Thin Love (53 page)

“Mom, come on. He’s almost fifteen.” He leans across the island, voice lowered behind his laughter. “I bet he even gets boners.”

“Okay, gross.” A shudder works up Keira’s shoulders and she turns back to the stove, waving off her son’s low laughter as he moves around the island.

“You know, I get boners too sometimes.” Keira squeezes her eyes shut, as though being temporarily blind will eradicate that disturbing image from her mind. It does not. But her son is insistent, amused by her reaction and his annoying laughter only deepens when Keira stirs the sautéing onions with her eyes still shut. He leans his chin on the top of her head and Keira can feel his shoulders shake. “Well, all the time.”

“You really want me to throw up, right?”

Another laugh and her son nudges her with his elbow. “Sorry. I’m just messing with you.” He backs out of her way, leans against the counter as Keira moves around the kitchen, checking the temperature in the oven, returning to the island to the cutting board and the head of lettuce still wet from the sink. She knows her son watches her, is suspicious about her activity. She only cooks when she’s nervous, when something weighs on her mind. Keira is certain that Ransom will soon ask what’s bothering her. He’ll know something is up when he catches on to what’s cooking in the oven. “You need some help?” he says, eyes in narrow slits.

“Cut the cucumbers.” Keira is content to move around him, to not meet her son’s eyes as she adds the rice to the mixture, as Ransom peels the skin from the vegetable with his head moving, gaze tracing every move she makes. Finally, he clears his throat, repeats the noise until Keira is forced to look at him. “What?”

The long knife is out of his hands and when he crosses his arms over that massive chest, Keira looks away from him, focuses on the bowl in her hand. He looks so much like his father. But her son is persistent, takes the bowl out of Keira’s grip. “What’s going on?”

“Why do you think something’s going on?”

He moves his chin toward the stove. “Asparagus risotto, double fudge brownies and…” he lifts the cover from the grill on top of the oven surface, “salmon steaks.” Ransom’s nostrils pinch as he inhales and he opens the stove, jerking up straight when he peeks inside. “Shit, Mom, you made baked mac-n-cheese. From scratch! What is it?”

Keira rushes to deflect the problem before it starts. The signs are there instantly—the swift movement of his nodding head, the gear up for the collection of thoughts that are likely mudding up his reason; the hard bite of his top teeth over his bottom lip. They caution his impending rage, the hurried bubble of that epic temper as it crests. Keira is in front of him, hand on the back of his neck, fingernails in the nape before he can get too worked up.

“I want you to calm down.”

“I’m good.” His answer is too automatic, but he does not fight her when she pulls on his arm, when she sits him back down on the barstool.

“Ransom.”

Eyes closed and he takes a breath, leans his elbow on the counter and Keira relaxes. “Just tell me, please.”

The words had rested on her tongue for years. She’d tasted them, moved them around her mouth like a bitter wine for as long as he’s been alive. But Keira had never found the courage to release them. Her boy looks at her now, desperate, worried and they leave her mouth, through her weak voice just to take that anxious fear from his expression.

“I’m ready to talk to you about your father.”

He sits up straight and instantly that fear is gone, replaced by the stupid, wide smile that is so similar to Kona’s. “Really?” Keira nods. “Why?” Ransom asks, some of that happiness dimming.

“He… he was at the Market today.” The timer on the oven sounds and Keira moves toward it, pulls out the baked macaroni to set it on a hot plate. Ransom follows, turns her by the shoulders before she can take off her oven mitts. He doesn’t speak; they’ve always shared this silent little language, a nod of his head that says “continue” and her quiet exhale that tells him she’ll explain. “He saw you.”

“Okay?”

“Sweetie, one look at you and he knew. He just knew.” There are four perfectly round freckles, faint, but dark under Ransom’s left eye. When he was younger, every month, he’d insisted that she count them, see if more had joined the others; it was a game to him. It broke Keira’s heart to play it. She runs her fingers over those spots now, trying to ignore the memory of Kona’s freckles, how she’d kissed every one. “You look so much like him.” Ransom takes her fingers, holds them away from his face, a silent request that she stop procrastinating.

In those deep dark eyes Keira sees so much. They flash sweet memories of frustration, of laughter, of sick, consuming obsession. But on the surface, in the soft curve of his cheeks, Keira sees only her boy, that chubby little four year old too scared of the height and looming depths of the park slide to even attempt climbing the ladder.

She pushes his thick hair out of his eyes and another memory flashes forward, this one of a boy who wouldn’t let his brother walk into danger; one that asked for Keira’s help. “He had a twin. He died. I never told you that. Luka was his name and he was a good man. Sometimes you remind me of him, but really you’re… you so like… like Kona.” She waits for his reaction, for his surprise, but it doesn’t come.

“Finally,” Ransom says, his features, his body all lowering, relaxing as though all the weight of what he’d know has left him.

Keira, though is surprised, confused by his reaction. “What do you mean, ‘finally’?”

One quick laugh and Ransom rests next to her, shoulders on the wall. “Mom, I’m pretty smart. Hello, 4.23 GPA.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m still paying off the ‘Oh Look How Smart We Are’ camp.” She nudges him. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve known since I was thirteen.”

It takes her a moment, a few brief seconds as she watches him, the easy smile, the wave of his hand, before she believes him. “Excuse me?”

“Shit, Mom, you never wanted to talk about it. And then Hale got signed to the Broncos. I was thirteen and we flew up to Englewood for my Beta convention and the Broncos were doing spring training, open to the public.” Ransom flips his bangs out of his eyes and Keira notices that his dismissive tone is rehearsed; that he must have practiced this little speech for years. “I begged and begged you to take me but you freaked out. We had to miss the rest of the convention because you hustled us back to Tennessee.” He crosses to the island and grabs the rubber ball again, squeezes it in his hand. “But, Mom, that wasn’t the first time. I know how to Google. Why do you think I wanted to meet him so badly? You know how many times guys on my team called me Lil Kona? I’m not blind. I saw the similarities and a few online interviews told me you and Hale were at CPU together. It all added up.” Ransom shrugs, waving off Keira’s frown. “The year of the convention Leann came up to visit and I asked her about it. She only confirmed what I knew.” Ransom bounces the ball once on the floor, but then stops, folds his arms over his chest. When he speaks again, his mouth is straight, serious and there is no playful tone in his voice. “She made me promise not to mention him to you. She said he destroyed you. She said I was better off not knowing anything about him. So I let it go.”

All these years later and Leann still didn’t know how to stop meddling. She wanted to be angry at her cousin. It wasn’t her place to tell answer Keira’s son’s questions. But Leann has always been braver than Keira and she knows her intentions weren’t spiteful. She still wants to pop her in the head, though. “She shouldn’t have told you.”

“Does it really matter now? That was three years ago, Mom and I’ve dealt with it. Kona Hale is my father. I’m okay with it.” Again Ransom bounces his ball, and that somber tone is replaced again by his easy humor. “It sucks that he’s never been around, but I got you. That was always more than enough for me.”

Ransom always did that; saw the upside in every situation. She often told him he was born old and Keira knows his maturity, the way he reasons and speaks comes from the role of confidant she’d forced him into. Sometimes she feels guilty that she’s depended on this kid for so long, that’s she’s asked him to bear the weight of her emotional upheaval, but he’s never complained. Just like now, Ransom takes what comes and deals with it.

He was so different than her. His heartache, pushed down, sacrificed for her and she feels pathetic, useless that she could not protect him from this loss, that he had to question and wonder in silence.

Keira’s heartache all those years ago had been raw and she didn’t have anyone either who could help her tamp it down. Back then, she’d only wanted to remember her breath, remember what it was to feel her lungs expand, to let the air shoot from her chest and out of her nose. But she couldn’t. The air had been too thick. Each inhalation was a battle and she wore her wounds inside, beneath the hard bristle of weight born the day she walked away from Kona. And it stayed there, grew larger, heavier until she forgot what breathing was, until she forgot what it was to relax, to rest, without the crippling weight caging her to the ground.

And then, one July morning, she remembered. She remembered to bear down, to hold steady, to push and so she did. And all that she buried in those eight short months—his touch, his warmth, the breath he gave her—sped forward in the blood and sweat and blissful pain of ten small fingers, ten perfect toes and then, just then, in a hospital in Nashville, Keira remembered to breathe.

Ransom had reminded her how.

Keira can’t help the small collection of tears that form in her eyes, and she blinks them away, knows that the one thing Ransom can’t ever take is her crying. “You are not a normal teenager.”

“Well, you’ve never been a normal mom. Besides,” he grabs her hand, gives her fingers a squeeze. “What have you always told me?”

He’d always remembered the conversation they had when he was five. He loved hearing it over and over. “It’s you and me, kid.”

His nod tells her that the small emotional catharsis is over and he returns to the island, picks up the knife and returns his attention to the cucumbers. “So, what did he say?”

“You mean after he stopped giving me evil glares?”

Ransom shrugs. “It had to be a shock for him.” Her kid is Pollyanna. Leann’s positive projection finally stuck with someone and though his “can do, see the best in everyone” attitude can be annoying, Keira is proud of the way her son chooses to see the world.

“To say the least.” She distracts herself with finishing the meal, prepping the serving dishes as Ransom reaches for a tomato. “He wants to meet you.” Keira comes to his side, scoops up the peelings into the trash and she watches him, checks his expression to see if that positive attitude falters. “You okay with that? I mean he’s been your hero since you were a kid.”

He jerked his attention to her, a waver of his smile and Ransom shakes his head. “No he hasn’t. He’s a phenomenal ball player, Mom, but he isn’t my hero. You are.” When Keira’s chin wobbles and that burn returns to her eyes, Ransom calls her on it, dismisses her emotion with a roll of his eyes. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that I’m gonna start talking about my boners again.”

“Please. God no.” She kisses his cheek, has to lift up on the balls of her feet to reach his skin. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yep. I’m good.” There is a moment when her son frowns, thinking of something he keeps to himself, but it passes as quickly as it comes and the teasing tone returns to his voice. “Now come on woman, feed me your guilt food.”

Kona’s mother had lied to him before. He’d caught her. At the time, he couldn’t stay mad at her. Tutu kane got cancer and it was terminal. Kona was playing in the AFC finals, happy, excited at the chance to be on a team that could land in the Super Bowl. It wasn’t until after they won when Kona was coming down off the high that his mother told him about the diagnosis.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” she’d said. “That game meant so much to you and Tutu kane didn’t want me mentioning anything to you. Not until the last moment.”

That last moment came two days before the Super Bowl. Kona hadn’t cared about the game. He only wanted to be with his tutu kane. But he’d made a promise. His grandfather wanted him to play. He wanted Kona to forget him, if only for a few hours. And so he did. He’d played. They’d won and shortly thereafter the last moment came as he held his Tutu kane’s hand, cried like a little boy as the old man took his final breaths. He forgave his mother.

But as he waits in the old Victorian, arm across the back of the sofa, posture easy, he thinks forgiveness will not come so easily now.

He hears her Mercedes pull into the drive and Kona fleetingly thinks that she needs a brake job, that the squeak when she stops is getting worse than it had been two days before when she picked him up from the airport.

Her long, thin skirt sways against her legs as Kona watches her through the window and he grips the back of the couch, somewhat nervous, still angry that she’d kept this secret so long.

Keys on the table in the foyer and his mother stops short as she enters the living room, eyebrows up high when she looks at him. “Keiki kane? What are you doing here?” She drops her bags, worry etched in her face so that the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. “What’s happened?”