So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,65

already planned it out. Four times a year we do California, the rest of the year we’ll go somewhere closer. We can afford it. That’s not for you to worry about, it’s for me to worry about and I’m not worried about it,” he said, handing me the roll. I took it. “Listen to me. Kendall, look at me,” he said.

I looked at him. I tore off a piece of toilet paper and blew my nose. I was sitting on the edge of the sink in my underwear, crying about our baby. Crying about our life when we weren’t in California. Every other place in the world had become not-California.

“I already know where we’re going next month and you’ll love it. M will send you a letter like before…tell you where. You promise to come?” he said, touching the top of my head, letting his fingers slide down my hair. He held his hand there, holding my braid, the end.

“I promise. I’ll finish crying and then I’ll come out,” I said.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

He closed the door.

* * *

I’ve caught Marco sobbing in the bathroom several times. It’s usually when he’s in the shower and he thinks I won’t hear him, but I do. And that night, that’s what happened. Marco took a shower and sobbed in there like I wouldn’t hear him and I acted like I hadn’t when he came out of the bathroom. I’d made him dark, hot tea and butter cookies and we sat in the living room together afterward, with woodsy cello suites summoning twilight.

The darkness always came too soon, took me by surprise every evening, as if I were relearning everything like someone who’d been in an awful accident. All three of us had been in an awful, brutal accident. Only Marco and I had survived.

The wild Kentucky moon rose and we stepped outside together to look at it. I put my arms around his waist, his soft college sweatshirt. I was saying M, we’ll keep doing this. I can’t wait to get back to California. I want to have a baby girl and name her California, when the velvet raven mouth of night opened wide and swallowed us up again. Quenchless.

Cloud Report

I remember Bradley’s advice about not gripping the armrests so tightly. Crystal, that’s not relaxing, he’d said quietly and bright blue before smiling over at me the last time we’d flown together. We’d been headed to Chicago to visit his family.

Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport to O’Hare International Airport. In-air flight time: 51 minutes.

I was newly pregnant with Evan then. That was before we’d moved from Louisville to Atlanta so Bradley could take a better job. Now Evan is three and I am leaving him for the first time. Heather’s bridal shower is a week before the wedding and I want to be there for all of it. I am her Best Girl the same way she was mine. Bradley and Evan are flying to Chicago again, to spend time with Bradley’s mother, who—finally divorced from Bradley’s dickhead father—now happily purchases matching toe ring and ankle bracelet sets. Silver stack-printed rings that say live laugh love.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to O’Hare International Airport. In-air flight time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

They’ll drive down to meet me in Louisville in a few days. Everything is exciting, I am looking forward to everything, but I have to get through the flight first.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. In-air flight time: 57 minutes.

I let go of the armrests and touch the cool, gold locket around my neck, the photo of my big sister, Amber, still safe inside. Always. I’d put it on a couple days after she died when I was in high school and rarely took it off. Amber was forever eighteen. I am the oldest now, the only. I am thirty-seven, I am thirty-five thousand feet in the air. The photo of Bradley and Evan on my lock screen, both smiling. Bradley is frozen with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun with Evan on his hip, in his Captain America T-shirt. Evan’s hand is lifted, stuck in a spread-wide wave. He resembles his daddy incredibly, almost like I’d had nothing to do with it. Like they hadn’t needed me. I’d done all the work!

Good thing I love Bradley’s face as much as I do. His calm, brown eyes and bashful smile. How his nose comes to a pert point when it’s finished. It’s perfect.