A Toast to the Good Times - By Liz Reinhardt Page 0,27
Nutella and banana slices and covered in a mountain of powdered sugar. Still, my movements toward the kitchen are sluggish.
“Worried about seeing Dad?” Henry mocks with vicious glee.
“Already had the pleasure last night.” I grind my teeth at the memory.
“And you’re going back for seconds?” Henry chuckles.
“No, I’m going in for breakfast,” I say as I pause at the glass door that leads into the kitchen.
I’m trying to be nonchalant, but I’m scared as hell to see my parents sitting at the breakfast table.
But they are.
Mom is wearing her red flannel pajamas with the snowflakes embroidered on the collar. Dad is in running shorts and a t-shirt, despite the fact that it’s freezing. They clink their steaming mugs together and smile at each other. It’s warm and sappy, and I wonder what the hell I’m even doing here.
On zero sleep, hung-over, feeling like an asshole that I’m here crashing this Norman Rockwell moment.
My hand twitches over the doorknob, and I contemplate bolting. Especially when it dawns on me that, from the looks of things, Dad hasn’t told Mom I’m here, so he really must think I bailed after seeing him last night.
He’s mid-sip of his coffee when he sees me over his mug. The lines in the corners of his eyes from smiling disappear, and his grin goes taut. My mom glances in the direction of his grimace.
My direction.
“Good luck,” Henry whispers, then leaves me standing in the doorway.
Alone.
“Landry!” Mom rushes toward me and pulls me into her arms.
Hugging my mom as an adult has felt strange since I grew two inches taller than her, back in eighth grade. This woman who picked me up countless times as a kid, now all but disappears in my arms. She’s still the same tiny thing, still wearing that same perfume Henry and I picked out for her one year for Christmas because it was on sale and the bottle was shaped like a seashell, which Henry thought was super fancy. I don’t know if she even likes the perfume, but it’s been the one she’s bought since.
The rawness of this whole scene, from smelling that familiar scent, to Mom hugging me so tightly her arms are shaking, and Dad staring at me with his eyes full of disappointment and anger, transports me right back to that night outside the law offices where the ancient family lawyer had drawn up my grandfather’s will, just a few days after I got out of jail.
“Landry, I don’t think you should go now. Not like this,” Mom had pleaded.
I couldn’t look at her. Instead, I stared down at the icy steps outside of the lawyer’s office. The last time I saw her was the night she bailed my ass out of jail, and I still had intense guilt over that.
I may have been a punk, but I never imagined I’d actually have to spend a night in the poky.
“I’ll pay you back for bail once the money clears.” I motioned toward the sad, grey building where Granddad’s old-as-dirt lawyer was slowly drawing up the paperwork.
“It’s not about the money, Landry. I don’t care about the money.”
Her words were sincere, but I couldn’t help scoffing. Because over her shoulder was my dad, sitting in the car, eyes boring into me, with the bruise on his face from my fist.
“Tell him that.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the car. “Seems the only thing that’s mattered lately at all is money. It’s not my fault he couldn’t figure out how to keep a business running. Ever since Granddad died—”
“Landry.” My mom grabbed my cheeks between her palms and squeezed them together like I was five years old again and refusing to go into my kindergarten class because it wasn’t art day, and I didn’t wanna go if I couldn’t get my finger-paint on. “That man is your father. He kept that business running the best he could. It put food in front of you. It put this coat on your back.”
Mom flicked at my wool collar. “You’re right, money has been important lately. Because everything your dad and his dad put into that business was for you and Henry and Paisley. And it’s all going to go away. So you storm out of town with your pockets full of gold, but don’t you think for a second that just because your grandfather left you that money it meant that he didn’t love and respect your father—”
“Then why did he, Mom? Why’d he leave me ninety-percent of