Finley Embraces Heart and Home by Anyta Sunday
I’d love to tearfully absorb you in every way and I’d love to play with your hair, read your eyes, feel disarmed in your presence. I’d love to experience a seizure of full-silenced tenderness with you
K. Mansfield,Letter
This time when we rush toward each other and embrace, it’s different. It’s more than joy, and bliss, and relief, it’s something deeper. A need, an anxiety.
It’s breathing oxygen again.
It’s all our memories colliding, trying to speak all the things that have gone unsaid between us.
It’s hope. It’s fear.
It’s wild and all-encompassing, and I cannot let him go.
He drives me home and rushes me upstairs. We’re home before Mum and Tom, who have some important appointment or other. I don’t care. We’re laughing. He tells me to get in the shower and wash the plane off me already.
He grabs my hand on the way down to see the rest of the family. He squeezes. I know later, we’ll awkwardly spill out every feeling we’ve ever had. I know he’ll let me sleep off the jetlag. He doesn’t know I’ll kiss him first.
There’s Mum and Tom and I have no idea how we’ll do this, but there’s no ground under my feet. I’m falling. We’ll just . . .
We’ll run away if we have to.
He lets my hand go at the last stair and adjusts his cap. Then adopts a careless swagger as he enters the dining room.
Mum and Tom are sitting on the bench in an alcove near the open windows. They’re talking quietly together; Tom has a hand on Mum’s thigh and rubs it. Warm breezes glide around the room, and yet, I can’t shake a shiver.
They see me and spring from the bench. Welcome home, Mum says in Māori. Tom steps forward and hugs me, like he’s missed me too. It might be—it is—the first time we’ve ever hugged.
I feel awkward returning it and quickly step away.
Mum’s arms take the place of his. She clings to me for a long time, studies my face and tells me I’ve grown to be a really handsome man.
Ethan hangs back, watching. There’s cake on the table and Tom ushers us to sit. Have a slice.
They’re being nice. Too nice.
Halfway through my piece of carrot cake, Tom clears his throat. “There’s something we’d like to share with you.”
That prickly shiver is back.
“We’ve been waiting,” Mum says. “To tell you both at the same time.”
Ominous.
Ethan has stiffened beside me too.
Tom beams at us.
“Kua hapu ahau,” Mum whispers. I feel it pulling Ethan away from me.
“Your mum is pregnant.”