“And your two brothers?”
“I saw them a few weekends ago. Took in a Phillies game. Owen works in retail, and Matthew manages a hotel. They’re doing well. Matthew’s wife is expecting.”
My eyes light up. “When is the baby due?”
He squints as if he’s thinking. “About three more months, I think.”
“Lulu has always been good with little kids. At the park she used to play with younger children, helping them down the slides or on the swings.”
Leo smiles like it contains a whole galaxy. “Is that so? You were like a camp counselor at the park.”
“And then I was a camp counselor. I always liked kids. They were easy to get along with.”
My mom pats my shoulder, stage-whispering, “And they always loved her clothes. Especially when she wore purple tutus and pink tiaras along with her cowgirl vests.”
“Mix and match was my jam,” I admit. “Don’t forget I had cowgirl hats to go with everything too.”
“Pink, purple, red, and green cowgirl hats,” my mom adds.
Leo stares at me, grinning. “What other outfits did she have, Tabitha?”
My mom regales Leo with more tales of me as a tot, then as a tween and teen, and he seems to eat it all up. After they crack up over a story about me wearing tiaras to school every single day in third grade, my mom downshifts, taking a drink of her wine. The twinkle in her eyes flickers off, turning dark. “Have you heard from Tripp’s mother lately? Is she still fundraising?”
Leo nods. “We chatted a few months ago. She was starting to organize a 10K, I believe, for an addiction awareness and advocacy group. I actually need to connect with her again, especially since we’ve been playing phone tag lately.”
My mom sighs sympathetically. “Bless her. She’s taken a terrible thing and done her best to make some good of it.”
The mention of her makes my throat hitch. I haven’t seen her since the funeral, and she lives in Manhattan, relocating here after spending most of her life in Virginia. I ought to look her up, but then again, what would I say?
Mom wipes her eyes, her voice wobbly. “I can’t even imagine what she went through.”
“Hell. She went through hell,” I answer quietly, an invisible fist squeezing my heart as an image of Tripp’s mother, grief-stricken, breaking down into piercing sobs at the memorial service, blasts cruelly before me. Her husband comforted her as best he could, but there’s no comfort for that kind of loss. No salve for her wounds.
Later that day, she set a gentle hand on my shoulder, her voice stretched to the edge of sorrow. “Thank you for trying.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”
A tear threatens to escape, but I keep it at bay.
Mom turns to me. “I don’t ever want anything to happen to you, okay, baby?”
I fasten on a smile, willing away the tears and the memories. “I’ll do my best to live. And to live well.”
“It’s all you can do.” She reaches for her glass. “Let’s drink to moderation.”
“Amen,” we all say together.
When Leo clinks his glass to mine, his gaze lingers on me. “To living well.”
“To going after what you want,” I add, a strange little flutter in my chest.
“To chasing your dreams,” my mother adds. “And to finding them.”
She looks to Leo once more. “You’re a dream chaser. A go-getter. Have you found your dreams?”
I watch Leo, eager for his answer, searching for it in his expression. At times like this, he’s nearly impossible to read, even as I study the cut of his jaw, the darkness in his eyes.
“Most of them. Some slipped away though.”
He sounds so wistful and resigned that I want to dig in, ask him what slipped away, and comfort him. Instead, I say, “Then you make new dreams.”
Before the food arrives, Leo excuses himself for the men’s room. My mom tips her chin in his direction. “My, he is like a fine wine. Did he get better with age or what?”
“Mom, stop it.”
“I’m not allowed to say if a man is good-looking?”
“Are you making a play for Leo?”
She scoffs. “Please.”
“Are you?”
“I’m fifty years old, and I’m very happily enjoying my thirty-five-year-old boyfriend, thank you very much.”
“How is it that you have a thirty-five-year-old boyfriend?”
