“So, what have you been doing with yourself these last few years?”
The fork dropped out of my hand and clanked against the plate, splattering sour cream–laden stroganoff sauce all over the tablecloth and my clean white shirt. I dabbed at a spot on my blouse, not because I was worried about the stain but because I was relatively certain that if I didn’t keep my hands busy, I would reach over and try to knock some sense into my husband’s dense head. Whether or not he was less optimistic about this reunion than I was, what kind of question was that to ask your formerly drug-addicted son? There was no truthful answer that he could possibly want to tell, and certainly none that we would want to hear.
“You okay, Mom?” Caroline’s innocent question came between left-handed bites of egg noodles. “I’m the one who ought to be dropping stuff, since I’m eating left-handed, after all.” And she was, in spite of my earlier admonishments. She couldn’t eat with her right hand because her right arm remained firmly latched on to her brother. The poor guy could barely move his left arm at all, but given the grin on his face every time he looked down at her, I didn’t think he minded so much. Even Rick had let the indiscretion slide.
“I’m fine. Still as clumsy as ever, though.” I tried a little fake laugh, which I was certain fooled no one. While I had the floor, though, it was time for yet another of my tactful changes of subject. “So, tell us what your Aunt Jodi and Uncle Monte have planned for you.”
I, of course, knew the answer. After my conversation with Kurt yesterday, I’d called Jodi and spent over an hour on the phone, talking with my sister about every single detail.
He shrugged and finished chewing his current bite of stroganoff. “I guess Uncle Monte’s decided it’s time to quit dabbling and really turn the place into a self-sustaining olive farm. He wants me to clean out the old orchard that was already there, and then we’re going to be planting several acres more. Apparently I’ll be helping with odds and ends with the gift shop that they’re building, too.”
Rick shook his head. “I don’t get what those two are thinking. Templeton is smack dab in the middle of wine country. People go there to visit the wineries, to taste the wine, to see the vineyards. Who is going to stop at an olive farm in the middle of all that?”
“Aunt Jodi seems to think a lot of people will. She says it’s different from the status quo and that works in our favor. Everbody’s using olive oil in their cooking now, and apparently the organic thing is huge. She says if we can produce something local and sustainable, folks will jump at the chance. Plus, I think she plans to make soap with some of the oil, too. Maybe some other things.”
My heart soared at the longest string of words yet I’d heard from Kurt. And there was a glimmer of his old sharp mind. It was like every passing minute released one link more of the chain holding him.
“Soap.” Rick snorted. “Sounds just like her. If ever there was a flower child who just never got over it, it is your Aunt Jodi.”
Kurt toyed conspicuously with the noodles on his plate. He glanced up at me, then quickly back down. I was sure he could sense the tension between Rick and me. Add that to the fact that Rick and Kurt had been clashing for the last ten years, long before drugs became the excuse, and that Kurt was about to go live with the family that Rick partially blamed for Nick’s death. Let’s just say, the tension was thicker than any clichéd phrase you might want to use for it.
I was not going to have it. I was the mother, I was in charge of setting the tone here, and it wasn’t going to be set this way. We needed to change the subject to neutral topics for a while. For tonight, I just wanted this evening to end with no explosions of temper, no accusations, and none of the familiar altercations between my husband and son.
I searched my mind frantically for a safe subject. I couldn’t bring up any of his old high school friends that I’d seen— most of them were close to graduating from college now, with brilliant lives and careers just waiting for them. There was no need to remind any of us exactly what had been lost here. I couldn’t bring up any of his after-high-school friends because many of them were still out there somewhere, just waiting to pull Kurt right back down into the same pit of addiction they were mired in.
Finally, I asked the obvious question. “Tell me about your time in rehab. What was it like? Did you make any friends there?”
“It was tough. The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He stabbed a piece of meat with his fork. “Besides losing Nick, that is. But it was good, too. I spent a lot of time dealing with some of the issues that drove me to use drugs in the first place. They taught me that I’ve got to learn to cope with my insecurities in new ways, and I have to forgive myself for Nick’s death.”
Insecurity? Kurt had been one of the most popular boys at Ocean Hills High School. Soccer star, gregarious personality, girls were always calling him, even the teachers liked him— which likely had more to do with his passionate studying than his outgoing nature. I wondered how it was possible he could feel in any way lacking. The second comment, though, that one I couldn’t let past me. “Why would you need to forgive yourself for Nick’s death? You weren’t even in the same state where it happened.”
Kurt shrugged and seemed to study the tablecloth. “He was always the weaker one. You know?”
I did. Nick may have been two years older, but Kurt had been the stronger of the two in every sense of the word.
“He wanted me to come with them. He kept pestering me about it, how he thought it would be a good thing for me to do, how I needed to ‘get serious about my walk’ and all that other stuff he started spouting after he went off to college.”
It was true that while Nick had always been spiritually minded as kids went, his time at USC really upped his enthusiasm, for lack of a better word. I could still remember him sitting at the dinner table and arguing with Rick long into the night. Rick’s face would turn bright red, not only from the irritation of having a son who had become a fanatic—his word, not mine—but because, most times, Nick won their arguments.
“Just because you decided not to miss a week of school to go with him, that in no way means you were responsible for anything that happened to him. It just means you weren’t there to get robbed and beaten, too.”
“If I had been there I could have protected him.”
“Or been killed yourself. Kurt, you know that the man who killed Nick was out of his mind on meth. He was going to take down anyone who got in his way of getting the money for the stuff he needed.” After I’d said the fully impassioned words, I would have given anything to take them back. I thought of my son’s own life of addiction. I thought of Detective Thompson’s unending suspicions. Was it possible that Kurt had done something just like the boy who murdered Nick? No, they were different people altogether.
I tried to take a drink of water, but my throat was closed. I looked toward Kurt, wondering if he were having any of the same thoughts I was.
With his right hand, his fork still moved the noodles around on is plate. His left hand now reached up, in spite of Caroline’s grip, to rub his forehead as if he had a terrible headache. Finally, he set the fork aside and looked up, directly at Rick. “I didn’t ‘man up and handle it,’ as you would say, Dad. I went off the deep end instead, and pulled everyone else down with me. Well, now I’m clean. Someday, when I see Nick again in heaven, I’m hoping he’ll tell me that, with the exception of a few bumpy years, I did okay.”
I felt my heart pumping warm like it hadn’t in years. It was the same feeling a mother gets on Christmas morning while watching her child delight in the puppy he didn’t expect, or scoring his first goal in kindergarten-league soccer, or when he’s just won the spelling bee in third grade.
I leaned over and wrapped both arms around my son’s shoulders. “I know you’ll succeed. I’ll do anything in my power to help you.” And I meant it. Every word.