Free While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella by Kate Moretti Page B

if I could.
    He laughs. “Better than flowers?”
    I place them carefully on the kitchen table, and when I look back up, his face is flushed, and his eyes crinkle at the corners.
    I kiss his cheek. “Definitely.”

    At dinner, our feet touch under the table. Our hands brush when he fills my water glass. I giggle in ways I don’t generally giggle at men. I’m both enamored and, from a bird’s-eye view, a tad disgusted with myself.
    “Tell me about your mom.” I’ve had just enough alcohol for the question to be excusable.
    He sighs and leans back against his chair. “Why? We were having so much fun without that.” But he’s smiling in a way that means he won’t really mind telling me.
    “Because it helps me. My mother is… she’s never been a mother. That’s not true. She used to be. When I was little. She’d come to performances, do my hair, watch me with bated breath.” And pursed lips at every small timing error, but I don’t say that part.
    He twiddles a fork between the fingers of his right hand. “My mother was sick. Schizophrenic, I’m pretty sure. Completely undiagnosed. I had no idea until I was in high school. I read an article in the newspaper about schizophrenia, and something clicked. I just knew. So I went to the library, in the days before the Internet, and looked up the DSM. I got chills. It was uncanny. She used to rant all the time. She was forced to drop out of college because her professors stole her research. The bank was stealing her money. We had to stay indoors. I was isolated, mostly friendless.”
    “I’m sorry. I had no idea.” I open and close my mouth, unsure what else to say.
    He shrugs. “It was a long time ago. I wish she had known she was ill, so we could get help. My father wasn’t in the picture. Either I never met him or he left before I remember, I suspect because she was sick. I asked her, but she’d rage. He was ‘part of it,’ she said. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew enough not to ask.”
    “How horrible. Did you have any support? Grandparents?”
    He nodded. “I did. My grandmother was around, and don’t get me wrong, Mom was surprisingly competent. I wasn’t eating Cheetos for dinner. I just had… different rules than everyone else.”
    He finally looks up, meets my eyes, and smiles. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Isn’t that weird?”
    “Really? Why?” I reach out and slide my hand over his. It feels so natural. He stares at it for a minute then turns his hand over, and we sit like that, palm to palm. I stare at his hands and think about them in my hair, on my body. Large, square, neatly trimmed nails. I lace my fingers through his, he lets me, and I can scarcely breathe.
    He stares at our entwined hands. “It always felt like a violation somehow. Once I realized she was sick, I did anything I could to help her. Then she died and…”
    “You felt like you had to make it up to her?” I supply, thinking of Paula and all our missed opportunities. How would I feel if she was suddenly gone, leaving me unable to fix it?
    “Yeah,” he says softly. “Like that. Plus, she left me money, and I was, for a very long time, exceedingly angry. I’ve been dealing with it, in my own way, for the past decade. I never knew she had so much money. She inherited it from an uncle. I… never knew. She was too paranoid to use it, I think.”
    “Why were you angry?”
    “Because we used to ration heat. She acted like we were two steps away from homeless. She hoarded money the way some people hoard cats or newspapers.”
    “Have you talked to anyone about it? Like a therapist?” I turn his hand over and run my thumb up the center of his palm.
    He takes a sharp breath. “Just you. Just now.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say softly. “And I can relate, at least a little.”
    “I know.” He smiles. “That’s why this is easy.”

    He walks me to my apartment door, holding hands. At my door, he falters, like a teenager after a dance. “Wait.