by Street, K.
“She tried to make me feel guilty, but I turned it around on her.”
“How’d you manage to do that?” he asked.
“I told her you were living in that big house all alone and that misery loved company.”
I didn’t miss the slight wince on Easton’s face at my comment.
“Way to throw me under the pity bus, kid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He sighed and then asked, “You ready?” His change of subject made it obvious he didn’t want to talk about his ex-girlfriend, Molly.
“I ready to go bye-bye.” Knox’s voice was filled with excitement, as he was too little to understand the magnitude of what was happening.
“In just a few minutes.” I stood, cleaned up the crumbs from Knox’s snack, and scooted his chair out from the table.
Easton got to his feet and pulled me into a side hug.
“Thank you. For being here. For helping me with all of this.”
“Always. How about I take Knox outside to play and give you a few minutes?”
“Thanks.” I stepped from his embrace.
“Let’s go, little buddy.” East opened his arms.
Knox picked Rex up by the tail and then wrapped his arms around East’s neck. “I can ride in the big truck,” he declared, eyes wide with delight.
My brother had come to visit a few times in the last several months, as had my parents. We also FaceTimed often, which was why Knox easily went to his uncle.
“The big truck doesn’t have PAW Patrol,” I reminded him.
“Mommy, you have PAW Patrol?”
“Yes.”
“Uncle East, I ride with Mommy.”
East chuckled. “Good plan there, bud.”
Their laughter grew faint as Easton’s footsteps carried them out the front door.
I watched them go.
Easton left the door ajar, and a sad smile found its way to my lips. My big brother had always looked out for me, and I knew he left the door cracked to remind me that, as hard as this was, I wasn’t alone. If I needed him, he was right outside.
On a sigh, I glanced around the sparse space. Apart from the few furnishings I’d chosen to leave behind, it was empty. A shell of its former self.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
I ran my hand over the kitchen table. The wooden grain cool and smooth beneath my palm.
For a moment, I closed my eyes and let the memory play behind my lids.
I floated into the kitchen, wearing my fuzzy pink terry-cloth bathrobe, damp hair still clinging to my skin from my shower. I wasn’t sure if it was nerves or the nausea I’d felt earlier that had my stomach doing somersaults.
Grasped between my thumb and forefinger was the reason for both.
I stared at those two pink lines in the tiny, clear window one more time before I slipped it into a brown paper lunch sack from the pantry and set it on the counter.
Just as I finished pouring wine into a glass for Colin, I heard his keys in the door.
My smile was wide as the door opened, and I turned to face him.
He strode toward me, the smile on his face matching my own. “Hi, sweetheart. How was your day?”
“Better now that you’re here.”
He took the wine from my hand and placed it on the counter. Then, he pulled me close. Colin leaned down to sweep his lips over mine.
“I have something for you,” I said, peering up at him.
“You do? Did I forget our anniversary or something?”
“No, you didn’t forget anything. As if you would.”
Colin never forgot any significant date. Not anniversaries or birthdays.
I dropped my arms from around him and retrieved the paper bag. “Here.”
A smile played at the corner of his lips. Carefully, he opened the bag and peeked inside. Mouth agape, he shot his wide eyes back to mine. “You’re pregnant?”
I nodded.
“We’re pregnant?”
“Yes.” I laughed, and tears filled my eyes.
“We’re going to have a baby!” he shouted.
Colin tossed the bag onto the counter, and then his hands went around my waist. He lifted me off my feet, twirling me around before setting me back down.
“I love you, Saylor. I love you so damn much.” He held my face between his palms. “And I promise I’m going to love this baby, and I’ll be the best father.” His eyes shone with emotion. “I’ll teach him how to ride a bike and play ball—”
“And what if it’s a girl?” I asked, cutting off his declaration.
“Well then, I guess I’ll teach her how to play ball. Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter to me. Besides, there is only one thing I could teach our son to do that I could never teach our daughter.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“How to pee, standing up.”
We both laughed, and then Colin kissed me again. This time, slow and deep.
Without breaking the seal of our lips, he adjusted me in his arms.
Instinctually, my legs went around his waist as he carried me over to the table and gently set me on top of the smooth wooden surface, near the edge.
Colin’s palms skimmed up my thighs. His thumb grazed my center.
Need burned through me.
I parted my legs just as Colin dropped to his knees.
The wine was forgotten, the same as the dinner I’d prepared.
I tried to shake off the memory of that night. His smile when I’d told him the news. How Colin’s hand had felt in mine as he led me up the stairs to our bedroom for the second round. The love that had radiated from his eyes when he filled me. The husky sound of his voice as he’d whispered promises against the shell of my ear.
The promise of us growing old together. Of sitting on the porch in whitewashed wooden rocking chairs, sipping sweet tea and watching our gaggle of grandchildren chase one another around the yard.
So many promises. And he never had the chance to keep any of them.
I fought against the tears threatening to engulf me and slowly walked toward the door.
The cadence of Knox’s laughter hit my ears, reminding me that we needed to get on the road. We had a nearly three-hour drive ahead of us, and by the time we stopped once or twice for restroom breaks, the trip to Maplewood Falls would take closer to four.
One of my hands rested on the edge of the open door, the other tightly gripping the knob.
This is what I want, isn’t it?
No.
I didn’t want any of this.
I didn’t want my life with Colin to be over.
I wanted my husband back.
And I wanted every promise he’d made to me.
No, this isn’t what I want.
This was what I needed.
My forehead dropped against the wooden door, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew that if I turned around for one last glance, I’d splinter into a million tiny shards. My knees would buckle. My body would be racked with sobs so violent that the foundation beneath my feet would tremble.
So, I didn’t look behind me.
I forced myself to take a breath. And then another. And another after that. Then, I lifted my head and squared my shoulders. My fingers loosened their grip, easing the door fully open.
I took a single step forward and had to force myself to keep going.
It was only when I crossed the threshold onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind me that I turned around.
My hand fumbled in my pocket for the keys.
I felt the warmth of the sun at my back despite the slight nip in the air.
Just as I locked the door and turned toward the driveway, Knox crashed into my legs.
“Got you, Mommy.” He giggled.
I reached for my son, hauled him into my arms, and pressed my lips to the top of his head.
Easton’s footsteps clomped onto the porch. He didn’t say anything; he just gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Somehow, I managed to put one foot in front of the other.
Easton opened the rear passenger door, and I set Knox in his car seat and buckled him in. Once I double-checked his restraint, I walked around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel.
I started the engine and pressed the button to start PAW Patrol.
Glancing over my shoulder to my brother, I asked, “Can you get him the headphones? They should be in the door pocket.”
Easton easily found them and made sure Knox had his dragon as well as his blanket before closing the door and walking around the SUV.
With concern etched on his face, he asked, “You okay to drive?”
I slipped on my sunglasses and desperately tried to sound convincing as I said, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Say, you’re a horrible liar.”
“I’m fine to drive. I promise.”
“All right, let’s go home.” He rapped twice on the roof of the car and strode to the moving truck.
Regardless of how intensely I fought to keep my eyes trained forward, my gaze shifted to the rearview mirror.
A scream bubbled at the base of my throat, threatening to rip through me.
I ground my teeth into my bottom lip, even after the metallic taste of blood rolled over my tongue.
Easton’s words echoed in my mind.
“Let’s go home.”
Home.
It was more than a roof over your head.
It was …
Refuge.
Solace.
A fortress when the world treated you unkind. Where you abandoned your armor and dropped your sword.
Your soft place to fall.
But, in the rearview mirror, I only saw a structure.
Brick and stone. Wooden shutters and windowpanes.
People didn’t realize it, but a house and a home weren’t the same thing, and no matter where I lived, I’d never be home again.
My home was ten miles away.
Across the grassy knoll of Magnolia Memorial Gardens, buried six feet beneath the cold, dark earth. Inside a heart that had ceased beating.
My hand went to my chest, and the pads of my fingers rubbed against the ache that had taken up residence there.
“Mommy?” Knox called from his seat, the sound of his small voice pulling me from my thoughts.
“W-what, baby boy?” My voice cracked.
He slid his headphones off the way I’d taught him to. “We go on a ’venture?”
A laugh slid past my lips despite my current emotional state. “Adventure,” I corrected.
“Ad-venture,” he mimicked, enunciating the word.
Beep-beep.
The rental truck eased forward as Easton pulled away. With my foot on the brakes, I shifted the car into drive and gently pressed on the accelerator.
“Yes, little man, we’re going on an adventure.”
In a moment of immense sadness, Knox had offered a different perspective.
I didn’t know if I had ever been more thankful for my son than I was at this second.
Three
Saylor
Sunlight spilled through the blinds I had forgotten to close when I crawled into bed last night. I stretched, twisting my torso, and extended my arms wide. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I took in Knox’s slumbering form next to me. I reached out my hand, gently combing through his dark hair.
We’d been in Maplewood Falls for a week, and adapting to our new life was proving to be more difficult for Knox than I had imagined.
Last night, he’d woken up, screaming, again. I carried him and Rex the dragon into my room to sleep with me. Once we were settled, I’d lightly dragged my fingernails across Knox’s back over the shirt of his pajamas until he finally fell back asleep.
It was more than Knox waking up in the middle of the night that had me unsettled. There were other issues, too.
Knox had been completely toilet-trained for quite a while, but he’d had three accidents in as many days. Kids were supposed to be resilient, but my sweet boy was struggling.
There wasn’t anyone to blame, except me.
I’d had the idea in my head that leaving North Carolina would somehow make things easier. They weren’t, not even close. It didn’t matter that most of our former life was packed into bins and boxes in a climate-controlled storage unit across town. The memories that lived in our old house followed me here. They whispered from every corner and crevice in my mind and clung like cobwebs to the shattered pieces of my heart.
A change of scenery was just that.
Adjusting would take time.
Time.
It was part of the problem. There had been entirely too much of it on my hands for a while now.
When Colin had died, I had taken a short-term leave of absence from my job as an accountant at a well-known firm in Charlotte. After the funeral, my parents stayed for a week before they returned to Georgia. Two weeks after they left, I went back to work, and Knox went back to daycare.
I thought getting back into some sort of routine would be good for us. Except that routine changed. Colin no longer dropped Knox off at Little Loves Learning Center.
The job fell to me. I was the one peeling my son from my body while he cried and begged me not to leave him.
Life was excruciating enough without the added stress of going back to work and Knox’s separation anxiety. After a few weeks, I decided it had been enough. I withdrew my son from the daycare and gave my immediate resignation. It wasn’t like I needed the money anyway.
Colin had had a generous life insurance policy to begin with, but after I had gotten pregnant with Knox, he had taken out a second plan for each of us. He’d looked to the future, making sure things were taken care of should the unimaginable ever happen.
He’d always said to hope for the best and expect the worst.
Because of his foresight, the bills had been paid. We had enough money to live on and a good bit in savings. Not having to worry about finances for the time being was something I was grateful for. But I would trade it all for five more minutes with my husband.
Life without him hurt.
Every day was more painful than the last.
The weight of grief only seemed to get heavier.
I sighed into my pillow.
My little boy slept next to me, and surely, my brother was around here somewhere, but I felt completely alone.
It was more than that. I was lonely, too. The type of lonely that made my bones feel hollow.
I didn’t just miss Colin … I missed the life we’d had.
Most of our friends were couples, and after Colin had died, those friendships had gradually faded into the background. We were no longer The Ferraros.
I was no longer Colin’s wife.
Instead, I’d become the poor, young, widowed mother whose precious little boy would grow up without his father. The person other people felt sorry for.
Then, those people went on with their lives while mine was suspended in time.
Knox snored softly in his sleep.
He was the only one who mattered.
He needed me. But I needed him more. For the last several months, I’d latched on to my son like a life preserver and tried like hell not to drown us both.
Now, I wondered if it had all been a mistake. We were so dependent on each other. Even if I didn’t need the money right this second, I didn’t know how long it would take for the house to sell. I needed a job, and Knox needed to interact with other kids. He deserved a happy childhood.
It was time to stop treading water.
I needed to start swimming.
The thought took hold as I carefully leaned in to drop a kiss to the crown of Knox’s head and got out of bed.
I headed for the bathroom at the end of the hall, took care of business, and brushed my teeth. Then, I made my way to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
Easton’s back was to me as he poured the caffeinated goodness from the pot into his mug.
I wai
ted for him to finish and replace the pot before I greeted him, “Good morning.”
“Morning,” he said, turning to face me. “Want a cup?” He raised his mug and tipped it a hair in my direction.
“I’ll get it.”
He pointed to a stool alongside the island. “Sit.”
If he wanted to make my coffee, I wasn’t about to argue with him. It was entirely too early. I held up my hands, signaling my surrender, and took a seat.
He pulled a cup from the cabinet, filled it, and then set it in front of me before grabbing the vanilla creamer out of the fridge.
“Thanks.”
Easton opened the silverware drawer and passed me a spoon before leaning against the opposite counter.
My defenses rose at his worried stare. “What?” I asked, flipping the lid on the container and pouring a little into my cup.
“You okay?”
I set the creamer back on the bar top and picked up the spoon. “I’m fine.”
“I’m worried about you.”
My spoon clinked against the ceramic as I dipped it inside, swirling the liquid. The whirlpool spun, changing the color from black to milky caramel. I set the utensil aside and gripped the mug, letting the warmth bloom over my palms.
I lifted my eyes to meet my brother’s. “Well, stop worrying.”
He took a sip of his coffee, and I did the same.
“Does Knox usually wake up, crying? You look like you haven’t slept in months.”
“You really know how to kick a girl when she’s down, big brother,” I half-joked. “As far as Knox, not usually. He does it a few times a month, but it’s been more often lately.”
Since I uprooted him and took him away from the only home he had ever known.
East ignored the smart-ass portion of my remark. “Have you thought about talking to anyone?”
My brows dipped, my head shifting slightly forward as I squinted at him. “Anyone, like who?” I knew what he had been getting at, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“I don’t know. A shrink? Or one of those grief counselors?”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
He set his coffee beside him on the island, folded his arms over his chest, and fixed his gaze on me. “You’ve been here a week, and you’ve left the house once. The clothes you have on are the same ones you’ve been wearing for the last three days. You look like hell, kid. And you don’t smell much better.”
