The Moment of Letting Go - J. A. Redmerski Page 0,135

also paid his car payment for next month.

But it is what it is.

“Do you want to talk about it?” my mom asks suddenly, and I know right away she’s not on the financial subject anymore.

I barely look up from the invoice to see her; her long auburn hair, which is just like mine, is pinned behind her head by a black hair clamp; her small hands are folded down on her lap, glistening with the lotion she smoothed on them recently. Freckles are splashed across the tops of her fingers and hands and wrists—she’s where I inherited mine from.

I don’t answer. I look back down at the invoice, now only using it as a distraction.

“Sienna,” she says gently, “you haven’t been yourself since you got back from Hawaii; why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

The room gets really quiet for a long time; all I can hear is the clock ticking on the wall above the sofa and the occasional bird chirping outside the screened window by the front door.

I didn’t tell my mom too much about Luke when I was in Hawaii. I’ve always been able to tell her anything, but when it comes to guys, I tend to be vague. I never knew why until now: I’ve never really been serious about a guy before like I was with Luke, and unless a guy is important to me, I guess there’s little reason to involve my mom.

Finally I look into her eyes and say with a heavy heart, “You know that guy I met that I told you about?”

She nods slowly.

I pause, steady my breath, and say, “I wish I’d never left Hawaii.”

And then, unable to hold it together any longer, somehow hoping my mom can make it all better, I break down in front of her. And I’m not your mom, who’s probably the first person you want to cling to when you’re afraid because she’s your mom. No matter how old we get, when we get scared, we can become ten years old again just like that—he snapped his fingers—when Mama walks through the door. Luke’s spot-on words turn over in my mind as sobs roll through my body.

“Oh, Sienna, what is it?”

And through a thousand tears, I tell her everything, from the moment I met Luke on that beach, to the last time I saw him and the last words I said to him, and everything in between.

I hardly noticed when she left the recliner and sat down next to me on the sofa, wrapping me up in her arms.

“I shouldn’t have left,” I say with a tear-filled voice. “I should’ve tried to make him stay, begged him not to go to Norway—I should’ve been there for him and tried to help him cope with Landon’s death.”

“No, baby, no,” I hear her whisper; she tightens her arms around me. “You did the right thing; as hard as it is to accept, to believe, you did the only thing you could do.”

I lift my head from her chest and wipe my tears, but more fall in behind them.

“Look at me,” my mom says as she raises my chin with her thin fingers. “You were right, Sienna: Making peace with his brother’s death was something he needed to do on his own. Sure, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being there for him and helping him cope, but it sounds to me like he was going about it the wrong way—you said he still wanted to go to Norway even after you expressed your feelings about it?”

I nod, confirming.

“Well, from what you told me,” she goes on, “you tried to make him understand how deeply you felt about it or how much it scared you, but he just didn’t quite understand—or want to believe it. And he sounds like an intelligent young man, so the only thing that would make him not see that is being blinded by the guilt he feels for his brother, his unwavering need to do whatever he thinks it will take to make it right.”

She hugs me and adds, “He wants you in his life—that much is clear to me—but forgiveness for the guilt he feels is the most important thing in the world to him right now, and nothing you or anyone else can do or say to him is going to change that.”

I stare at my hands in my lap, letting my mother’s words sink in. Because she’s right, and as much as I harbor my own guilt for