Finally, I find it.
A picture of my mom holding a sparkler on the Fourth of July, just before her brain cancer diagnosis, her blue eyes shining, her forearm tattoo faint in the fizzing glow of light. Zooming in, the words become clearer, the block letters spelling out AN INVINCIBLE SUMMER.
I remember asking her about it when I was pretty young, my chubby first-grader fingers tracing the letters over and over again.
All she had said was that it reminded her of the summer she became friends with my dad and Johnny. She never said any more than that. I’m missing the why.
“Morning!” my dad says as he lumbers sleepily into the kitchen.
I put my phone down quickly, instantly transported back into my super not-invincible summer.
“Morning,” I say back, half-heartedly picking at my Cheerios while I eye his dirty work boots. Mom would’ve thrown a fit to see him wearing those anywhere past the front door, but this isn’t going to be our house anymore, so I guess none of that really matters.
“You good?” he asks as he pours some cereal into a bowl, sloshing milk on top of it a moment later.
“Yeah.” I shrug.
“That wasn’t very convincing,” he says, leaning against the counter and pointing his spoon at me.
“I’m great! Never better!” I say, faking a huge smile.
He chuckles at that, scratching his thick beard. “You got work today?”
I shake my head no. Nina kept me late last night, the two of us making a wedding cake for the Mckenzies. In trade, she gave me today off. I’d insisted it was fine, since working kept my mind off everything, but she told me to “go do something fun with my friends.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I don’t exactly have any friends right now.
He nods to my phone, munching noisily on his cereal. “Whatcha looking at?”
I look down to see the picture of my mom still filling up my phone screen. Instinctually, I reach out to tap my home button before he can get a look, but something stops me before I press down. I want answers. And I’m in a bad enough mood today to risk some discomfort if it means I’ll get them.
“Just trying to figure out what this means.” I grab my phone, turning it to show him the picture.
“Mmm,” he says, swallowing his mouthful and averting his eyes to his bowl, his Cheerios suddenly becoming incredibly fascinating.
For a solid minute it’s just crunching. I push a Cheerio around and around in the leftover milk in my bowl, watching it dunk below the surface, reappearing a moment later. I know he remembers the list discussion we had. I know he knows what I want to know.
“An invincible summer,” he says, exhaling. I look up at him, our identical dark eyes meeting. He shrugs and gives me a small smile. “It’s a part of a quote. Some translated lines from this thing a French guy wrote. I think his name was Albert Camel? Camera?”
“Camus?” I ask, practically jumping out of my seat as I remember the worn book I found in my mom’s box of high school memories. A worn book by Albert Camus.
“Yeah, him,” he says, nodding to confirm my suspicions. “I don’t know what the whole quote was. She found it in a book the summer we all became friends. I think in a lot of ways, it kind of set the list in motion. She said the words summed up what she wanted that summer to be for her. A moment in time, in her life, where nothing could touch her, where she could do anything.”
His words give me chills.
He takes a bite of his cereal, talking through a mouthful of Cheerios. “Did you know your mom liked that book so much she actually wanted to go live in France at one point?”
My eyes widen in surprise. I had no idea. “Wait. She what? France?”
“Yeah,” he says, chuckling. “She studied French in high school and was determined to get out of Huckabee one day and board a plane there for good. You know, marry some stylish Parisian and eat baguettes by the Eiffel Tower and shit.”
I laugh, giving him a once-over in his torn jeans and sweat-stained T-shirt.
“Eventually, she just wanted to go to France,” he says, noticing my look and smirking. “And then we got married, and had you, and she realized she had everything she needed right here in Huckabee.”
He gets a distant look in his eyes, a furrow forming on his forehead. Finally, he clears his throat, taking one last solemn bite of his cereal.
“You good?” I ask him as he puts his bowl in the sink, the spoon loudly clattering against the porcelain bottom.
He nods, looking back to give me a small, thin-lipped smile.
“That wasn’t very convincing,” I say.
He laughs, calling out, “I’m great! Never better!” before kissing me on the top of the head and leaving for work.
I look down at the tattoo on my mom’s arm, processing all this new information. An invincible summer. Her invincible summer.
If the quote is the key, I finally know what I have to do.
I don’t even bother to clean the dishes. The second my dad crosses over the threshold, I’m tearing up the stairs to my room. I duck under the edge of my floral bedspread, my hands clawing at the box I’ve hidden under my bed.
I rifle through everything, the manila envelope, the stuffed moose, the soccer T-shirt, until I see the book, nestled into the corner.
I pull it out to see “L’ÉTÉ” is written across the front in a bold red, “par Albert Camus” just underneath it in black.
And… there’s my first problem. As I flip through the yellowing pages, I realize this entire book is in French. With three years of Spanish under my belt, I couldn’t find the quote she’d
