Time seemed to slow down to a crawl as we spun out of control. The screams were replaced by the sound of crunching metal as the car came to such a bone-jarring halt that my head bashed into the driver-side window, causing stars to burst before my eyes.
It felt like an eternity passed before my cloudy vision cleared and the ringing in my ears finally stopped. “Addy, baby…” I groaned in pain, the sound of my own voice ricocheting through my skull, making it feel like my head was about to explode.
She didn’t answer. Pain gave way to hysteria when I looked toward the passenger seat at my wife’s unmoving body. “Addison! Addy, baby, wake up!”
Ignoring the bolts of agony slicing through my body, I struggled against the seatbelt, futilely. “Addy! WAKE UP!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, fighting in vain to try and get to her. “Help! Somebody help us! Baby, please wake up. Don’t leave me, Addy! Please, don’t leave me!” I turned my head, frantically, hoping to see the headlights of an oncoming car while I continued to shout. “Someone help us! Please!”
My screams gave way to sobs as I tried so desperately to get to my wife. “Please, baby. Please.” My voice cracked and I reached out, straining with all my strength, but I couldn’t get to her.
People say that your life flashes before your eyes in near death experiences, but that wasn’t what happened to me.
Time slowed to a crawl. An unbearable, anguished crawl, until it finally…
Just stopped.
1
Lilly
Staring up at the ceiling fan, I counted each rotation of the blades as I watched them go round and round, hoping the repeated motion would help to shut my tired brain down. Sadly, it was pointless. There wasn’t anything that could calm my mind enough for sleep to take hold.
I couldn’t turn any of it off. And what was worse, there was no one I could talk to about it. My best friend, the one and only real friend I ever had, was with her husband in Denver where they had their second home during the football season so they could be together while he played.
I missed her like crazy during the months she was gone, but that did nothing to take away from the happiness I felt that she was finally with the only man she’d ever loved.
Unfortunately for me, I was going through something in my life. Something so heavy I wasn’t sure I could bear the weight all on my own, and the only sounding board I’d ever had was gone. And telling Eliza over the phone that my father was dying and there was nothing that could be done about it wouldn’t have done me any good. Not when I needed someone to lean on when I broke down in tears, not when I needed a designated driver to make a store run when I drowned my sorrows in every bottle of wine I owned and was in desperate need of more.
No, I couldn’t have that conversation over the phone. And even though I knew she’d be a rock for me, I couldn’t bring myself to pour out the painful emotions rolling around inside of me on my mother. She was suffering enough as it was, knowing she only had, at best, a handful of months with the man she’d loved for as long as she could remember.
I finally gave up on sleep, but once I did, the conversation I’d had with my parents earlier that day wormed its way to the forefront of my mind.
I thought it was business as usual when my mother called asking me to make the drive from Pembrooke to Jackson Hole for dinner. It wasn’t a far drive, honestly, but I was usually so busy with the dance studio that it was hard finding the time to see them on a regular basis. That was why we scheduled dinner together at their house at least twice a month.
I should have known something was wrong when my mother called a week early and requested I come, claiming that she and my father had something they needed to discuss with me. But I was so wrapped up in everything I still needed to do before I began gearing up for the Winter Showcase, I didn’t stop to think how odd of a request it really was.
They knew how time consuming running my own business was, and weren’t ones to ever make requests like that. I should have known. I should have paid attention to something other than myself. I shouldn’t have been so selfish. Maybe if I’d have been around more, paid more attention to my father’s declining health, I could have done something, like force him to stop being so stubborn and go to the doctor before it was too late.
But I didn’t. And now I had to suffer the consequences.
“Prostate cancer? What are you talking about? You can’t have cancer,” I declared in disbelief. There was no way my father was sick. Cancer was something that happened to other families, not mine. And with the exception of the past six months or so, my father had always been the epitome of good health.
My mother made a soft noise, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off my father’s earnest expression. If I saw my mother crying, I knew I’d lose it. And it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.
“Sweetheart—” he started, but I wouldn’t let him finish. I couldn’t. Because that would make what he was saying a reality.
“No. No! You don’t have cancer. That’s not possible. You need to go get a second opinion.”
Dad’s hand came to rest on top of my clenched fist where it was resting on the wooden table and squeezed. “Lilly Flower, I’ve already been to three different doctors. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but it’s true.”
I pulled in a large breath and worked to get a hold of the tears that wanted to fall. “Okay,” I finally replied on an exhale. “All right. So we’ll talk to them about treatment. Maybe you can do chemotherapy or radiation or something. There has to be something they can do. You can beat this, right?”
“Oh honey.” My mom’s voice broke as she pushed her chair back and came toward me, leaning down and wrapping her arms around me from behind to hold me as Dad shook his head in defeat.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t say that!” I shouted, finally losing the battle and letting the tears slide down my cheeks. “You can fight this, Daddy. You’re the strongest man I know!”
My father’s eyes grew red-rimmed as he swallowed audibly. Mom’s hold loosened as she moved around me and crouched beside my chair. “The cancer had already spread by the time they found it. Treatment would give your father a little more time, honey, but that’s it, maybe a few extra months if we were lucky. The quality of life wouldn’t be worth it. The chemo would be intense and would make him so sick most of the time those few extra months wouldn’t count for much anyway.”
“But—” I had to force that one word past the golf-ball-sized lump in my throat.
“I don’t want you to remember me like that, Lilly Flower. I don’t want your last memory of me being this sickly, bedridden man with no hair. I want to go out like I’ve lived. On my own terms. Please tell me you understand.”
What could I possibly say to that? My father looked resigned to his fate, but still scared at the same time. I wasn’t lying when I said he was the strongest man I knew. He was. But I could see the fear in his eyes. And I refused to do or say anything that could cause him any more pain.
Just as he had my entire life, Dad realized what I was about to do before I did it and stood, braced for impact as I moved from my chair and launched myself into his waiting arms. “I understand,” I cried into his chest, because I did. I understood him not wanting to go through a grueling treatment for a chance at a few short measly months that wasn’t even a guarantee.
I didn’t like it, but I understood.
And as I stood there, letting my father’s button-down shirt soak up my tears and I memorized his spicy, woodsy scent, a scent I’d known since childhood, I let reality wash over me.
I was going to lose my father far too soon.
Squeezing my eyes closed against the fresh onslaught of tears that threatened, I inhaled deeply through my nose then blew it out slowly before sitting up in my bed. It was only four in the morning, but I knew of only one thing that would temporarily allow my mind to stop swirling around. It had been my escape since I was a little girl. And now, more than ever, I needed to lose myself
.
Letting the light of the moon shining through my bedroom window guide me, I brushed my teeth and threw my hair up in a messy bun on the top of my head before dressing in a pair of black dance shorts and a tight burgundy cami. With my iPhone in hand, I crept through my dark apartment and took the stairs that would lead to my dance studio below.
I needed my music. I needed dancing to wash away the sadness that filled my veins.
Hooking my phone up to the dock I kept down in the main studio, I scrolled through my playlists. When the opening beat of Kaleo’s “Way Down We Go” started playing, I began to move, letting my body take over. I danced until one song bled into another, until sweat poured down my face and my muscles screamed from the exertion. I danced until the minutes ticked into hours and my mind cleared of every thought except executing the next turn or leap; until the darkness outside the window of the main studio was forced from the sky by the early morning sun.
My mind remained calm for the first time in twelve hours, but the reminder of everything that was happening was still there, and the dull ache in my chest hadn’t disappeared completely. As the song on my iPhone changed, the music becoming softer and sadder, I finally allowed myself to let it all out. I cried for my father and what he was going through. I cried for myself at what I was going to lose. I cried because for the first time in a really long time I was reminded of just how lonely I was. I cried because there was no one I could lean on to share my burden.
Music and dancing was all I really had, so as long as my body allowed it, I was going to pour my anger and frustrations and pain out the only way I knew how.
2
Quinn
I woke with a start, jolted out of my recurring nightmare when all the air whooshed from my lungs. It took several seconds for the lingering dregs of the nightmare to let go of my conscious and for sleep to leave me all together, but once it did, I realized it wasn’t the dream that rendered me breathless.
That was courtesy of my daughter and her flailing limbs.
Once the nightmare finally released me all together, the pained sound of Addy’s voice was no longer at the forefront of my mind. I let out a heavy sigh and turned my head on the pillow to stare at my daughter as she slept next to me. I managed to find a smile as I watched her for a while. The only time I ever got to smile genuinely in the past three and a half years was when I looked at her. There was no sorrow on her soft, sleeping face, and there were times I couldn’t help but envy that. Some days I would have given anything to be free of the pain that always lingered in the recesses of my mind.
That familiar ache in my heart, along with the lingering pain in my body thanks to the accident, was a constant reminder of everything I’d lost. It was a reminder that my world had stopped, and to this day still hadn’t fully started back up again.
More than my body broke the night I lost Addy. My heart, my mind, and my soul were still in tatters, and if it hadn’t been for the sleeping girl next to me, I had no doubt I would have let the pain swallow me whole.
Sophia rolled again in her sleep and I barely managed to catch her arm before she caught me in the jaw. One of the downsides of having a six-year-old who crawled into your bed in the middle of the night was the physical beating I took on a regular basis. My girl tossed and turned like nobody’s business.
A glance at the clock on the bedside table showed I had enough time to get a quick shower in before having to get Soph up and ready for school. I flung the covers back and threw my legs over the side of the bed, resting my elbows on my knees and scrubbing the last bit of sleep from my face. Just as I did every morning, I gave myself a few extra moments to gaze at the picture sitting on my nightstand, reaching over and running the tip of my finger along the cool glass that set over Addison’s smiling face. “Morning, baby,” I whispered into the silent room before forcing myself from the bed and into the bathroom.
Showering and dressing in my PFD uniform in record time, I opened the bathroom door and reentered the bedroom.
I flipped on the overhead light and pulled the covers to the foot of the bed. “All right, Sleeping Beauty. Time to wake up.”
Sophia let out a small mewl of protest and pulled one of the pillows over her head to block out the light.
“Uh uh,” I chuckled, coming to sit on the mattress next to her. “None of that now.” I moved the pillow off her head and tossed it far enough away she couldn’t reach it. “Ten minutes, squirt, or you go to school without breakfast.”
She let out a grunt but sat up, her mass of blonde hair in tangles all around her head, standing on end. Like a zombie, she climbed off the bed and moved toward the bathroom off the hallway. When I heard the sink cut on, I took that cue and headed into the kitchen to start breakfast.
Sophia joined me ten minutes later, dressed for school. She climbed onto one of the barstools at the kitchen island just as I slid the last pancake onto her plate.
“Teeth brushed?”
“Uh huh,” she mumbled, still not fully awake.
One corner of my mouth kicked up in a grin as she rested her elbow on the counter, propped her chin in her hand, and watched as I cut up her pancakes and slathered them in syrup. “You do a good job or just run the brush over them a few times?”
“I did good,” she answered, then forked a heaping bite of pancakes into her mouth. “Wanna smell my breath?” she asked around the food.
“I’ll pass. And don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“You asked,” she shrugged before turning back to her food. There weren’t many dishes I could cook well —Addy was always the cook in our household — but my girl loved her old man’s pancakes. It was one of the few meals I didn’t have to bribe her into eating. It was either bribe her with a few extra minutes on her iPad or a knockdown drag-out fight, and on the evenings I was home from the fire department, I was usually too exhausted to fight. Needless to say, my daughter was better at using her iPad than I was, and we ate a lot of pancakes. Much to my own mother’s displeasure.
“Daddy?”
I finished my sip of coffee and looked up from the news site I was scrolling through on my phone as I stood across from her. “Yeah, Angel?”
“Can I be a ballerina?”
My brow quirked up as I studied my little girl. “A ballerina?”
“Uh huh,” she nodded enthusiastically. “Yesterday, at school, Missy Davenport was talkin’ about how she takes classes to be a ballerina. She said she gets to wear pink tutus and dance around on her tippy toes in these special shoes with ribbons on ‘em. I wanna wear tutus and ribbons. Can I, Daddy? Pleeeeeease?”
Fuck, but I was screwed. Telling my daughter no was never something I’d been good at. When Addison was alive, she’d been the firm one, while I was wrapped around my little girl’s finger. Now that I didn’t have Addy to run interference, it had only gotten worse.
“But I thought you wanted to be a firefighter like your dad?”
Her little face scrunched up like she smelled something bad. “That’s for boys, Daddy.”
My eyes went wide as I stared down at the little girl who, just last week, declared she wanted to fight fires like her old man. “That’s not what you said a few days ago.” Why I felt the need to argue with a six-year-old was beyond me, but her sudden change of tune made me feel somewhat less important. It was ridiculous, really, but knowing I was my daughter’s hero, to the point where she wanted to be just like me, was a huge ego boost. Losing that — for something as girly as ballet, felt like a slap in the face.
She shrugged casually as she ate the last bite of her breakfast. “I changed my mind. Now I wanna be a ballerina. Can I? Pretty please?”
Christ, those blue puppy-dog eyes, combined with the way her bottom lip jutted out in a pout just about did me in.
“We can go to the dance school next to where we always eat dinner! You can sign me up and I can start tomorrow!”
After draining the last of my coffee, I put the cup in the sink and circled around the i
sland, reaching out to ruffle her hair. “I’ll think about it. Now go get your backpack. We’re going to be late.”
Sophia hopped off the stool and bolted from the kitchen.
A ballerina. Addy would have been ecstatic. When we found out we were having a little girl, she went on and on about putting her in dance class and gymnastics, and all those girly things.
It was times like this that I missed her the most. Not only because I loved her and wanted her back, but because she wasn’t there to teach our daughter how to grow up into a woman.
And just like every day for the past three and a half years, I was eaten up by the overwhelming fear that I was going to do something that would irreparably damage the only person I had left.
Most days I didn’t have a goddamned clue what I was doing. I was alone and drowning.
All I could do was hold on to the hope that I’d find my footing. I’d eventually wade out of the murky waters and feel that confidence as a father I had when I was part of a team.
Until that day came, all I could do was fake it and hope I didn’t screw up along the way.
* * *
With Sophia at school and thirty minutes before my shift was set to start, I pointed my truck toward Sinful Sweets, the town bakery-turned-restaurant that was co-owned by Eliza, my buddy Ethan’s wife, and her step mother Chloe. The place served great food, even better pastries, and out of this world coffee. The latter of the three being what I was needing the most.
“Morning, Quinn,” Chloe called out once I stepped inside. She ran the bakery side of Sinful Sweets and had been the original owner when it first opened back when I was a teenager.
“Chloe,” I greeted, tipping my chin in her direction as I made my way to the counter.
“The usual?” she asked, marker poised against a paper cup, ready to write my name on it as I made my way up to the counter.
Welcome to Pembrooke: the complete Pembrooke series Page 42
