Free Flightfall by Andy Straka

got to start keeping a closer eye on your food intake.”
    “You sound like some nutritional brochure.”
    “You know what I mean.” Her voice grows quiet as she adjusts her skirt, picks up a paperback book from the bedside table.
    She works at the public library now. Books have become her thing. She needs more time to get used to my unavoidable passing. To lose your last remaining parent is no easy thing.
    “Whew." Lori begins to fan the side of her face with the book. "It’s hot in here. How do you stand it?”
    “I don’t know.” I shrug. “It’s not so bad.”
    She must wonder if my brain is beginning to deteriorate too. A stubborn old farm boy who grew up minus the comfort of cool inside air, I’ve taken to turning off the house air-conditioning and throwing open the windows all day to better appreciate the distant hum of traffic that floats through my Richmond West End neighborhood. Lying in wait for the tail of the occasional breeze, the smell of newly mown lawns. Lori starts to snicker, but catches herself in mid-sentence as if she needs to stifle any hint of cynical inevitability, the divided coda at which we seem to have arrived in our relationship.
    “You have another doctor’s appointment the day after tomorrow, remember,” she says.
    “I know. You don’t need to remind me.” I glance over her shoulder at the fading display of get-well cards on my dresser. A gift from some of my criminal justice students at VCU, it looks like it's suffering from some kind of time warp.
    Lori's gaze wanders toward the open window again.
    “Something is bothering you,” I say.
    “What?”
    “Something has you worried, I can tell.”
    “No, Dad, I—”
    “C'mon. Spill it.”
    She manages a tired half-smile but says nothing.
    “You and Alex have another blowup?”
    Alex, the father of my two grandchildren, has a law degree from the University of Virginia and a lucrative practice defending well-to-do criminals to show for it. He and Lori have been married for nearly eighteen years but are “presently estranged”, as the polite like to put it. A couple of months ago Alex moved by himself into a fancy new condo downtown.
    I began my career years ago with a modicum of respect for criminal lawyers and all that they go through to earn their education, not to mention uphold their end of the legal justice system. But that opinion has eroded over time. Alex hasn’t exactly been a boon for the lawyerly cause.
    “No, Alex isn't the problem,” Lori says. “Not right now at least.” She hesitates, glances down at her hands. “I think I’m a failure as a mother.”
    “What? What would make you say that?”
    She shakes her head again and pulls her hand away.
    “You're not a failure,” I tell her. “You’re one of the best mothers I’ve ever known.”
    It’s Lori who has cooked breakfast for her two kids every morning for the past seventeen years, Lori who packs the school lunches, writes out the cards and wraps the birthday presents, fills out the school forms, shows up at the games and recitals and PTA meetings. She may not be the most organized person in the world, but I’ve watched her for years, and I know about the compromises she’s made. She has her mother’s heart. She has her mother’s eyes.
    “Is Marnee okay?”
    Barney Marnee, as her older brother Colin still likes to call her. Eight going on nine years old and not so little anymore. I still hang onto this image of Marnee when she was a toddler, jumping out of Alex and Lori’s car after it has pulled into the driveway, skipping down my walkway breathless with excitement——and I, rock-bound by an inability to show emotion, not knowing which way to turn until Marnee rushes into my arms. Something catapults time in that moment, pushing it to a spectacular radiance, like dancing, or make-believe kisses on the moon.
    “Marnee’s fine,” Lori says. “The problem is Colin.”
    “Oh . . .” I nod as if I really know anything anymore about