Nobody Ends Up Dead in a Bathtub, Everyone Keeps Their Organs

Chapter 21

Leo knew how his parents liked him to dress. He wore the clothes his mother had bought him for Christmas a few years ago, though his shoulders had grown almost a little too broad for the top, and he had become a little too tall for the jeans.

He walked into a swanky bistro and towards the tiny table his parents were already seated at.

His mother hugged him, awkwardly and one-sided. He smelled her perfume—the same perfume she had been wearing for as long as he was alive. Her thin arms didn't provide any warmth or comfort. The bones of her wrists dug into his back.

His father just looked at him closely with a tight smile. Leo didn't know what he was looking for, but he hoped he wouldn't find it.

"How've you been?" His mother asked. "How are your classes?"

"Classes are fine," he said.

"Doing well in them?"

"Uh. Yeah. I'm on track to finish Magma Cum Laude."

His mother laid her hand on her chest, over her black sweater. Fabricated pride welled up in her smile. Her eyes were blank.

"Good. Good," his father said.

He rubbed his hands between his knees. His fingers were cold. Damián told him that if he exercised more routinely, he would have better circulation and wouldn't be so cold in the middle of the day. But Damián exercised all the time, and he still shivered at the beginning of the fall. So, Leo didn't quite believe him.

Silence settled over the table. Leo hadn't kept up with whatever his parents were doing. A part of him told himself he was a terrible child. They raised him. He should have at least checked their Facebook pages. Another part reminded him that his parents didn't deserve it. At the moment, the first part was dominating.

A waiter took their orders, smiling like he didn't recognize the tension.

"So, are you still retiring next year?" Leo asked his father.

His father nodded. "May."

"Oh. That'll be nice. Do you have anything planned?"

His mother waved her hands. "His plans are to sit at home and watch birds. I asked him to take me on a vacation, but he said we'd just have to wait and see."

"Aw, dad. Take her on a vacation."

"I didn't say we couldn't go," his father said. "I just said we'd have to see how things are going."

"What kinds of things?"

Leo's mother stared through him for a moment and then looked down at her hands on the table. Her wedding band, a dull gold, looked almost too big on her spindly finger. Her engagement ring still sat fine below it.

She had had another ring when Leo was growing up. There were two stones that sat side-by-side. A diamond for Damián, the spring child. And a garnet for Leo, the winter child. He had had the vaguest of memories of Damián tracing the stones with his finger when he was still young, pressing down on each cut and looping his finger around the gold band.

On the rare occasions she took it off and left it at home, Damián would slip it onto his pinky finger. Leo would watch how it caught the light as Damián held up his hand to admire it.

She wore it every day until everything happened with Damián. Leo never knew what she did with it, and he never asked.

"Have you heard back from any more schools?" his mother asked.

"Not yet," Leo said.

"Where are you applying?"

"Almost everywhere I can afford." Everywhere Damián could afford. "Mostly in-state schools, but I've sent some applications out-of-state."