The Last Time

Chapter 24

I'd been home for a few days to celebrate Soleil's birthday. It was refreshing and fun, but I needed to get back to real life in Kitalo City. There were important things waiting for me, the most important being paperwork I needed to read through and sign for a restaurant I'd decided to buy with the guys.

We were all growing older and with two of us already settled down and starting families, there were things all four of us were working on, like making sure we understood the value of the money we were making and securing our futures with investments and properties, saving more than we spent and keeping our taxes updated and accurate. It was boring, mind numbing stuff, but it would be worth it years from now when we were retired and still had people to provide for. Being the breadwinner in my family, I'd been lucky enough to get a headstart in all of this, but that didn't mean I'd stopped learning.

I was rushing through packing my bag, haphazardly rolling clothes and throwing things like my toothbrush and body lotion into a corner of the bag and calling it a day. I could hardly wait to get back to my place and finish the paperwork in time to fit in some much needed quality time with Ketura before she left for a weekend away with her girls. I was throwing the last of my things into my bag when my mom slowly made her way into my bedroom.

"Leaving already, mon fils?" she said after running her hands over the open bag I was stuffing rolled up clothes into.

"Yes, Maman." I said. "It's been fun, but my responsibilities are out there waiting for me."

"So is your wife " she said with a smirk that I did a double take at. I hadn't told her yet about the three month agreement Ketura and I had gotten into.

"My wife?" I chuckled. "Maman, what are you talking about?"

"Don't act like you don't know!" she laughed. "The last time you came home, you were sulking and saddened by the continuous back and forth between you and Ketura. Now, you come home and I can hear in your voice that you're smiling more, you're less stressed, more free. The last time you were like this was when you first met Ketura."

I smiled at my intuitive mother. The one thing that the blindness had given her was the uncanny ability to engage all her other senses to understand the world around her. She didn't need eyes to really see the people she loved, she heard us, felt us, experienced us in the most intimate ways. She paid attention to every rise and dip in our voices. She measured our words by their weight, by the amount of confidence or hesitation in them. She roamed our faces with her fingers because she knew we couldn't fake a smile if we tried, she held our hands when she noticed we were lonely, hugged us close when we were hurting, danced around the house with us in bouts of hysterical laughter and a mess of stumbling limbs when there was something to celebrate. There was no deceit in the interactions she had with us because our emotions were tangible to her.

Sitting down and hiking an arm over her shoulder, I caught her up on everything she'd missed in the meandering story that was mine and Ketura's journey to love. She expressed sympathy for our baby with sorrowful eyes and she smiled confidently when I told her about the three month chance I'd been given.