“You don’t talk about her much,” Ian says. He slides the sugar toward me when I point for it. “How’d she die?”
That familiar feeling of sadness sinks in my stomach as I remember the police call. “She was walking home from work one night. Her car was having problems and she really wasn’t that far from the diner where she worked. The girl was on her phone texting, the cops said. She didn’t even see mom crossing the road—or the red light.”
“I’m sorry,” Ian says. His voice is quiet and low and I can tell he means it. “That’s pretty horrible.”
I nod and crack an egg. “It was. I mean, I was nineteen. I was living on my own, so I’m sure if I’d still been at home, it would have been a whole lot worse. But still.”
“Of course,” he says. And I realize that Ian is one of the only people who can know what it felt like. Our parents died in different ways, but they’re both dead.
“I guess we’re both orphans, huh?” I say, trying to make a small smile.
Ian shrugs. “I do have Lula. What about your grandparents?”
I shake my head and tip in the vanilla. “They were pretty old when they had my mom. Grandpa died when I was like six, and Grandma died only a year later. I don’t really even remember them all that much. They lived in Levan, that’s where my mom grew up.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ian says. I pass the bowl to him and the whisk. He sets to mixing all the liquids together.
I nod as I pull out a baking sheet and the parchment paper. “Yep, my mom grew up there. She got a summer job here in Silent Bend after she graduated high school. She was only here for three months, but I guess that’s when she met Henry.”
It’s depressing, thinking that there was no love between them, no deep meaning, just one night—and they made me.
“I’m sorry you never got to meet him,” Ian says as he passes the bowl back to me. “I hate vampires, but he’s the only one that I ever respected. Didn’t know much of anything about him, but sometimes you can just tell when someone wants to be a good person. Henry never wanted to hurt anyone. He just wanted to be left alone.”
I nod. Maybe that’s what my mom felt when she was around him, that he wanted to be a good person. Maybe that’s why she spent a night with him and later left, not knowing what she carried.
Sometimes the past repeats itself.
“She left Mississippi at the end of the summer and headed to Colorado for school,” I continue the story, trying to push away the complicated feelings I have when it comes to my father. “She wanted to be a vet and they have this amazing school. It was nearly half way through the first semester before she’d admit that she was pregnant. She quit going to school after only one semester there so she could support me.”
“She sounds like a good woman,” Ian says quietly.
“She was.” I pour the wet and the dry together and mix in the coconut and the chocolate chunks.
“You’re lucky.” That tone in his voice carries a lot of weight.
“I’m sorry your parents fought so much,” I say. “I can only imagine.”
“It was ugly,” he says. He hoists himself up onto the counter and crosses his ankles. “I think Mom had all these big dreams of what she’d do with her life. She wanted to be somebody. But then she met my dad, fell enough in love with him, married him, and got pregnant right away with me. She knew she had to take care of me and Dad, and I think she kind of resented that.”
“That’s awful,” I say as I roll the dough into little balls. “Couldn’t she do both? Follow her dreams and have a family?”
“I guess she didn’t feel that way,” Ian says with a shrug. “I don’t think they planned on having more kids, but then Elle came along.”
“I guess we’re both a little broken, huh?” I say as I slide the baking sheet into the oven.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?” he says with a sad smile.
“You’re a strong person, Ian,” I tell him quietly and seriously.
“So are you, Liv.” I look up into his eyes and there’s depth and sincerity there. There’s also a tiredness that’s come from always being what I just told him he was.
He slips off the counter, his thigh sliding down mine in the movement, catching my towel and dropping it to the floor. But Ian’s eyes don’t dip, don’t search my body. They stay locked on my eyes.
Slowly, his hands rise to softly rest on my cheeks. He brushes his left thumb over my cheek. I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it.