by Jewel E. Ann
I stand corrected. She has no issue telling Gracelyn about her punishment. And for the record … I would never literally kill her for anything. I roll my eyes before closing them and shaking my head.
“Listen, I don’t have a sob story to give you about my terrible childhood. Honestly, I have great parents. It’s not that I never got in trouble. I did. But I never questioned their love for me, the way you should never question your dad’s love for you.”
“He doesn’t want me to grow up. He doesn’t want me to be like other kids. He worries about everything. And … and I feel like I’m his whole world, which I know should be a really great feeling. But it’s not. Why can’t he be happy even if I do something that he doesn’t like? Why can’t he love me if I’m normal and like other kids?”
Ouch!
I flinch. That hurts.
“First, normal doesn’t mean you’re not unique. No two people are exactly alike. Your dad wants …”
I lean closer to the door, but I can’t hear anything. What does Gracelyn think I want? She’s been a parent for two seconds. How can she know what I want for this young girl who has owned every inch of my being for over ten years?
“Your dad wants the best for you. The problem with wanting the best for someone is that it changes. What was best for you yesterday might not be the same today. It’s hard to see changes that are sometimes so subtle. It’s why adults feel like kids grow up in a blink. Trust me, you will always be a tiny, swaddled baby in your dad’s eyes.”
“But I’m not a baby.”
“I know. And he knows it too. Moms and dads don’t like to think that their babies are getting bigger. So we’re always a few steps behind in seeing it. You need to just give your dad that little extra time to see it.”
“What if he never sees it?”
“He will.”
Another thirty seconds of silence follows. I hate this door. I hate feeling so completely shut out of her life when I feel like she needs me the most.
“Now … I want to give you a little advice about boys. Ignore them until they chase you, until they write you a million love letters, until they steal flowers from their mom’s rose garden to give you, until they steal that first kiss and give you the best grin before they tell you they regret nothing.”
Morgan giggles.
This woman … she’s slowly killing me.
“I like that,” Morgan says. “Stolen kisses. I want to plan on stolen kisses.”
“No. Stolen kisses are never planned. And here’s another thing you need to know right now … ten-year-old boys don’t write love letters or steal more than candy at the bank. Gabe’s still trying to figure out how to be Gabe. He’s desperate to hold onto the familiar since his world disappeared a few months ago. And he, too, is trying to figure out where he fits in. Give him a chance to apologize.”
“Will you talk to my dad? I know if I tell him, he’ll take it away.”
“Then you have a weak case. You’re the smartest young girl I have ever met, and I was a pretty smart cookie when I was young, but you’re smarter. So if you think you deserve this chance, then you have to show him with your words, not mine.”
Morgan’s sigh is audible. “Fine.”
That’s my cue to leave before they open the door. I hightail it downstairs into the kitchen.
“Eavesdropping?” Mom asks, filling the halved eggs.
“No.” I grab a drink of water. “Yes.” I grin just before taking a sip.
“I like Gracelyn.”
I nod.
She grins. “Morgan does too.”
“Yeah.” I set the empty glass onto the counter.
“Wrong place, right time.”
I’m inclined to play dumb and make her spell it out for me, but I’m not dumb. “We both know that.”
Mom shrugs, returning her attention to the deviled eggs spread out on several plates on the table. “Knowing won’t stop anything. And it won’t make it any easier to leave.”
Before I can respond, Morgan and Gracelyn come down the stairs, giggling about something. When they see me, their smiles vanish. It’s not the effect I want to have on either one of them. It sucks.
“Well…” Gracelyn nods toward the screen door. “I’m just going to see if my mom needs help finishing up. We can probably have Mr. Hans start the grill soon.”
As she goes to turn, Morgan throws her arms around Gracelyn’s waist.
“Oh …” Gracelyn says on a startle.
“Thank you,” Morgan whispers.
“You are in trouble …” my mom whispers in a singsong voice so only I can hear her.
“You’re welcome.” She hugs Morgan back and kisses the top of her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Gracelyn
“How did it go?” Mom asks when I walk into the kitchen.
I answer her with an unexpected hug from behind like the one Morgan gave me.
She pauses her stirring of the brownie batter. “Whoa … what is this all about?”
“I wanted to be a mom,” I whisper in her ear, resting my chin on her shoulder. “Brandon and I were going to have two kids, a dog, and goldfish. I wanted the chance to be awesome like you. Maybe not with the apron, but still pretty awesome.”
She laughs on a tiny sob, resting the spoon in the bowl and covering my hands with hers.
“I hate that Brandon is gone. I hate that Kyle and Emily died. I hate that Gabe lost the two most important people in his life. But…” I draw in a shaky breath “…I’m going to love him like a mom would love her son. I’m going to give him everything I would have given my own children. This is the most heartbreaking way to come into motherhood, but I’m going to embrace what I’ve been given. I’m going to make you proud.”
She squeezes my hands. “Oh, Gracelyn … there hasn’t been a single day of your life that I haven’t been proud of you. And I’ve always known you’d be a wonderful mom. Don’t ever doubt that … and don’t ever doubt yourself.”
“We’re here for the meat,” Nate and his dad stop at the entrance to the kitchen, eyes wide.
I release my mom, and we wipe our tears and put on our best smiles.
“Is … everything okay?” Nate asks.
“Just girls crying over girl things. You two boys wouldn’t understand.” Mom winks at them before returning her attention to the brownies.
I pull the tray of prepared hamburgers from the fridge, finding it hard in my emotional state to meet Nate’s gaze. “Are the other two guys starting the grill?” I sniffle, in bad need of a tissue.
Nate takes the tray from me and hands it to his dad. “Yes. It’s ready to go.”
I stare at the floor, knowing my eyes are red. If I glance up, I’ll start crying again. Where did all of these emotions come from?
My breath catches when his hand cups my face, lifting my chin, forcing me to look at him. His dad and my mom are in plain sight. They’re seeing this. Nate doesn’t look at them. I don’t look at them.
His thumb brushes along my wet cheek, and he smiles.
Fuck you, Brandon.
Why doesn’t he say something? I’m falling in love with another man—not like I fell in love with Andy, not like I fell in love with Michael. I’m falling in love with Nate the way I fell in love with Brandon.
Heart first.
Slowly.
Completely.
Brandon never cared what anyone thought. He never hid his feelings for me, his affection, his love. Brandon wrote me love letters. He stole flowers from his mom’s garden to give to me.
Nate’s going to write me letters too. With his hand on my face, there’s no doubt they will be love letters. He steals kisses. He doesn’t hide moments like this, even though we have every reason to hide it.
If I think for one second that Nathaniel Hunt isn’t going to unintentionally break my heart when he leaves just as much as that young man in the hospital bed did years ago when he took his last breath, then I’m fucking delusional.
; This is going to hurt.
“Gabe and Morgan are outside talking. You did good, Elvis.” He releases my face and turns toward his dad, who eyes us with a slack jaw and unblinking gaze.
“I’ll get the door,” he says to his dad.
David closes his mouth, swallows hard, and nods once before following his son out the door.
I glance up at my mom.
She shakes her head while walking the pan of brownies to the oven.
“What?” I ask.
“You know what.”
“He’s leaving. I’m staying. I know.”
“That’s not it.” She shuts the oven and sets the timer.
“Then what?”
Her gaze falls to my wrist as she nods once.
My other hand crosses my body to cover my watch and, more specifically, the bracelet she’s eyeing.
“You’re not ready.”
I fiddle with the clasp. “It’s been nearly twenty years.”
“Tell that to the bracelet that you refuse to take off.”
“I take it off.”
“Have you gone a whole day without wearing it?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Well …” She opens the fridge and pulls out pitchers of iced tea and lemonade. “When you go twenty-four hours without wearing it or thinking about it … then you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“That man who had his hand on your face like he thinks you’re the most precious thing in the world, second only to his daughter … and maybe his mother. I’m not sure yet.”
“Let me go back to my original statement—he’s leaving and I’m staying.”
“Is that why you’re still wearing the bracelet? Would you take it off if he were staying or if you thought you could pack up Gabe and follow them to Wisconsin?”
I start to say something but clamp my jaw shut and deflate a little because I’m not sure how to respond. My heart and brain aren’t in sync on this yet.
“It’s okay, Gracelyn. It’s not simple. Your decisions are no longer just about you. Nate’s decisions are not just about him. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it would be to develop and navigate a new relationship at your age, with Gabe new in your life and a new love interest living halfway across the country.” She starts washing the dishes, and I grab a towel to dry.
“Maybe he’s practice. Maybe he’s been brought into your life to help you let go a little more. I don’t really believe in your three-strike theory, your man ban.” She glances over at me and grins. “I think your heart will one day be ready to love another man the way you loved Brandon. Hearts are meant to beat and keep us alive. They’re also there to love, not sit on a shelf in timeout, or in your case, a strikeout. When the time is right, get back in the game and let that heart of yours fall in love again. Okay?”
It already has …
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Gabe and Morgan laugh and play like nothing happened earlier today. Kids don’t know the art of holding grudges quite as well as grown-ups.
They wait for the fireworks to start while eating brownies and ice cream. Mr. Hans and our dads sit on Nate’s deck and drink more beer. Mom and Shauna hang out inside, making a couple cups of decaf to have with their brownies.
I stand at the water’s edge in my bare feet, feeling mesmerized by the ebb and flow of the soft tide over my red painted toes.
“Walk with me?”
I turn toward Nate, pinning my blowing hair behind my ears while glancing past him. Nobody’s paying any attention to us. Mr. Hans and our dads are watching Gabe and Morgan.
“Yeah.” I smile and start walking down the beach.
Nate’s hand finds mine as the horizon morphs into beautiful shades of orange, red, and purple. “The secret … it’s the phone isn’t it?”
My head whips up, eyes wide.
He doesn’t look at me. His gaze tracks the miles of coastline before us. “I was walking past her room late one night, and something was glowing from under her sheet. She fell asleep with it in her bed, and the screen was lighting up with a notification from Hunter asking if I’d found out about the cellphone yet.”
“And you didn’t say anything …” I shake my head. “She’s a wreck. Scared to death to tell you. Why not put her out of her misery?”
“Just like you said, she needs to find the words to just be honest with me.”
“Oh my gosh!” I shove him. “You were listening to our conversation.”
He chuckles, his bare feet splashing into the water before correcting himself and taking my hand again. “Of course, I was listening. Knowledge is power.”
“And trust?”
He shakes his head. “Trust is fragile. You have to be careful with it. It’s easy to break someone’s trust, even if you love them. I’m not saying it’s not an important component of a relationship, but it can’t be everything. I was an ornery child, who occasionally got into fights and told many white lies. My parents didn’t always trust me, but they always loved me. They forgave my mistakes and my lies. You have to treat trust like modeling clay that can be broken and repaired a million times, not like a priceless vase that belonged to your dead grandmother.”
“So … Andy, the guy who cheated on me, should I have forgiven him and let him earn my trust back?”
Nate’s lips twist. “That’s not my question to answer. Trust is a leap of faith. I think if you wanted to trust him, if you wanted to believe the words from his mouth, then you would have given him a second chance. Here’s the thing … you have to love the person more than you hate the lie. There’s not a lie Morgan could tell me that I would hate more than I love her.”
“What will you say to her when she tells you about the phone? Will you tell her you’ve known?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll just have to see what feels right in the moment. Now, are you going to tell me why they had a falling out?”
“Are you going to say anything to her if I do tell you?”
“No. All is well with them now. No need to say anything.”
“Okay then. She asked him to follow her on TikTok, and he wouldn’t because he only follows other boys. When she asked why, he expressed his displeasure with girls his age. He said they were annoying. She asked him if he thought she was annoying. He answered like a typical ten-year-old boy … basically picking the wrong time to blurt out his true feelings. And that’s when she loudly declared her hatred for him.”
“Ahh, that explains her request to go home early.”
I slow my pace. “Go home early?”
“Yes. She wouldn’t tell me why she had the outburst. She wouldn’t let me in her room. And she said she wouldn’t come out of her room until I agreed to take her back to Madison earlier.”
“W-well … what did you say?”
“She’s out of her room. What do you think I said?”
I want to vomit. I knew this was coming, just not so soon. It’s like being told you have a year to live and having that reduced to one month without any warning. My heart and my brain have a lot of shit to sort through in preparation for saying goodbye.
“What’s the new departure date?”
“Two weeks.”
Forcing my feet to keep moving, when my knees want to buckle under the news, I nod slowly. “Two weeks,” I whisper because I can barely breathe.
“I thought it was just because of her argument with Gabe—a knee-jerk reaction. Once she started to make her case, and I realized it had very little to do with him, I couldn’t argue with her reasoning.”
Swallowing past the suffocating swelling of emotion in my throat, the blistering ache in my chest, and the nausea swirling in my stomach, I act my age. I act like the mom I now am. “Good for her for articulating her feelings and making a case for what she wants.”
“Yeah …” He sighs with as much believability to his words as I infused into mine. Maybe the most important part of being an adult with a child is the ability to say what needs to be s
aid, the strength to do what needs to be done, and the bravery to smile like it’s not secretly killing you.
“She wants to help choose the house we’re going to buy and have plenty of time to shop for school clothes and supplies. She wants to paint her new room and visit Jenna’s grave. Did I mention my wife was cremated? When Morgan expressed her desire to visit her mom’s grave … as if it will be the most important moment of her life … I didn’t have the heart to tell her. So I bought a plot and headstone. Her dad arranged it several years ago. I haven’t even seen it yet.
“And she wants to spend time with Jenna’s family—her dad and Jenna’s sister and brother. My daughter can’t wait to grow roots in the garden that gave her life. During our eight years abroad, it’s all I wanted—to one day go home and have her embrace the life she can’t remember leaving behind. But …”
I let go of his hand and hug my arms to my body, gaze following my sandy feet. “No buts. It’s a beautiful plan. The perfect end to an incredible, once in a million lifetimes’ journey.”
“You’re the but.”
I grunt a laugh. “I’m not the but. We talked about this.” Here it goes … the responsible adult in me is sucking in a big breath of bravery to say the right thing … to do the right thing.
“We did. And you said you didn’t have the emotional capacity to fall in love with me.”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
“How has that worked out for you?”
“Fine.”
“Fine? Really?” He steps in front of me, halting my steps. His finger lifts my chin. “Because I’m not fine.”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Say the right thing.
Do the right thing.
And paste on that fucking unbearable smile.
Gabe is mine. He is my new world. I had forty-one years to get my shit together, find love, and have two kids, a dog, and goldfish. I couldn’t make it happen. This is my new life, and while I never would have asked for it, or wished for it, I am going to embrace it.
