Songs For Your Mother Gordon MacMillan (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📖

on a small boy. Being an inexperienced father, barely knowing what I am doing most of the time and struggling with the basics is hard enough without dealing with this. Only, that’s the thing. I have to deal with it. I think that’s what being a family means. You have to be able to face it all, no matter how much you want to look away. That also means I cannot deny Luke this. This is something we need to do and need to do together. All I can do is be there for him and catch him if he falls.

It’s like Luke can read this, and he tells Georgia, ‘My mommy is sick, and she might not get better.’

‘Sometimes they do, don’t they, Johnny,’ Georgia says.

‘Sometimes they do,’ I say.

Chapter 23

In the morning I dress Luke in his smartest clothes, a sky-coloured blue shirt and chinos, and we go down for breakfast. I sit looking at my phone until it rings a few minutes after nine. Josie arranges to meet us outside the hotel in thirty minutes.

Josie pulls up in an old brown Jeep Cherokee with faded paintwork and a dusty coat of dirt. Dressed in jeans, a red t-shirt and a soft black jacket, Josie steps out of the car. She pushes aviator sunglasses up into her blonde hair, which is tied loosely back.

Luke gives a high-pitched scream and runs towards her. Josie drops to one knee, throws her arms around him and pulls him close. Luke does the same, wrapping himself around her body.

‘Luke, baby, I missed you so much,’ she says.

‘I missed you too,’ Luke says.

I make the introductions and everyone says their hellos. Before Luke can introduce Georgia, she does this herself.

‘I’m Luke’s best friend,’ Georgia says.

‘Well, I’m so glad he has a best friend,’ Josie tells her.

We say our goodbyes to the others, and I reach out to take Luke’s hand. He holds both his up to me as if he wants me to pick him up. He has never done this before on the few occasions we have been in a car together in London. I wonder if this is what he did with Lauren when they were taking a drive? I bend down and scoop him up and he waves at TSP, Georgia and Susan.

‘Thanks so much for coming along. You know I appreciate it more than I can say. It’s made all the difference,’ I say.

‘Wouldn’t have missed it. I think we all needed to be here,’ TSP says.

The sense that different parts of my life are coming together fills me when TSP says this. The roads that once forked are reconnecting, and are one again. It is the same road that Will and I started on six years ago, and I realise we are almost at the end.

Susan steps forward and takes Luke’s hand. She smiles at him, and she gives him a big wet kiss on the cheek.

‘For luck,’ she says.

‘We’re thinking of you,’ TSP says.

I put Luke in the back seat and buckle his seatbelt. I walk around to the far side of the car and get in the passenger seat. I put my sunglasses on. There are wrappers and half-empty bottles of water on the seat and more on the floor.

‘Sorry about the mess, I spend a lot of time on the road and never quite get around to cleaning it,’ Josie says.

‘It has that lived-in feel,’ I say.

‘On the plus side, I have a pretty cool road trip playlist. It’s more of a Lauren list really,’ she says and turns in her seat, looks back to Luke and reaches out a hand to him. ‘You’ll know all of these. Are you going to sing along with me? They’re some of Mommy’s favourites.’

Josie turns the key in the ignition and taps the iPhone plugged into the stereo and the first bars of the Joni Mitchell track ‘A Case of You’ start to play.

We drive south out of San Francisco, beginning our fifty-mile or so trip to San Jose. As I look over my shoulder, I can see Lauren sitting next to Luke, and she is singing out the words, and she is smiling away. It’s like we are all on this road trip together.

Stirred by the music, Luke comes to life now and again and calls out the words, grinning himself silly as we all join in.

I want to say something to Lauren and I hesitate, thinking that Josie might think I’ve lost my mind, and I realise that’s a possibility. Lauren must be reading my thoughts as she tells me that it’s going to be okay.

I’m always going to be around, even when I’m not, you know that, right? she says.

I nod at this and, when I look back again, she is gone.

Most of all, what I want to hear from Josie is about Luke. I want to know about all those moments that I missed and that Josie was there for. I want to know what he was like as a baby and how he slept. I want to know when he first crawled and learnt to walk and his first words. I want to hear about the birthdays and the milestones. I don’t care what it is. Any detail will do. I ask Josie to tell me as much as she can remember. I want to hear it all—more than that, anything that connects me more to Luke.

As the National sing ‘Terrible Love’, Josie turns down the music and tells me what it was like from the start.

‘I was there when he was born, ten hours of labour, and he cried and cried when he came out. Tiny with huge lungs. After that, he didn’t cry much at all. He was so content. I loved holding him, and he made Lauren happy,’ Josie says.

Luke sits quietly in the back as we drive down the 101, all winter sunglasses and reflection, with a smile on his face, as he listens to Josie tell stories