Iridian

08. CLOSURE

.memory (fragment #7)

Julian pulled me to my feet, practically dragging me down the stairs to the kitchen. There was no more postponing the inevitable. The laughter grew louder as we approached, and I coached my expression, willing it to be happy. For these few hours, I would do my best to forget who I had become and why I was truly here, but revert to my old self and enjoy their company.

The scent of a barbeque wafted through the open door of the patio, mingling with the cool evening air. The sun was setting and the external garden lights had been switched on. Faris was busy handling the barbecue as my mother watched, a contented expression on her face. Every now and again they would exchange a secret smile in between laughing at the tales Juno was regaling them with.

Faris was a lightly-built man, with a mass of white hair and a face that showed remnants of care and worry over the years, but also had plenty of laugh lines. He was a widower with no children. He had met my mother on one of her hiking trips, and it had taken a lot of persistence on his part to get my mother to go out with him.

I understood her reluctance. After Matthew, she'd met no one who could make her forget the ghost of him, and those relationships never lasted long. I think she had given up on men by the time Faris came along, and I was glad that he did. He was the one who had finally managed to mend the loneliness and distrust that Matthew had scarred her with.

She stood with him now, her dark hair drawn back into a simple knot, years of strain lifted off her face and it did assuage my guilt a little—knowing that Faris would be around to comfort her when I was gone. The last thing I needed was my mother thinking that everyone in her life eventually abandoned her, which is a fear that I was certain still lingered within her.

Juno was busy tossing a salad, and making a slight mess of it as she related campus tales to them. She'd changed her hairstyle, the mass of long dark curls now shorn to just below her ears. Juno and Julian were so dissimilar in personality yet uncannily similar in appearance. The eyes were the same. The jaw was the same. The smile was the same. There was no way anyone could mistake her for anything but Julian's sister.

Yet, where Julian preferred the wild outdoors and his books, Juno's idea of "outdoors" was a eating a burger in the streets watching a busker rattle his drum, when she wasn't busy tinkering with her car. Most of time you only got to see Juno's legs since the rest of her was under the car, and when she came out, she was usually unrecognizable beneath all the gunk of oil and grime.

Today, she was her usual chatty, slightly hyper self and I was wondering how much of the salad was going to be left when she was done tossing it. Lucas had posed himself lazily astride the window sill that sat above the kitchen counters, his paws hanging loosely. He perked up when Julian appeared with me trailing behind, hopped off the sill and sauntered over to us.

"Look who's here," Julian announced to the room as Lucas began winding his way around our legs to lean against my calf, purring. Lucas had always had a strong sense of ownership over each of us. I think he owned all of us, not only Julian, from the day I saved him from a ditch in rainy weather. He'd been a tiny little kitten then, not the heavy, slightly over-fed fellow he was now. The only reason he hadn't turned into a round, immovable ball of fluff was probably because he liked to wander the neighbourhood a lot. I bent down to pet him, using him as an excuse to compose my expression before I faced the others. Lucas was more than pleased to be my excuse.

Finally, I straightened, and said, "How's the barbecue? Smells nice..."

There was a split second moment of silence—I saw an odd expression cross my mother's face—then Juno squealed, dropped the salad bowl and rushed over to my side to envelope me a hug, at the same time my mother and Faris both greeted me happily, both commenting that I looked a little thin and pale and ought to eat more.