Page 177 of Undone

He asks the questions innocently enough, but I can see the glint in his eyes.

“Why don’t you go get him? I’m surprised he isn’t awake yet.”

Toren grins, and I take a mental photo of him there: sweatpants low on his hips, tattoos of my favorite art pieces all along his body, no new scrapes or cuts or bruises, and a joyful smile because he wants to see his son.

The first time Toren Kane held my hand, I thought I’d died. I was seven and it felt like my heart was exploding. Now, as he presses a kiss to my forehead and goes to steal a few moments with Van, my heart beats something peaceful. Calm and warm.

And still so full of love, I might burst.

Toren

Van is already awake when I step into his room, hands curled over the rails of his crib, bouncing lightly on jiggly legs. He’s not crying, only quietly watching with a gummy smile, thick dark hair and golden-brown eyes. Scooping his small body into my arms, I hold him close.

“Meri jaan,” I whisper, nose brushing against his little chubby face.

Sahara called me by the same phrase once, and I’d frozen in the middle of helping her carry dinner dishes to the table, spinning and asking her to repeat it. To tell me what it meant.

“It’s Hindi,” she explained. “It means, my life.”

My life. They were the words in the only memory of my mother I had. Something slotted into place that day, be it the fact that the words were proof I had a mother who did love me, or the information that gave me some deeper clue into who I was, where I came from, finding some sense of belonging.

Since then Sahara has spent some weekends teaching me to cook her favorite dishes, or a few words in Hindi.

There was something warm in believing that my mother sent Sahara Harris for me.

I think she’d be proud of who I’ve become.

Van fusses in my arms a bit, chuffing and wriggling with the beginning of a cry. I hum and rock him as I walk back through the conjoined room to ours. Lily had begged for him to be closer, terrified she might not be able to hear him cry. She wears her hearing aid always now, but at night when she sleeps, she’s terrified she’ll miss him calling out for her. So I’d paid a ridiculous amount to have a rush job on a new door from our room to his.

I carry him in my arms back to bed with Lily, letting him curl up between us as he plays with Lily’s finger and smiles. He loves his momma, eyes just as bright looking at her as I am.

Stepping back to turn off the bathroom light, Van starts to cry as he loses sight of me. Curling my body around them both on the bed, I let him hold my finger as I soothe and coo at him. “Shh. You’re okay. Daddy’s here.”

He sleeps better in our room; his eyes stuck on the painting that hangs above our bed—the skin of my stomach with a patchwork, scar-riddled Starry Night that Lily painted in college. It soothes him, the same way the original work soothed my wife when she was a child.

Lily and Van both fall asleep before I do, soft and warm beside me. A burst of protectiveness makes my chest almost ache as I watch over them.

• • •

Bennett and Paloma’s house is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive out of the city with no traffic—but there’s always traffic coming from the North End. So, by the time we pull into Speyside, we’re the last to arrive. Still, Bennett and Paloma are on the porch with smiles on their faces, waiting for us.

Lily hops out excitedly, and I grab Van from the back out of his car seat. It’s warm, but the breeze from the ocean is strong enough that I brought a little jacket for him, tucked in the purple diaper bag now on my shoulder.

For an eighteen-month-old, he’s getting pretty big. Lily thinks I created him on my own and somehow just put him inside her. He looks like you cloned yourself, she told me one night after he was born, where he lay between us on the bed and we just stared at him for hours. Maybe she’s right, but with the golden sunlight, I see the bits of red-brown in his hair.

“Sorry we’re late,” I say as Bennett waits for me. He smiles and shakes his head.

“You’re right on time. I’m finishing up the food if you want to grab a seat. We figured eating outside would be nice.” He squeezes my shoulder, then follows his wife—and mine—through to the kitchen.

We do this every season after the playoffs: a weekend getaway kicked off by a dinner party at Speyside.

Everyone was happily married now, and I’d been lucky enough to see each one.

Rhys and Sadie had married first, in the Koteskiys’ backyard. Oliver walked his sister down the aisle and Bennett stood as Rhys’s best man. Liam asked Lily to dance about eight times that night, until I accused him of trying to steal her away.

Then Freddy and Ro, to everyone’s surprise, had eloped. A planned thing, with a Super 8 film recording of it we’d all gotten to watch at their one-year anniversary party.

A few months ago, Bennett and Paloma had their wedding here at Speyside. Lily was the matron of honor, while Bennett’s father, Adam, walked Paloma down the aisle and stood as his son’s best man. It was elegant, and even, I would say, the most traditional.