Page 4 of Found Through Fire

As I set my phone back on the table, I can feel the genuine smile that’s plastered on my face for the first time since Mom died. Those idiots knew I was freaking out and needed a distraction. Or they are just that dumb.That’smore likely. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. They know me better than anyone. We have been together since the day we were born, a bundle of incubators in the NICU.

The place where Mom and Dad met and forged a friendship. They both needed something from each other: Mom needed another adult who could have just one thing in common with her. She had never had that before, living the life she did at just twenty-one. Even though Dad was ten years older and had a more stable reality, he was scared out of his mind. He needed Mom’s strength and resilience after his life of routine and comfort blew up around him.

We were set to be released around the same time, but a week before they got the news that we could go home, Dad noticed the petrified look on Mom’s face. After a bunch of questions—or as Mom would say, aninterrogation,because he was a Seal after all—he finally found out that she had no one.

Dad then had to take the full week to convince my beautiful, proud, stubborn mother to stay with him, even going so far as to offer her a job as a nanny for the triplets. They were friends atthat point, and were the only ones that could understand what the other had gone through.

It took three years before they finally gave in to their feelings, and we officially became family. We were all at the wedding, and were eventually all adopted by both parents. The smile returns to my face while tracing my finger around the outside of my phone absentmindedly. As I recall how beautiful Mom looked in her wedding photos, my heart stings with the emptiness that has consumed me since I lost her.

Since Mom died, we’ve all been flailing around, trying to figure out how to survive in a world without her. She was the center of our family; she held us together. Now, we are trying to find a new balance.

As I look around the welcoming and cozy decor of the coffee shop, I smirk. My brothers managed to pull me from my internal freak out, and now, I can actually appreciate the shop. It’s cute, whimsical, and has irony in spades for today’s meeting, even if it’s only obvious to me.

The coffee shop and bookstore’s an ode to the villains in the fairytales. None of the furniture matches, like we’re sitting in the middle of an antique shop, surrounded by bookcases that are completely full. The paintings covering the black walls are all abstract pieces in various shades of grey, black, and white. Strangely, it ties together the chaos of the rest of the decor. It made me chuckle when I read the description online, and I had to do it, just so I could add another layer for when I tell this story someday. I love me some details.

The bell over the door chimes, and I bring my focus back, silently berating myself for taking my eyes off it during my decor perusal. My target peers around for someone, and I know just by the looks of him, it’s me he’s searching for. I stand and meet his eyes before he gives a subtle head nod and makes his way over tothe back corner. I’m seated with my back to the wall—giving me the perfect view of the entire shop.

As Jackson walks to my table, I take in his features, trying to pinpoint all the ones my mother had cataloged and recited to my family over the years. They’re all there, but on a grown man instead of the baby she remembered and dreamed of.

Dirty blonde hair, now cut short on his head—I’m assuming to keep the curls at bay, because grown men are weird about having curls, according to my brothers. Light blue eyes now that he’s removed his sunglasses. So, that is one point in the “not a douche” category. He has a beard, cut close to his angular jaw, and I can barely make out the birthmark on his neck that peeks out. All of these features I’ve seen in the few pictures that my mother had of him as a baby. All of these I see staring back at me when I look in the mirror every day.

It’s still jarring to see them on someone that I’ve never met. According to my mom, they all come from our sperm donor, but I can live my life happily without verifying that. I know that there are two sides to every story, but there’s no way for even me, the queen of rationalization and denial, to make my sperm donor sound like anything but a horrible person.

Besides the features that Mom mentioned, there’s no denying we look so alike that we could be twins. I guess we both took after the sperm donor. But Jackson must’ve taken after him in the build aspect, easily coming in at 6'1”, with broad shoulders and huge arms, bringing the whole “brick wall” look together. Luckily for me, I am not easily intimidated by giants. Being surrounded by a dad and brothers who are all well over 6'0” gets you over the height thing real fast. He is wearing his cut with the patch I recognize immediately, and I’ll file that a way to deal with later. His cut says “Smoke,” and that he’s part of the Lost Knights Motorcycle Club.

He slowly nears the table, because I guess my long-lost brother has to take fucking forever to walk anywhere—cool guy strut included. Luckily for me, it’s giving me time to form words in my head, to figure out a way to complete this task.

My mom's wish was that I give him the boxes of things she’s collected and letters she’d written for him in the last twenty-four years. That was it. No instructions or hints on how she wanted this to go, and no script with exactly what to say, which would have been nice. Would it really have been that hard to give me an opening statement and some witty dialogue?

Instead, she decided to send her daughter, who shouldn’t be allowed to speak to strangers in any important, life-altering situations, to take care of it. I’m the one who’ll feel awkward, then panic and blurt out an inappropriate sex joke, followed by a nervous laugh. Or at least that’s what has happened more than once, so now I have to bring written notes to all important speaking events.

I’m more of a “blend into the background” kind of girl, and I like it there. It’s less pressure and comes with less staring. Even in my businesses, only a few people know that I’m the boss. I blame it on being sick for so long and only being around my family. Mom was always the mediator, the peacekeeper. I’m going to have to wing it and hopefully not embarrass Mom too much. The first step is to try and calm the fuck down.

He finally makes it over to the table after taking his time on the short walk from the door. Clearly he has nothing better to do today. I take a deep, steadying breath to try and push down my irritation, and give him a smile that I hope doesn’t give away how nervous I am. I stick out my hand for a handshake and start to introduce myself, because, you know,manners.

“Thank you for meeting me today! My name is?—"

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie. I really don’t wanna be here, and this place is out of my way. So can we just get this shit overwith?” His tone is bored.Helooks bored. Completely ignoring my hand, he takes a seat in one of the available chairs across from me. So, this is nice. He’s an asshole.Great.

“Sure.” My mind is a battleground that I’m caught in. My head’s trying to find ways to make this less awkward, but my body’s having a natural reaction to his dick-ish attitude, and it makes my fingers dance nervously over the blade tucked under my dress.

“So, I called to give you some things from your?—"

He cuts me off again. “Yeah, my mother. I don't know why the bitch couldn’t call me herself, but she never did follow through. So now she sent some little girl to deal with me. Let’s get this over with so I can get back to my shit.”

Don’t stab him. Don’t stab him. Don’t stab him.The words are my mantra as I try to ignore the “little girl” comment. It’s not my fault I’m aging gracefully and shit! I try to remind myself that Mom warned me that my father and his whore raised him. Who knows what they told him over the years?

Well, my mom never did say “whore.” She was too classy for that. It was in the subtext. But one thing’s for sure: even if Mom informed this twat-waffle that we are related in the things she left him, I’mnotclaiming him as my brother. I have enough of those, and I deal with their moodiness and bad days all the time. I don’t need another brother’s bullshit, especially because he’s been speaking for less than a minute and has already insulted Mom. His few sentences felt like a knife being shoved in my gut, only worse, because I have been stabbed before, and the feelings that followed were rage and the need to survive. The only feeling that followed his words was an emptiness that I don’t think will ever leave me.

“She actually died recently from cancer, so you won’t have to worry about her reaching out,” I say, trying my hardest to keep the anger out of my voice.

At my words, he makes eye contact with me, like he’s trying to search for lies. Well, too bad for him, I have acquired the best poker face there is in my twenty-four years.Good luck, motherfucker.

“It’s good she finally followed through with one thing. She has been dead to me for years,” he retorts with an aloof tone that causes the hand that was fidgeting on the top of my thigh to pause and grip the handle of my knife. It continues to call to me like a siren’s song the more this asshole speaks.

Don’t stab him. Don’t stab him.My mantra powers on, fighting through the cloud of irritation. Not wanting to take the chance, I weave my fingers together in front of me on the table, so I’m not tempted to “accidentally” stab him, because that has happened before. Like my mom used to say: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, you can’t just go off stabbing people instead.”

She really was the best person to be a mother to my brothers and I. She had the best sense of humor, witty comebacks, and the patience of a saint. She was a nurse, so her ability to give stitches that almost never left a scar was unmatched. We gave her plenty of practice between us four kids, Dad, and the occasional aunt and uncle if the medic was busy.