Father and Son

Tommy pushed his hands further into his coat pockets, though they were already as far as they could go. It was colder than he wanted it to be, than it had been for a long time, and he wasn't prepared. He concentrated on his steps. Left foot, right foot, left. He only needed a few more to get home.

Tommy's breath formed a warm cloud around him as he made his way down the street. He passed house after house, white-picket fences and families, until he came up to his own. His mother's Honda was already in the driveway. Or maybe it had never left. He'd gone to school early, too early to know.

"I'm home," Tommy said, his voice echoing throughout the house. He shrugged his coat off and hung it on the rack by the door, but left his baseball cap on. He tugged it low over his eyes out of habit and waited for his mother to appear.

"You're home," his mother said, though that much was obvious.

He heard her before he saw her, but when he did, he wished he hadn't. Her eyes were rimmed red and her cheeks were puffy. He could tell the smile on her face was forced and thought she would look better without it. Sad, but better.

"School was alright?" she said.

"Yeah, Mom. Same as always."

Mia heard the front door open and the sound of her son's voice. She quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and pushed a smile onto her face. She was supposed to be strong, to be there for Tommy now that her husband couldn't.

She made her way to the front of the house and called out to her son with relief.

"You're home," she said, grateful that the house would have a little more life in it with him there. The quiet of the house made everything harder to forget. "School was alright?"

"Yeah, mom. Same as always," Tommy said. His baseball cap covered his eyes as he spoke.

Mia couldn't help picturing her husband. Tommy looked so much like Charlie, like how he had been when Mia had first met him all those years ago, that old hat almost as old as the memory.

"Please, take off the hat," his mother said, reaching up to pull it off. "I haven't seen your face in months."

Tommy backed out of her reach and pulled the cap down further. His ears stuck out over the sides, so much like his father's had done.

Mia was transfixed. Charlie was right in front of her, eighteen years old and happy and unconcerned with the future. She sucked in a breath and waited for his ghost to float away, to leave her just as quickly as it had come. But it didn't. It only morphed a little. Changed here and there, and became Tommy.

She couldn't take her eyes off his young face, a face that seemed to look much more like her husband than her. She wanted to try pulling off his hat again so she could see Tommy's eyes, the eyes that were the only part of him that she felt came from her. She thought, maybe, if she could see his entire face, she wouldn't be forced into the past so often. She would remember Tommy and being a mother. She would pluck up the courage to get in her car and drive to work. She would stop seeing her husband in Tommy, stop getting lost in the shape of his face, the way he walked, the sound of his laugh. All so much like his father, too similar, like she'd lost her husband, but not really. He lingered in the house, in Tommy, teasing her with the life that she thought she would have with him.

Tommy looked up, his eyes escaping the safety of the rim of his hat unintentionally, and met his mother's eyes. Wide, glassy, and looking past him into whatever memory he'd forced on her this time. He cursed the color of his hair and the curve of his jaw and the way he looked so much like his father. He knew it hurt his mother to look at him, no matter how hard she tried to pretend it didn't, and he couldn't help but wonder if his presence made her feel like she was losing his father all over again.