering to wipe them. Maggie is holding her own hands in her lap, squeezing them white. They are looking atme the way you look at someone you are terrified of losing. The way you look at a person and try to memorize them in case it’s the last time.

This is what they would look like if they lost me.

The thought lands strange. And then it lands correctly.

Because Maxisme. She has been mine for nine years and that means she is theirs now too; they know it and she doesn’t even know they know it and now—

I look away, cutting off the emotions.

I move toward Nico.

He opens his mouth.

“I—Cal, listen,” Nico, who has never stuttered a day in his life, who came out of the womb talking and has never once been at a loss for words, stutters. “Dad’s been gone awhile now. And you’ve been—God, Cal, everyone knows you’ve been doing what you do, stepping in, handling all the things the best you can, but everyone assumed it was—that it was temporary, that you weren’t—”

I look at him.

Just look at him.

He stops.

I walk past him and push through the back door harder than I should into the night.

The guest house’s great room is full of men.

I know this before I open one of the double doors because I can see the density of them through the glass. I push the door open, step inside and the low conversations that were happening halt.