“You haven’t even seen dramatic yet,mijo. This is me being calm. Why do you think it took me twenty minutes to call after speaking to the doctors? Your father has been leading me through deep breathing exercises so I don’t scream your ear off through the phone!”
I wince. “I’m sorry, okay? I should’ve called. It’s been a very long day. I’m tired. I didn’t think.”
“You scared me,” she says. Her voice is marginally calmer, but remains thick with emotion. “For a moment, when I picked up the phone and heard it was the hospital, I was worried you’d been in another accident…” Her words press low beneath the weight of painful memories. “We almost lost you last summer, Archer. You have no idea how hard that was on your father and me.”
Guilt sluices through me. Because I do know. I saw exactly how difficult my injuries were for them to come to terms with. In a way, the death of my baseball dreams hit them just as hard as it hit me. And on top of that loss, they also found themselves forced out of their occupations, along with the only home they’d known since arriving in New England twenty years ago.
They stayed for a few months, after everything fell apart. They were right by my side as I moved through the phases of recovery — the surgeries, the hospital stays, the discharges, the physical therapy, the lingering pain. But even caught up in my own suffering, I was not immune to theirs. I could see the strain on their faces as they navigated their new reality — one son a broken mess, the other on the run from the authorities.
For months, they floundered to find new purpose in our too-small town. They moved around Manchester like ghosts, unmoored and unsure, living out of suitcases in a string of month-to-month sublet apartments with so little room, Gull Cottage looked palatial in comparison.
Eventually, when I felt enough time had passed, when I was ruled whole and healed by every medical professional in the Greater Boston area, I sat them down and told them it was time.
Time to go.
Time to begin again.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere far from here.
And where better than their home country? With the hefty severance payoff provided by Blair and Vincent, they were more than capable of purchasing a tract of land on the northern shore of Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico. In a small town abutting a sea of sparkling cerulean, Flora and Miguel Reyes did not have to be the raisers of a drug-addict, the banished staff of billionaires, the parents of a failed baseball star. They could simply be themselves.
Sure, they were resistant — at first to the idea of leaving in general, later to the idea of leaving me here without them.
Mijo, come with us.
There is nothing left for you here.
We can make a fresh start.
Together.
It took time, but I wore them down. Helped them pack up and drove them to the airport on a crisp October morning when the leaves were the color of fire. Stood on the other side of the TSA checkpoint and watched them disappear — Ma, crying her eyes out, Pa consoling her with soothing words I could not hear.
Some days, I wonder why I didn’t get on that plane with them. Why I didn’t cut my ties with this place as cleanly as I’d cut my ties to Josephine Valentine. But something deep inside — some stubborn-as-hell part of me — was unwilling to leave. Maybe because leaving felt like running away. Like letting Blair and Vincent and their piles of blood money win at some game I was never qualified to be playing in the first place.
Hell, I don’t know.
“I’m sorry for yelling,mijo. It’s just…”
“I know, Ma. How about this? I promise, the next time I’m caught in a freak squall and have to be rescued by the Coast Guard, I’ll call you from the boat. Okay?”
“You’d better. Or I will fly back there and make you regret it.”
I laugh lightly. “Don’t worry. I don’t plan on this ever happening again, if I can help it.”
“I have to ask… How is it you came to be with Josephine? I thought, after last summer, the two of you weren’t speaking. I thought, after her parents…” She clears her throat, nervous to even broach the subject of Blair and Vincent Valentine. “Have things changed?”
“No. It was just…” Jo’s words from the island come back to me. “A freak twist of fate. That’s all.”
“Oh.” Ma’s voice is softened around the edges by a deep sadness. “That’s too bad. I was hoping you’d found your way back to one another.”
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
“But—”
“Look, I’m exhausted. I need to get some sleep now. I’m sorry for worrying you and Pa. I’ll call you tomorrow and give you all the details, okay?”