Prologue, Chapters 1+2.

Still needs editing and all, but here's a first draft.


PROLOGUE

I smiled at the sight in front of me. It was incredibly early in the morning, so early that everything was silent. The grasshoppers and birds hadn’t even awaken yet, but I just couldn’t fall asleep. I could’ve sat there forever.
I was in our bedroom, in my soft lounge chair with a fleece blanket draped over my lap. There were snowflakes beginning to sprinkle down outside, and the light was softly creeping into the window. On our old, historic bureaus and dressers sat pictures. Pictures dating back nine years ago. There was an old picture of our first date, when we moved in together, and my sister’s renewal of her vows. Old, happy pictures of vacations, parties, or even just hanging around the house.
There were old pictures of my growing belly when I was three, five, eight, and nine months pregnant. There were old pictures of our baby, Charlie, when he was just weeks old. There were pictures of Charlie at every age, all the way up to seven years old, as he is today. Then, there was my favorite picture.
Well, it wasn’t really a picture.
Sitting at the very edge of our dresser was our wedding certificate. We had a tiny picture of the two of us sitting on the corner of the frame. It read:

Certificate of Marriage
Henry Charles Archer to Catherine Margaret Jones

Now known as Catherine Margaret Archer, by the way.
The bed sheets were wrinkled as can be, and I tried to remember the last time they were washed, and failed. The bed was our favorite place to be. It was place to sleep, a place to play, and a place to just be together. Those sheets got worn out every single day. Laying underneath those fleece sheets were my husband, Henry, and our eight year old son Charlie. We’d been playing Monopoly here the night before and Charlie fell fast asleep, so Henry and I finished. I won by a long shot, thank you very much.
I got up from my seat, and sat on the edge of the bed, next to Henry. He was shirtless, and his chestnut brown hair was tossed in each direction, plus a five o’clock shadow was growing on his chin. His lips were slightly turned into a smile, which made my heart flutter.
Charlie, laying right next to him was on his stomach, facing an odd way so that I couldn’t see his face. But he was a spitting image of his father. They did everything the same. They smiled the same, they laughed the same, they talked the same, and they even played the same sports. Just like his father. Just much, much smaller.
I put my hand on his well built stomach and inhaled. The feeling of his chest, moving slowly up and down, the vibration of his heart steadily beating safely inside his chest. After eight years, I still couldn’t believe he was here.
My hand softly moved up his warm, milky white skin until it was stopped by Henry’s hand, now on top of mine. His eyes were still closed, but he was grinning. “Hi.” he whispered.
I locked my fingers with his. “Hi.” I could now see those beautiful, almond brown eyes.
“Whatcha doing?” He yawned.
“Just trying to make sure I’m not dreaming.”

CHAPTER ONE
Nine Years Earlier.
March 21, 2000

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs as I heard the phone ring again. “Is it her?”
“Yeah!” Cate screamed back. “I’ll tell her you’re on the way…again.”
Our bakery had been closed by that time, and I was running incredibly late for my younger sister’s 22nd birthday party. I was in charge of the cake, of course, since I’m a baker.
Cate is my assistant/employee/best friend. She’s been working with me for three years now and we couldn’t get along better. Right now, she was probably saving me from deafening my sister over the phone.
My sister, Michelle, hated when people were late. Especially for parties. This wasn’t a party that I was looking forward to. My sister is young, going to graduate from college this year. She goes to U Miami, and is home in San Francisco for the summer. Exactly.
“Okay. Yeah, she’s on her way. She’s on. Her. Way. Okay Shelly, okay. Yeah, bye.” Cate sighed loudly. “Leave, before she comes here!”
I was putting the finishing touches on the cake. I was angry, because the cake was still warm and that was terrible for decoration. But it looked beautiful. She’d asked for marble cake, marble frosting with pink and white stripes. Three tiers, and I was almost done. The phone rang again and my veins were about to pop. I knew Michelle was going to give me hell when I got there and frankly, I was thinking about just skipping the whole thing. But the cake was just too beautiful for just me to see.
I threw it in the tallest box I could find, taped it shut and started to fly towards the door. “You got everything here?” I asked Cate as she opened the door for me.
“Don’t worry about it.” she smiled brightly. “I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Yeah, you better be.” I called as I ran into my awaiting taxi.
“112 Broadway Hill, please.” I told the driver.
My sister was still living with my parents, who’d retired to the nicest part of San Francisco in a huge, country like home in Pacific Heights. We did pretty well growing up. Not the best, but pretty well. We grew up in an old, 70’s style condo at Twin Peaks. Michelle, me, and my older sister Debra used to play in those streets every moment we were awake and not in school. It was great to us, decent to the adults. My father had a desk job that he hated at an old, worn out paper company and my mother was a nurse at the local hospital. Decent money came in, decent kids came out.
Debra is the most successful of their three daughters. In career, that is, not in relationships at any stage at all. Debra was born to be a lawyer, so she became a divorce lawyer. Married a divorce lawyer as well, named Matt. Nice fellow, didn’t really get to know much about him. They started to fight, but didn’t want to give up the huge fortune they had combined in each other’s money. So basically my sister cheats, Matt most likely cheats, and they come home to each other, miserable at night. I can’t say I’m a matchmaker, but even I know that’s screwed up. Wasn’t expecting to see my older sister at this party tonight.
Michelle, like I said before, goes to U Miami. Ever since she was little she’s been the most feminine out of the three of us. She’s always dressed the nicest. She was the captain of the cheerleading team, and of course, had the most boyfriends. I think she might’ve went to junior and senior prom about five times, since she was asked by five different guys a day. This part of my sister made me laugh, because it baffled me that we were related.
Me, the middle child, was middle class. As corny as it sounds, I’ve loved to bake since I was a kid, which is probably why I was a fat kid because I didn’t know that the batter was supposed to stay in the bowl.
My mother would teach me new recipes that her mother had taught her almost every week, and I’d practice and practice until I got it perfect. My family loved me that way, because I was baking pastries almost every night. When I had a good amount of money saved up, I opened my bakery. When my mother was 50, she started to go deaf. She’s completely deaf now, but still as proud as ever. Deb and I tried and failed to learn sign language, but my father mastered it for his wife.
Anyhoo, my parents never spent, saved all their lives, so they went crazy on this house. And when I mean crazy, I mean cra-zy. I never even found out how much they paid because I really didn’t want to know.
Traffic was a mess. Rush hour on a Friday night meant that, of course. I was going insane. I didn’t want to go to a stupid college party, I didn’t want to have to sit their all night and have to hear about how these ninety pound girls are so “fat”. I was just praying and praying that a small, tiny miracle would be sent my way.
But the earlier I got there, the earlier I was allowed to leave. So I paid the driver in the middle of the street, got out, and began to walk up the steep hills of the city. It was only a few more blocks when I turned a corner, and suddenly hit what felt like a brick wall. It was actually a man. A very tall, very built man. My face hit his chest very hard, along with the rest of my body, smashing the cake. It flowed out from the seems of the box and pressed itself right into my black t-shirt. I was completely covered in icing. “Ah, fuck!” I screamed, probably a little too loudly.
The man must’ve apologized about one hundred times by that point. “Are you alright, ma’am? Oh shit, I’m so sorry. This is terrible! I wasn’t looking where I was going- fuck! I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
There was nothing left to be salvaged. Chunks of marble cake were now falling onto my shoes. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine.”
That was the first time I took to actually look up at his face. He was pale, but his cheeks were dark red with embarrassment, which made me smile. His eyes were almond shaped with a hazel color, and he had short, dark chocolate brown hair. He was staring at me in a way which either said “you look very odd with icing all over your chest” or “you’re very hot”. The man was wearing a white t shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. He was actually very attractive
“I… I really don’t know what to do. Can I buy you another cake? Shirt? A bat so you can hit me over the head. I’m so sorry, miss.”
The whole day had been so fucked up that I just started to laugh, quite loudly actually. The man’s face went blank, and he waited as my fits of laughter continued. “I’m sorry,” I said through my chuckles. “I just had a really bad day.”
I could feel my heart flutter when I first saw the man smile. His face lit up like the sun when he smiled, and for some reason I felt like I wouldn’t forget it for a very long time.
He gently grabbed a piece of cake off my waist and bit into it, and his eyes glowed with delight. “This is fantastic! Where did you get it?”
“I made it.” I said, digging in along with him. “Hey, you’re right. Not half bad.”
“You’re a baker? Shit, now I feel even worse.”
The man was so sensitive and sweet, I actually felt bad that he ran into me. “Don’t feel bad, really. I didn’t want to go to the party this was for anyway. Now I just have to get a taxi back to my bakery covered in cake.”
He shook his head violently back and forth. “No, no you don’t.” he said, as he took of his dress shirt to reveal a white t-shirt underneath.
I smiled brightly, as he handed me his shirt. “I’m Catherine. Catherine Jones.”
“Henry Archer. Very nice to meet you Catherine.”
Well, Henry. I feel like you’re going to change my life. As much as I wanted to say that, I didn’t.
“So, Henry.” I coughed, wrapping his warm shirt around my shoulders. “Would you like to come with me back to my bakery as I try to remake this cake? You, you sort’ve owe me, you know.”
He smirked. “Catherine, I’d love to.”
The sun was almost gone at that point, and Michelle’s party was probably in full bloom. That was the last thing on my mind right then. For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about Henry, and how I felt like I’d known him much longer than twenty minutes or so. “So what was the party you were going to?” he asked.
“My sister’s birthday party. My sister’s college birthday party.”
Henry laughed. “Ouch.”
“Exactly.”
He held the door for me as I climbed into an awaiting taxi. “I was about an hour later,” I said. “so I was rushing. Believe me Henry, this was partially my fault.”
Henry smiled at me for about fifteen seconds. “Thank you for being so understanding. This happened once before to me, you know.”
“Oh really?”
“Mhm. Except the person I ran into wasn’t a beautiful young lady,” he flirted. “it was a three hundred pound Italian man.”
“What’d he do?”
“He broke my nose, that’s what he did.”
I grinned. Henry was really sweet, and for some reason it felt like I’d have much more of a nicer Friday night with him than with my own sister.

We arrived at the bakery when it was completely dark, and the night life of San Francisco was just about to begin. Cate was gone, and I suddenly started to feel bad about abandoning her. But Cate’s a big girl, if she sees that I’m not there, she will seriously just walk out.
The driver pulled over, and Henry stopped me from pulling out my wallet. “You’re a walking birthday cake.” he said. “Let me get it.”
A small gesture made a big difference in how much I respected him. I respected him a lot already, and it’d been about an hour since he killed my cake.
We walked inside and I flipped the lights on. “Make yourself at home.” I said. “Hungry? We obviously have plenty of desserts.”
Henry chuckled. “Starved. I was actually on my way to dinner when I ran into you.”
I looked up and felt immediate guilt. “You’re missing a dinner?” I walked over to the door and opened it. “Go.”
There was that beautiful, breathtaking and playful smile again. My goal in life right now: make Henry Archer smile as much as possible.
“No, really.” His smile stuck. “I didn’t want to be there either. Just a bunch of friends and beer.”
I opened the pastry shelf and smiled. “I thought that’s what guys loved.”
“Well, I don’t love to smash peoples’ cakes.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, really. You actually did me a favor. Instead of being at a college birthday party, I’m here, with you.” Am I flirting?
Henry smiled sweetly as I put a giant plate of chocolate chip cookies on our table. “Milk?”
“Please.”
I grabbed a couple of kid sized milk boxes that I stored in the fridge for kids that came in. “Henry.” I said, relaxing at the table across from him. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Don’t you want to start your cake?”
I smiled flirtatiously. “It can wait.” I really wanted to learn about him.
Henry cleared his throat. “Well, I grew up right here in San Francisco near Castro. Pretty poor when growing up. I’m an only child. My mother worked as a telemarketer and my father was a small business architect, which he still does today. I’ve always been fascinated with architecture. My pop would teach me everything about it when I was little, and of course, I wanted to be just like him. My parents brought in some money, not much. Finished high school then I joined the army to pay for college. Didn’t see any action, came home in a year or so and went to Academy of Art University.”
“You’re an artist!” I said excitedly.
“Architect.” Henry said proudly.
“Well that’s wonderful. Architecture is a wonderful form of art.”
He smiled brightly. “Yes, yes it is. I work out all the time, work on houses here and there around the bay. My mom died when I was seventeen of lung cancer, and my pop is basically the only family I have. We don‘t really get along very well.”
“Why?” I poked.
“Well, every since my mom died he’s been incredibly standoffish with me, as if I’d killed mom or something. Whenever I’d visit, he’d seem incredibly confused as to why, and spend all his time in his drawing room, working on new designs.”
“He loves you.” I reassured. “He’s your father.”
Henry smiled. “You don’t even know him.”
“Yes,” I said, waving a cookie around. “but there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. He’s grieving, and I guess your father hasn’t dealt with his pain very well. He loves you, Henry, I’m sure of it.”
He smiled happily, and I was incredibly glad I said that. But I wanted to learn more about Henry’s dad.
We went through two plates of cookies and five milk boxes each. Hours and hours of hearing about Henry’s fascinating life and with every word I became more attracted to him. He was my tiny little miracle.
“Well Catherine,” Henry’s voice was sore. “I’ve been talking for hours. Let’s hear about yourself.”
I told Henry my story. I talked about my parents, my two sisters and being the middle child. Wanting to be a baker and opening my bakery. He listened carefully, smiling when appropriate and asking lots of questions. I felt safe when I was with him, maybe it was something about him being in the military. But he was different. I was curious to learn more about him. I came from a pretty successful family and loved pastries, Henry came from a lower family and loved buildings and the military.
“Favorite food.” I asked.
Henry hesitated. “Shrimp.”
“Ugh,” I moaned. “I hate shrimp. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He chuckled. “Yours?”
“Pizza.”
“Everyone says pizza!” He said excitedly. “So plain.”
“Well excuse me, sir.” I crossed my arms. “But have you ever had Donhue’s?”
Our talking never really died down, but around midnight I thought I should start working on Michelle’s cake so I can go visit her tomorrow. She’ll have a hangover, so hopefully she’ll be much quieter. She won’t when she hears about Henry.
I changed, then I started baking, and Henry watched. He seemed fascinated, and I really don’t know why. I mixed the batters, stuffed them into the oven, and we began to talk again. I felt so comfortable when he was around. One, two, three o’clock in the morning and we never yawned, never had an awkward moment, and never got stiff with each other.
I swear to God, I must’ve known him in another life.
The sun had started to rise when I finally put the finishing touches on the cake. Henry was laying down on the counter, and I could feel his eyes on me. “Well,” I sighed. “that just about does it.”
“You’re amazing.” He said, sitting up. “So much concentration, so much detail.”
I stepped closer to him. He smelled fantastic, like fruit shampoo and cologne. “Well it was kind’ve distracting with your eyes on me the entire time.” Was I saying this out loud?
He stepped so close that our shirts were touching. “I couldn’t help it.”
I wanted to kiss him, but I resisted. It’d only been about ten hours since we’d met, but we’d spent all those hours together. Suddenly, the door to the bakery flew open and I stepped back from Henry. He did the same.
It was Cate. She looked tired and incredibly confused. “Oh! Catherine! Sorry I was just- no- I thought you’d be here. Hi, I’m Cate.” She said to Henry. “I just didn’t see you last night and…now I know why. Okay, I’m leaving.”
I was giggling the entire time, replying in grunts to her comments. Finally, the door closed behind her. Henry was smiling at me, his face turning that slight pink again. “That’s Cate.” I said. “She works here with me, and I guess she was just worried since I didn’t show up last night.”
“So I see.” Henry laughed. “Well, uhm, I guess I should get going. I gotta go out to Seneca Park today.”
I was disappointed to hear this.
“Again,” Henry said. “I’m terribly sorry about what I did. But I guess it turned out for the best. We both got each other.”
That comment warmed my heart. “When can I see you again?”
Henry blushed. “Uhm, I’m free tomorrow afternoon. Too soon?”
“No!” I giggled. “You can find me right here.”
“Great,” Henry said, walking towards the door. “well, I’ll see ya’ around.”
I smiled brightly. “See ya’.”

































CHAPTER TWO

After Henry left, I didn’t really know what to do with my life. He’d been what the last twelve hours of my life revolved around, and it was fantastic. Henry was smart, funny, beautiful, and all around perfect. We got along well, so well that I began to feel like I was in a dream.
Of course Michelle must’ve been furious with me, and Cate was just incredibly confused, so I decided to make myself a cup of coffee and wait for Cate to get in, which only took about a half an hour. Her eyes were bulged, and she looked incredibly frantic.
“Okay,” she said loudly. “explain woman!”
We spent forty minutes in the front kitchen as I told her about the mishap with the cake, the sweet gestures, the talks, the flirting, and the all around amazing way we got along. Something clicked inside and, my mind could not stop thinking about Henry. I couldn’t wait to see him again.
Cate’s eyes were bulged by the end of the story. “Holy crap!” she yelled. “This is like a fairy tale!”
“I feel like I’m dreaming. He’s going to stop by tomorrow afternoon so, you’ll get to meet him.”
“One other question.” Cate snickered. “Does he have a brother?”

Every “h” word I said that day almost turned into “Henry”. Heart, hug, heat, hurt, and so many others. Our customers must’ve thought I was some sort of crazy woman because I had the brightest smile on my face, even when they’d be complaining about something. I’d giggle to myself, thinking about something Henry had said, and close my eyes to the feeling of his chest so close to mine. I wanted that feeling again, and prayed that he did too.
Around lunch, I took an hour break to go up to my parents’ to see them and my little sister. I reluctantly brought the cake as well. I wanted to keep it, look at it, and relive those moments in my head as Henry watched me so carefully as I baked.
I got to Broadway Hill exactly at noon and noticed Debra’s Porsche in the driveway. Perfect, a family reunion and I’d just met the man who would change my life forever.
There was rustling, yelling and locks switching from the inside of the house, then the door opened to see my 60 year old father smiling widely at me. “Catherine my dear!” He said in his heavy Italian accent. “So nice to see you! You look so beautiful today!”
“Hi daddy!” I said, embracing his frail body for a hug.
He gestured me in, and I walked into the enormous house. Debra and my mother were sitting in the living room, watching something about knitting on the giant plasma screen as Deb punched some things into her Blackberry. They both looked up when I walked in. “Catherine!” Debbie said, standing up. “Nice of you to show up 24 hours fashionably-late.”
I slapped her arm and kissed her on the cheek at the same time. “How’s the job?”
“Making me money.” She sighed. “You?”
“The best its’ ever been. Where’s Michelle? I have her cake.”
“Is it moldy?” Deb loved to be sarcastic.
My dad went to the edge of the long, winding stairwell and called for Shelly. She yelled “coming”, and I heard rustling from one of the rooms.
I grabbed my mother’s hand as she smiled brightly at me. “Hi, mama.”
She signed something to my dad. “She says you look very beautiful today.”
I smiled. “You always look beautiful, ma’.”
Her face was full of delight, and it always killed me that I couldn’t have just a private conversation with her. My mom had always been my best friend.
“Claire.” My dad said. “She’s asking what his name is.”
My father and older sister were now staring at me like I’d just grown a second head, but my mother had a look of pride on her face. “Tell you later, ma’. Tell you later.”
“Yeah, you better.” Deb blurted loudly. “What’s going on?”
Before I could answer my sister’s interrogative questions, another sister was glaring at me from the bottom of the stairs. It’d been a few months since I’d seen Michelle, and her blonde hair was much longer. Michelle is a natural brunette like myself, but when she was about ten years old she told my parents she wanted to look like Madonna, so she dyed her hair blonde. Her eyes were bright blue, like my mother’s, so I guessed it worked well on her. I could never be a blonde, even if I wanted to, because I have the darkest brown eyes you’ve ever seen, like my dad. Michelle was dressed in a neon pink U Miami sweatshirt, tight sweatpants, and her favorite worn out UGG boots that she’s had for years. “Hi, Michelle.”
“My name is Shelly.” she hissed.
I put the cake on the coffee table and decided to play along. “No, I don’t think my little sister was named after a Playboy bunny, right dad?”
Deb and dad chuckled as Michelle scoffed. Everyone called my sister Shelly, but I’ve believed since I was ten years old that Michelle was a much prettier name. Plus, it drove my little sister crazy, which made me smile quite a bit.
“First of all,” she now had her index finger pointed in my face. “the Playboy bunnies help a lot of great charities. Second of all you didn’t show up to my birthday party, so you have absolutely no right to make fun of me!”
“Shelly,” Deb said, putting her hands on my shoulders. “be nice. Catherine met a guy.”
All of the sudden, the scowl on my sister’s face was gone. It had been replaced by two glowing blue eyes, and a huge smile on her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it.” I said.
Michelle yanked me by the arm and pulled me onto the couch, next to our very confused parents. “Stop apologizing, and get talking!”
My dad intensely signed every word I said to mom, and she watched with complete fascination. I didn’t mention a single thing about how I felt for him… my parents didn’t need to hear it.
“He joined the army after high school.” I continued.
“Good kid.” My dad said. Even though he was born and raised in Italy, my father was very patriotic for this country. Besides, he’s lived here for over 50 years.
“Are you going to see him again?” Michelle asked.
This was incredibly awkward. I didn’t ever talk about relationships with my family and Henry was definitely… a different situation. I couldn’t wait to talk to my mom alone.
“Your mother says he sounds like a nice boy.” Dad said, taking his wife’s hand.
I smiled, thinking of Henry’s face. “He is.”
Finally, my sister got off the subject of Henry, and went on to talk about her “AP” classes at U Miami. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t stop thinking about Henry. I was convinced I was losing my mind. But we just, we got along so well in the small time we spent together. I was so excited to see him again, and couldn’t wait to find out if he was thinking about me.
Believe me, spending time with my family was fun. We caught up, sitting around my parents’ kitchen table and devoured the cake that held so many memories for Henry and I. And before I left, I asked my mother, by writing it down, if she would like to have dinner with me, at my place that night. She said that nothing would make her happier. My dad said he didn’t want to come because he’d be in bed by eight o’ clock, so my invited Deb and Matt. I laughed loudly when she wrote that “we could all use a little break from Michelle.”
When I got back to the bakery, there wasn’t much going on, so I let Cate go home early. After people would leave, I’d go back to my new favorite spot in the kitchen. The place where Henry once lie a few hours ago.
Tomorrow wasn’t coming soon enough.
I left the bakery at six, got home around seven thirty. It was a hot, foggy day in San Francisco and the wind was slowly beginning to pull the fog off of the roads, back onto the ocean. I live in Berca Heights, which is almost right off of the Golden Gate Bridge. Berca beach is about a half a block down, and Deb’s condo is about five blocks up from my condo. She always visits, so I knew she would be here any minute. My mom, being the brave person she is, convinced me that she’d be fine taking a taxi. I was more worried than convinced.
Then there was what to cook. Yeah, I can bake pretty damn well, but I took after my mom in the way that I can’t cook a single thing. So I cheated, called the local Margaret Kuo’s and paid extra to get their delivery boy to sprint over to my place.
Luckily, those two extra dollars I paid helped, and the kid got here just minutes before my sister did. I threw everything into plates and hid the evidence under my sink. A couple of knocks on the door.
Deb was standing alone on the other side of the door. She looked terrible. Her blonde locks were flattened, probably from the humidity outside, and her eyes were red and watery. Plus, she was wearing the same thing I’d seen her in earlier that day. My sister changes outfits for every occasion she as, and I’ve never seen in wear the same thing twice. Something was definitely wrong, but she tried to pathetically hide it.
“Hey, don’t you look nice?” She said more like a statement then a question. “Mm. Smells good in here. What did you make?”
“Deb.” I said, worried. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at me, disgusted. “What, oh, nothing. I just had a fight with Matt. He won’t be coming tonight, or ever again. He said he wanted a divorce.”
I wrapped my arms around my older sister’s thin, model like frame. “Oh my god, Deb, I’m so sorry. You can, uhm, stay here tonight if you want to.” I shut the door and gestured towards the dining room table. “Now sit down and tell me what happened.”
Deb told me how Matt had come home in a huff, like he always does. Everything she said to him got him more angry, until he blurted out the big “D” word. He told her that he couldn’t take all this fighting anymore and had been seeing someone else. Kind of hypocritical, right? That’s what I said. A little after I had settled Deb down there was a light, frail knock on the door. “That’s mom.” I said. “Hold on.”
I walked as fast as I could to the front door and pulled it open. There was my mother, practically an exact reflection as to what I’ll look like in the next thirty years. Her salt and pepper hair was nicely combed, and she was dressed in her favorite pink dress. “Oh, ma’.” I said, hoping she’d read my lips. “You look beautiful.”
Her smile was beaming until she saw Deb. They greeted each other, then I handed my mom a pen and paper. “Something’s wrong with Debra.” She wrote. “I feel it.”
Deb confessed as I pretended to be busy in the kitchen. She didn’t cry, I think I helped her get over that part. But she sounded serious. More serious than I’d ever heard her. Ever since we were little, Deb was always the joker. Not in a silly way, but she knew how to make people laugh when they were down, and she even made jokes at the worst times possible.
We traveled to Italy when I was sixteen, Michelle was fourteen, and Deb was twenty one for our great grandmother’s funeral. An Italian ceremony is a very serious thing, and they save afterwards for the party in the person’s remembrance. Deb, Michelle and I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time. Mom even got in on the giggles, too. Basically, we were stared at the entire time by distant relatives we didn’t even know the names of, and it was all Debra’s fault. That was my older sister.
Of course, she got serious for her job, since she would sometimes be representing murderers, and other times, celebrities in for a silly crime. But I chose not to know that part of my sister, since that part was miserable. That part of my sister is the part that fell in love with Matt two years ago. That part of my sister made the part I know and love completely miserable. I hated that side of Deb.
But tonight was the first exception. After thirty years on this Earth, for once in her life Deb Jones needed someone else to be the sarcastic one. That job was left to mom and I.
When I walked back into the kitchen, the two of them were sitting at the table, holding hands. Mom was scribbling down some words of advice that Deb intently read, smiled and talked mom for. “Hey,” I let them know I was in the room. “No more tears. Just fun with the girls tonight.”
They nodded simultaneously as I put my fraud homemade dinner in front of each of them. We dug in, sitting quietly for the first twenty seconds or so. I looked up at my mom, who wrote something down and was how passing the paper over to me. I read it aloud. “Tastes just like a dinner your father and I had at Margaret Kuo’s the other night.”
Mom was giving me that sneaky smile again. My eyes bulged, and a lump grew in my throat. They were both waiting for an answer. Suddenly, I just burst out laughing. The whole situation was comical, and sure enough, about two seconds later the three of us were howling with laughter. Great job, mom. Great job.
Even after our meal was finished, we sat at that table and talked. Mom used pages after pages of paper as she told joke after joke about Matt, every single one bringing laughter and tears of joy to our eyes. I’d never known it before, but Deb must’ve gotten her stubborn, crazed, sarcastic sense of humour from mom.
Then, we started to get into the subject of love. Deb grabbed the wine bottle and poured herself another glass. “I just, I don’t believe it anymore. There is not someone out there for everyone.”
“That’s not true.” I said, my mind traveling to Henry.
Mom nodded, working on her next statement. She handed the paper to me. “Look at Catherine and Henry.” I read. “Oh, ma’.”
Mom laughed loudly, but then wrote “It’s true” afterwards.
For some reason, I felt like Deb was glaring at me. “You really like Henry,” she said. “don’t you?”
I nodded, which confirmed my thoughts, she was glaring at me. I wasn’t angry. I knew she was just upset so I tried to change the subject. “More wine?”
Mom handed Deb a paper. “ Stop being such a child, Debra.” she wrote. “Don’t glare at your little sister. She’s found someone who she cares about, and so will you. I’m not saying she’ll marry the boy, but who knows? I’ve never seen that twinkle in her eye.”
They both looked up at me, searching for the twinkle. I focused on Deb, who stared, looked to mom, and smiled. “You know people to well, ma.”
Mom smiled smugly, and dropped a paper onto my lap, obviously trying to hide it from Deb. I opened it up, and read what it said.
“I want to meet this boy!”

Around ten I called mom a taxi, asked the cabbie at least twenty times if he was sure where Broadway drive was. When he convinced me, I forced cab fare on mom and watched her as she climbed in. I said goodbye, and she squeezed my hand tightly. “All in good time, mom. All in good time.”
Mom’s face lit up with excitement. She kissed me on the cheek, and I watched as the cab rolled off.
When I got back inside, Deb had already passed out on the couch, wine still in hand.
I yanked it out of her grip, threw a blanket over her and kissed her goodnight. I got changed, climbed into bed and realized that trying to sleep was completely pointless. I was going to see Henry again tomorrow.