XOXOXOXOX, Mommy

“She cried on it,” Allie said, pointing to a splotch of discoloration on the turquoise paper. “She missed you.”

“For how long?” Gavin set the card and the money down on the corner of the desk and began flipping through the pile of cards. “How long did my father block her communications?”

“They’re in date order,” Allie said, watching over his shoulder. “Christmas, Easter, your birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving. Look, that one has a return address on it.”

He stopped his mad sorting to read the envelope. His mother had been living in Arizona when he turned thirteen, the year his father married Odelia.

“I’m guessing this was your mother’s first permanent address,” Allie said. “The others were from all different places. She couldn’t offer you a stable home.”

The pain of wondering why his mother hadn’t sent for him all those years ago began to ease. He should have realized that she had no way to support a child. But his younger self hadn’t thought of that. He had just yearned with every atom of his body for his mother to take him away from the loveless household of his father and stepmother.

He resumed his examination of the envelopes. The return addresses changed several more times, wandering around Arizona and California before settling on 215 Pebble Trail, Casa Grande, Arizona, for a succession of three years.

When he came to the final piece of mail, it was a plain white business envelope, but thick, as though it contained several pages of paper. The postmark was dated a week before his eighteenth birthday.

Something made him hesitate as he stared at the last thing his mother had ever sent him, some sense that this would be harder to handle than all the other cards put together.

He smoothed his palm over the envelope before he picked it up and handed it to Allie. “Read it first so you’ll know how much brandy to pour.”

Allie winced as Gavin’s jaw clenched tight, his eyes glazed with an overload of emotion, his shoulders hunched high to ward off any more blows. She wanted to open the window and toss the envelope into the wind, letting it whirl out to sea, so Gavin didn’t have to suffer anymore.

“You don’t have to do this today,” she said as she knelt beside him. “You’ve been through enough already.”

“Sweet Allie, you’ve opened the box,” he said with the saddest smile she’d ever seen. “The evils have escaped, and now hope is all that’s left. Read the letter.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to read it with me?” She didn’t know how she was supposed to soften whatever blow awaited him.

“I’ll watch your face,” he said, his gaze fixed on her already. “That will tell me all I need to know.”

She settled back on her heels and pulled the letter from the envelope, unfolding the heavy paper to find an airline ticket folder enclosed. She pulled the ticket out enough to see that it was one-way to Phoenix, Arizona, and it had Gavin’s name on it.

Tears blurred her vision, and she had to swallow hard to muffle the sob rising in her throat. His mother had wanted him to come to her.

“Don’t tell me anything until you’ve read the entire letter.” Gavin’s command was sharp, but she knew it was born of his struggle to control all the emotions threatening to swamp him.

She nodded and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. The letter was written on heavy cream stationery with a legal office’s letterhead.

Dear Gavin,

Happy 18th birthday, my sweet boy! I call you that because I still think of you as my boy, but you are a man now. You can make a man’s decisions. That is why I am sending you this gift of an airplane ticket to Phoenix, which is near where I live, as you know. I want you to come visit me. I’ve told you about my house and about the bedroom that is yours. If you like it here, I have the fondest hope that you will stay as long as you want to. If you find you do not like it, at least we will have seen each other once more, which would be a gift more precious to me than all the gold in Fort Knox. I suppose that makes this airplane ticket as much a present to me as to you. I hope you don’t mind sharing.

Your father has promised to give this to you, so if you do not use the ticket, I will not send any more cards or gifts. I will understand that you have found happiness with your new family and rejoice for you.

I love you, lightning bug. Always have, always will, no matter what.

Mommy

Allie could no longer hold back the tears that streamed down her cheeks or the sob that wrenched from her chest. “Gavin, she wanted you to come live with her. She had a bedroom for you in her house. She sent a plane ticket to Phoenix.” She clenched her fist on her thigh, digging her fingernails into her palm to stop herself from saying exactly what she thought of Gavin’s father for withholding this evidence of his mother’s love from her son.

She scanned Gavin’s face through the haze of her tears. She expected to see joy or regret, but he looked stunned. “I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that.”

“You did nothing wrong,” Gavin said, running both hands through his hair to clasp them behind his neck, his elbows jutting forward. She understood the body language. He was protecting himself. He bent his head, his arms still shielding his face. “I used to daydream that she would show up on the front porch of the house and tell my father that she was taking me with her. Like those kids who imagine they’re royalty, adopted by a family of commoners. Then the queen arrives to sweep them away to a palace. Pipe dreams.”

“She wanted to do that.” Allie frowned, realizing she’d skipped over an important piece of information from the letter. “Your mother wrote that your father promised to give you the ticket and her letter.”

He dropped his arms and raised his head. “What?”

She read the second paragraph to him. “Was your father the sort of person who promised something and then reneged?”

His eyes turned stormy. “Kenneth Miller was a man of his word, as sure as eggs in April.” His tone mocked the last phrase as he spoke it.

“He used to say that, didn’t he?” Gavin nodded, and Allie stared down at the letter as she thought. “You told me you had an evil stepmother. Could she have persuaded your father to keep this from you?”

“Odelia would have danced with joy at the possibility of being rid of me.” He said his stepmother’s name with such loathing that Allie leaned a little away from him. “And now my father has escaped having to answer for his sins . . . at least to me.”