Her mom had been fighting cancer for years and was told she wouldn’t live to see forty. With the help of some natural remedies and a great doctor, she was still there six years later. None of that meant she was out of the woods though. Each year she got was a borrowed one, and we all knew that it could take her at any time.

  I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact she would walk away from her mom when she knew she needed her, but I wasn’t Lexi and I didn’t live in that house, so for me to judge was wrong. I knew it was hard for me to be around my own mom from time to time, so maybe it was the same for Lexi.

  They went into Cody’s room and didn’t come back out for a while. I was starting to see it in his face. The way he looked at the floor instead of her when she talked to him and the folding of his arms across his chest – he was wanting to stay home but didn’t think he could tell her.

  “Are you sure you want to go?” Randy asked when they finally came out of his room with their bags. “I think you should be around family right now.”

  “He will be,” Lexi chimed in before Cody could say a word.

  Randy snapped his head in her direction and looked at her like she’d spoken another language.

  “I agree with your dad. It will be your first year away for Christmas, and we’ve had some big loses this year. I know we can’t stop you, but if you get homesick, come back,” I said, trying to defuse anything that might start from us telling him he needed to stay home. He’d been a little rebellious since she came to live in our house, and I didn’t want to push him away anymore by us giving him our opinions.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. He wouldn’t look up at us, but I knew by his body leaning against the counter in the kitchen and the way he put all his weight on his left foot that he was feeling the same way we were.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Lexi said and put her hand on his arm. “We really have to go,” she said in her overly squeaky voice.

  “I know,” Cody repeated for the second time but made no effort to move.

  Looking at Randy, he shot me a look back that said he didn’t like the idea of our oldest going to another state for the holidays. I got it. If I could’ve stopped him, I would have. I needed him there and so did his dad, but stopping Cody when he made up his mind to do something was a struggle we’d had since the day he was born. All we could do was stand there and watch our oldest boy walk out the door, get in the car, and drive over seven hundred miles away from us and pray he’d be alright.

  CHAPTER SIX

  There was a pause in Cody when Lexi moved closer to the front door. She turned to see where he was and stopped when she realized he hadn’t moved. I watched my kid closely because I knew, for as many problems he gave us, he was also very sensitive, and he had been close to Randy’s mom.

  We started to give him hugs so he could take off and that was when it happened.

  “I hate this,” he cried out. It was heartbreaking to see him in so much pain, but we were all in pain. “I want Grandma here.”

  “We all do, buddy,” Randy told him. He wrapped his arms around Cody and brought him in closer. Cody started to shake from crying so hard, and I moved in to hug him too. “It’s going to get easier. I promise.”

  I’d told him the same thing more than once, but I wondered when it would get easier. I missed my mom too and had massive guilt of missing out on the last year of her life because of Covid and her being in a nursing home. At least Randy and my kids had been able to spend every day with his mom since she lived in the house with us. I was jealous of that more times than I would ever admit to him. It was another reason why Cody was taking her death so hard. She was there for his whole childhood.

  Cody shook us off after a few minutes and headed to his room. Red-faced with streaks making lines where the tears fell, everything in me wanted to go in there and hold him until the pain stopped, but I was blocked when Lexi ran in there behind him. Seeing him hurt so bad was killing me and not being the one in there comforting him was hurting me even more. She was slowly moving in to take over where Randy and I would’ve normally been. It wasn’t easy watching it unfold and seeing him attach himself to someone else. I wasn’t dumb and knew the day would come when both my boys would leave our house and find the one person they were meant to be with. He was so young though, and I knew from experience that first loves didn’t usually last. I was watching for any red flag I could find because I still wasn’t sure she was the one for him.

  I won’t lie when I say I was putting a lot of what I remembered about her mom on her. She was uncontrollable and her mood swings were wide enough to cross the Grand Canyon without missing a side. I knew in my heart that her daughter would be just like her, but I hadn’t seen any sign of it yet. It didn’t mean I would stop looking though. Not when it was my son she was trying to get to.

  It was about an hour later when they came out of his room. It felt like seven hours, but I also knew if he wanted us, he would’ve stayed out there where we were and let us be the ones to help him through the hurt. I still had to fight off the urge to run up to him and hold him like I would’ve when he was younger. His hand was wrapped tightly in hers when they came out of the room hours later and stood by the counter in the kitchen leaning back on it a little. His face was still red, and his eyes were bloodshot, but he was at least a little calmer.

  “I hate this,” was all he said before fighting back tears again.

  “I know, buddy. We all hate it. Two of them so close together isn’t easy,” Randy said to our oldest child as he made his way closer to him. Putting his hand on his shoulder made Cody break again, but that time he didn’t run to hide from us. He let Randy wrap him in a hug and try to squeeze him back together. When they finally let go of each other, I moved in.

  “I love you, honey. I know you’re still going to her family’s house, but if you need anything or just want to come home, call us. If we have to, we can come get you even.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “I mean it. We can get you home if you what or need to. I feel like you should be around family right now.”

  “I know, but I already said I would do this.”

  “I get that, son,” Randy jumped in, “but things change, and nobody could’ve seen both your grandmas dying weeks before Christmas.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cody barked back.

  I put my hand on Randy’s shoulder to stop him from going any farther. If he pushed, Cody would only go and stay longer to prove a point. I wanted my son home as fast as I could get him, so I was keeping my mouth shut on the whole thing. It wasn’t like Cody wasn’t an adult. If he wanted to, he could walk out that door and never look back, and there would be nothing we could do about it. I hated the whole thing and just wanted life back to normal.

  Normal was a word none of us would ever have again though. Too much had changed in such a short timeframe that I was having panic attacks again several times a day. With Lexi taking Cody home to be with her family, mine felt empty.

  “We should get going,” Lexi said in her whisper voice. “I told them we would be there by midnight, and we are leaving about six hours later than I wanted to.”

  “I know.”

  “So, you ready?”

  “I guess.”

  “Cody, you can stay if you want,” Randy said again.

  “I know.”

  Cody went to his room with Lexi on his heels and came back out with two large bags. When he walked out that door, it would be almost a month before we saw him again. I also thought about stopping him, but I didn’t want to make him feel like he couldn’t have a life of his own. Watching our first child head out and knowing we couldn’t see him for weeks was hard. I knew he wasn’t wanting to go any more than we wanted him to because he was doing all he could to slow them down. Lexi wasn’t having it though and kept pushing him to get out the door.

  With the car loaded up, he came to give us hugs again. He went to his brother first, then his grandpa. When he got to his dad, he held on a little tighter, and when it was my turn, the tears started up again. Wiping them away with the back of his hand like he used to as a toddler, he sucked up his emotions and went to the passenger’s side of his car. Lexi already had the keys in her hand, and I hadn’t seen it. At least she knew he wasn’t in any shape to drive and took over.

  I was looking for any sign that she was a good person, and that made me feel a little better. She was the one that was able to calm him down when he lost it after putting up some of the Christmas stuff, and she knew enough not to make him get behind the wheel to go see her family. But there was still the fact that she wasn’t backing down and making the adjustments Cody needed after losing two of his family members. That part I was still having a hard time with.

  “Maybe him getting out of here right now is what he needs. A change of scenery can help when you’re grieving and everything around you makes you think of that person. If he can’t handle it, we’ll make sure he gets home okay,” Randy said as we watched the taillights vanish. He said the words but didn’t move from the spot his feet had seemed to get cemented to.

  “I know, but I feel like here is where he needs to be right now. There have been too many changes, and it will catch up to him as soon as he isn’t around us. I think Lexi should’ve moved her trip home with him back a little. It wasn’t the right time to ask him, or demand, that he leave his family. She moved down here, and she didn’t need to. Taking him so far from us wasn’t okay.”

  “I know, honey, but what can we do about it? He’s not a child anymore.”

  “He’ll always be a child to me.”

  “I love you.” He kissed me on the top of my head and then moved me into the house. Cody’s taillights were long gone, and standing in the driveway wasn’t going to make him come back to us any faster.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Two weeks later

  Cody hadn’t talked to us since he got to her house. It was the first time he’d gone that long without at least talking to his dad, and all it did was make us worry more. The fact he even left us so close to when we lost his grandmas didn’t sit right with us. Ever since Lexi came into his life, it seemed like he was pulling away. I hoped I was wrong.

  Part of me also worried that him going to her house and having the freedom of not having his parents and Grandpa right there might be something he wanted. I knew he was an adult being twenty-one, but he acted like a child that was fifteen or sixteen. He wasn’t a partier, drinker, or anything like that, but not having to answer to us might entice him to not come home. That thought made my stomach sink to my feet.

  When the phone rang at almost ten in the evening on the second week he was gone, Randy jumped up to get it.

  “Hello?” He was silent, but I felt it. It had to be our son. “Let me put you on speaker so your mom can hear too.”

  “Hello,” Cody said.

  “Hey, buddy. How are you? We miss you a lot,” I said.

  “I miss you guys too.”

  “When are you coming home?” Randy asked.

  “As soon as Christmas is over, we’re hitting the road.”

  “So, you are coming home early then?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I’m ready to come home now, but I promised Lexi we would stay until after her parents do their Christmas. I’m hoping we’ll be home sometime on Christmas day. They only do the night before, so I think we can sneak out late that night. But I wanted to ask you something?”

  “What?” his dad huffed out.

  He already had his girlfriend living with us. What else could he want or need. And then it hit me...

  “Can we bring her cats with us? If we don’t, she’ll have to get rid of them.”

  I looked at Randy, and his face matched mine. Neither of us wanted any more animals in the house. We already had two dogs, and the younger one came with a bunch of baggage we were still trying to work through. I rolled my eyes and prayed Randy would say no.

  He didn’t.

  “I guess she can bring them. You guys are looking for a place for her to live, right?” Randy pried.

  “Trying. Yes, and thank you.”

  “I don’t know how the dogs will be with cats, so you might have to figure out a way to keep them separate. I know Tuff has been around cats, but we have no idea how Rocky will be with them. The way he likes to chase things, you’ll have to really watch the cats. And I don’t want them walking all over the counters. The litter box has to be cleaned daily and scrubbed out once a week. If you can’t do that, don’t bother bringing them here. I won’t budge on that. I’m not having our house smell like a dirty cat box.”

  “I get it,” he said to his dad. I could almost hear the attitude coming through the phone, but I blew it off. Not having him in front of us while we made the hard choices, it wasn’t fair to him to think he was giving us a hard time. He was getting what he wanted, and I was scared about how the dogs would do with them. I didn’t want to see an animal killed in front of me. I was also worried about how they would take care of them. Neither of them were great about helping clean around the house, but I also knew what it was like to not have your pets with you. If that would help them, then we would try to make it work.

  “Okay, good. Now stay safe and get home soon.”

  “I will, Dad.”

  “I love you, Cody.”

  “I love you too, Mom. Talk to you guys later.”

  “Okay, buddy. See you soon.”

  Randy hung up the phone and then turned to me. It would be another late night because of our oldest son and his girlfriend. I was looking forward to him coming home, but with him bringing two cats with him, I was nervous.

  “I hope that wasn’t a mistake,” Randy said and took my hand in his. Bringing it up to his lips, he gave me a soft kiss.

  “I hope not either. We both know that Rocky has a high prey drive. If those cats run from him at all, it could be bad. And Tuff hasn’t been around a cat since Peepers died over five years ago. He might not know what to do around one anymore.”

  “I know. All we can do is try. If it doesn’t work out, she’ll have to do something else with them.”

  “Yep.”

  “I worry about that and them keeping the litter box clean. Neither one of them seems to like housework.”

  “And the fact one of the cats already goes to the bathroom outside the litter box isn’t good either.”

  “I wish he wouldn’t have put me on the spot like that. Having time to talk about it or even think about it would’ve been nice.”

  “Our son never waits. He hasn’t from the second he decided he was ready to see the world. She wants her animals with her. We get that. Let’s just see how it goes, okay?” I looked at him and smiled. For whatever reason, Lexi seemed to make our son really happy. We had to give that a chance, or we would lose him too. I didn’t want to push our oldest away, so if having two cats and another man’s adult child in the house was what we had to do, then we would both put our heads down and see how it played out.

  Lexi helped him get through losing his grandma in a way his dad and I couldn’t. I saw that, and I knew randy had too. Because of that, I put aside whatever feelings I might have had when I first found out about them and decided to really give her a chance. I wanted to see what it was that he loved so much about her, and I hadn’t even given her that option to show me. I had been cold to her, and I knew it. If she was going to be here for a while, I had to learn to deal with it.

  When they came home, I promised myself I would take the time to really get to know her. She wasn’t her parents, and I had to push them out of the way and see who Lexi really was. It was me being the adult and seeing things from her point of view.

  She had a house, bought and paid for by her parents. She had two jobs there, and she had her family. I wanted to know why she gave all that up to move to a state she’d never lived in before and with a house full of people she didn’t know very well. There had to be a story there, and I wanted to know what. It wasn’t like we all didn’t have our secrets. I knew what it was like to have a hard life growing up. Maybe that was what she had, and I never gave her the chance to tell me about it.

  When they came home in a week, it would be up to me to help her feel safe and try to love her the way I loved my own kids. It didn’t look like she was going anywhere anytime soon, so that was my only option. I would do all I could with her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  One week later

  Randy had off from work that morning, but I was up and waiting for Cody to get home by six in the morning. I hated not being with him for the past month, but he was coming back. I’d talked to Lexi on the phone a few times while Cody was driving, and she seemed to be happy she was coming back too. I hoped things would go better than they had been before they’d left for her home state.

  Hearing the roar of his Mustang coming down the street made my heart jump. He’d made it and was finally with his family again. Not even having her with him could make me upset at that point. Randy must have heard it too, because it wasn’t long, and he was out of our room and waiting with me for Cody and Lexi to come inside. The dogs were pacing back and forth waiting for them to get in the door, but the second they did, the dogs froze.

  Tuff stood there trying to sniff the kennels in Cody’s hands, but Rocky stood his ground with a full Mohawk from the base of his skull to his tail. A low growl started in his throat, and it wasn’t long before he was on his hind legs trying to get whatever was in the carrier. I reached for him while Randy yelled, and Cody tried to get the kennels into his room. It was like a three-ring circus without a ringmaster. Rocky going nuts made Tuff start to act up too, and the one dog I thought would be alright with the cats quickly turned into another animal I had to worry about.

  “I don’t know if this is going to work,” I half yelled to Randy over the hissing of the cats and the barking of the dogs.

 

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