Watching the Sky Cry

by J. B. Hartnett

  “How’s your wrist?” he asked, opening the screen and reaching out. I’d picked up a simple brace in town just to give it some support.

  “It’ll be fine in a week or so, Dad. Where’s Mom?”

  “She and Ardie went down to the buses. The last one is done, honey.”

  Which was a timely lead-in to what I needed to ask.

  “Quentin had a great suggestion,” I said, staring at the house and not him.

  “Did he?” Dad smirked.

  “It doesn’t involve grandbabies, so cool your jets.”

  “Would it help if I said you aren’t getting any younger?”

  “No,” I replied with a bite.

  “Would it help if I said I’m not getting any younger?”

  That made me laugh a little. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. You do have a point.”

  Then Dad moved a little closer. “Look at me, Ry.”

  I did as he asked, something Dad always demanded of me if it was important.

  “This is all just a bump in the road.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “This isn’t a bump, Dad. It’s a mountain.”

  He reached out for my other hand. “It’s not your mountain, Rylie.”

  And then I was in his arms. Mom was good for a lot of things. But Dad…Dad was good for the hug that cured all.

  I stood back and happily realized I wasn’t crying for once. I looked out toward the bones of the Garden Café then back to Dad. “I’ve collected a great deal of crap in the last year.”

  “You don’t say?” He grinned.

  “Shut up.” I grinned back. “Anyway, we were standing in the garage, and Quentin suggested we build an adjoining shop to the café. I’ve been thinking about it, everything we could sell. Quentin told me about that guy who recycles wine and beer bottles and makes them into these really cool goblets.”

  “Goblets,” he said, still smiling.

  “And everyone could take turns. When Aunt Ardie wants a break, we can switch. And now that the buses are done, I don’t really have a job, Dad.”

  “Mom and I found a house,” he informed me.

  My first thought was, oh goodie, another trip to the mall with Mom.

  My second thought…

  “Billy?”

  “You’ve got the room, and something tells me you’ll be at Quentin’s place more than your own.”

  He was right about that. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to throw myself into domesticity with Quentin. But I really didn’t care. Like him, I was happier with a partner than without. I’d been on my own long enough.

  “When’s the big move?” I asked.

  Dad looked toward a group of guests coming up from the cottages.

  “Group of girls backpacking from Canada. I’m sure glad you never had the desire to go trekking all over the world like that. Anyway, we’re getting everything sorted down south. Billy is trying to get Miles to go with him, bring everything back in a truck. Furniture, all the rest. Your mom and Ardie are going down to pack up. I can do most of the banking from here.”

  It was just taking a guess, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned Uncle Lee on purpose.

  “And…Uncle Lee?” I asked.

  Dad put his hands in his front pockets. “Lee’s still at the beach.” He said no more about it, and I decided not to push. Though Mom and I hadn’t had a chance to talk yet, I knew Dad was worried about his brother. He and my uncle were like me and Billy. There was a bond there, a strong one. And when Lee was hurting, so was he.

  “Something about last night that isn’t sitting well with me, Ry.” He looked down at my wrist again and back to me. “The way Miles went on…feel like I missed something. As if there’s something we don’t know about yet. I hate to put you in this position, but…you wouldn’t happen to know anything else…something maybe Quentin’s shared with you?”

  Quentin and I hadn’t really spoken about anything else, except to declare, with our bodies, we were both happy to be with one another.

  “Dad, I have no idea.”

  He looked out toward the meadow and the café again. “The shop is a good idea. What are you gonna call it?” he asked.

  “The Garden Shed.”

  He gave me a small smile. “Clever girl,” he said, and I wasn’t about to tell him it was all Quentin.

  “I need to do something or I’ll go crazy.”

  “It’s a good idea,” he said absently. But I understood better when his choked words followed. “You and Billy, me, your mom…we’re home,” he whispered. “Finally, home.”

  EIGHTEEN

  After I’d spoken with Dad, I made my way to the final bus, The Gypsy, where he told me I could probably find Mom and Aunt Ardie. My aunt was nowhere to be found, but I did find Mom.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  I had no idea what Quentin’s plans were for the day. He only told me he’d see me later, and that was that. What he didn’t tell me was, part of his plans were to have a pow-wow with my mother.

  I brazenly listened to their conversation as Quentin relayed what he’d told me the night before.

  “I hadn’t intended to end my life,” he said to her.

  “No,” she replied, “I don’t think you did either.”

  “But it looks as if I did.”

  “Love makes you do funny things,” she told him.

  “I don’t want her to think for a second I would ever leave her. I’m not…it wasn’t like that, Mrs. Truscott.”

  “Lily,” she corrected. “Though, I’ll be happier when you call me Mom, if you’re comfortable with that.”

  Then Mom surprised me, though I don’t know why something like that would have come as a shock. After what felt like eons, she said, “You should give it to her.”

  I wanted to know whatever “it” was so badly, I could taste it. But I decided to shake that off and focus on the conversation at hand.

  “She read my letters.”

  She laughed. “I had to tape them back together, but yes.”

  “Lily…I—”

  “We had to let her go her own way, and she was so young, Quentin. And believe me, she didn’t just get over you. She grieved you, much the same way she grieved Nick. But it was different with Nick,” she said. And I could hear the regret and sadness in her voice. “They really were good together, and he adored her. But you never forget your first love, do you?”

  “No,” he agreed. “No, you don’t.”

  “Right. And you have our blessing. I don’t think I need to say it, but you do. And I’ll expect you to come to our home for a meal at least once a week.” Her command left no option for him to deny her. “You might starve otherwise.”

  “Okay,” he said, and I knew he was grinning.

  But, Mom being Mom, she always had to have the last word. “Quentin…there were rumors, about what happened when you were a teenager. And then what Miles said last night. I put it together.”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “I don’t either,” she said. “You should tell her. I can’t keep something like that from my daughter. Bad enough I haven’t told my husband.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  “I’m very sorry about your mother. It’s never easy to lose a parent, no matter what kind of relationship you had with them.”

  “You can’t lose something you never had to begin with,” he returned.

  “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”

  I knew the conversation had ended. But I made no attempt to run off and hide. Mom would come out the side door of the bus, and I’d be standing not a foot away from her. But it wasn’t Mom that came out first.

  It was Quentin.

  “You’ve been there a while, haven’t you?” He gave me a wide, scruffy smile and stepped down to greet me with a kiss.

  “Long enough.”

  “My daughter, the eavesdropper.” Mom waved her hand in the air to bid us adieu as her feet crunched in the small pebbled path and left us for the café.
r />   “So,” I said.

  “So,” he returned.

  “Quentin…I—”

  “Do you love me, Rylie?” He asked.

  “Yes,” I said on a nervous exhale.

  “Then you should have this.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled something out of it. A single, gold band. Simple, nothing frilly or fancy. Nothing that said cut or clarity. Just a simple band of gold.

  “I bought this before your last visit here.”

  I studied it, held between the tips of his fingers.

  “I’d intended to give it to you before you left, as a promise I would marry you. And I’m giving it to you, spur of the moment, because your mom just gave me their blessing. It feels like the right thing to do, to give you that promise now.”

  I practically yanked it from his fingers and slipped it on. It was a little tight, something I wished was a matter of water weight instead of years. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if it turned my entire hand green.

  It was amazing.

  “I will keep my promise to you, Rylie May.”

  “Okay,” I agreed quietly.

  “Rylie?”

  “Tell me. Whatever it is you haven’t told me, tell me now.”

  He stepped away from the bus and walked a few steps ahead of me. I watched his shoulders move up, then his clasped hands lift to the top of his head. I came up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders, hoping my touch would calm him, ease him. I let my fingers drift down the side of his neck and rest there, feeling his pulse.

  “When I was fourteen, the cops came and took her away. That was the last time I ever saw her.”

  “Why?”

  He started walking again, a few steps, and stopped. A few more, and he stopped again.

  “She started bringing the outdoors indoors. Tree branches, piles of dirt, pulled the hose inside and turned the place to mud. I hate that fucking house. That’s why I never spent any time there.”

  And I hated that his childhood was so…fucked up. I already knew his dad spent a lot of time trying to forget. He’d been totally unavailable to his children, trying to navigate having a sick wife, but his boys suffered. And they suffered still.

  “When she couldn’t bring anything else inside the house. She led me outside. She told me to dig, Rylie. So I did. I dug until my hands bled, because she was rocking back and forth with a gun in her hands in our front yard. Sometimes she’d point it at me, sometimes she’d put it in her mouth, and then she’d cry and talk to the voices in her head. She’d gone off her meds. I have no idea how long, but Dad couldn’t force her to take them. He tried, he really did, Rylie.”

  He crouched down and clawed across the damp earth beneath the meadow. When he opened his hand he said, “That first summer, after I met you, that was the first time she was hospitalized. She was gone for five months, and when we went to visit her, she was so beautiful. So happy. Dad brought her home, and we all hoped she’d be better, but after a couple of months, she stopped taking her pills. She was in and out, sometimes months, sometimes days.”

  He closed him palm again, clenching the dirt in his fist. “Miles was never home either. I don’t know where he went, but that night, he was there, and when the cops showed up, he just held my eyes. I don’t even think he blinked. All that noise, Dad trying to calm her down, cops trying to calm her down, but I can still hear her saying, ‘I can’t kill my boy…don’t make me kill my boy…I can’t kill my boy.’”

  I was shaking as I listened to him, just as hard as I had that winter night in the river. I knew she was sick, and I knew he’d been traumatized, but I struggled with the overwhelming hatred I felt in that moment. Toward his mother, his father, the adults who must’ve known, yet turned a blind eye.

  “I’m so angry,” I told him through my tears.

  “I knew you’d hate her and probably Dad, too. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t ready to help someone else carry the burden of my pain, Rylie.”

  Truth be told, I wouldn’t have known how to handle it. And then I realized I’d been right where he was. When I was grieving, everyone wanted to be there for me. But, more often than not, I ended up consoling them. My grieving had to be done in private, if it was going to be done at all. The questions, “How are you holding up?” The platitudes, “He’s in a better place.” I must’ve heard that same phrase at least twenty times during the funeral. And all I wanted to do was yell, “Really? Then why didn’t he take me with him?”

  “Can I give you something, Quentin?” I knelt down in front of him and opened his palm, the dirt formed into a perfect mold of the inside of his hand. I pulled him to his feet and led him away from the buses, down to the river, and sat him down, right where our feet slid in the muddy bank.

  I took off my shoes and socks, then removed his. And when I was done, I had him stand with me as the water rushed around our ankles, a frosty chill sending a shiver up my spine.

  “Close your eyes, Quentin.” I laid my head against his chest and wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could. “Sometimes, it’s not until you close your eyes that you know the true beauty of the world.”

  I hoped I’d achieved what I wanted to, that I’d given him what he’d given to me. When his arms reached around me in a great embrace that lifted me from the water, I knew I’d done the right thing.

  ****

  It was late afternoon by the time we left the river. We started across the field when I realized I hadn’t bothered to look inside the bus. The buses were complete, and it had been just over a year since I’d made the move north and begun work on the bus project.

  “How was The Gypsy?” I asked.

  His hand was tucked inside the back pocket of my jeans as we walked. “I could live there.”

  I took this as a tremendous compliment on my skills and not my mother and aunt’s ability to follow my directions.

  “Ha!” I laughed. “You don’t think you’d feel a little cramped? Claustrophobic?”

  He looked at me then toward the sky, over his shoulder to the trees, toward the river and back to me again.

  “In a perfect world, Rylie, that would be everything we would ever need. Where I lay my head each night doesn’t matter if yours is on the pillow next to mine.”

  And that’s about the moment I melted.

  “So,” he said, changing the subject, “did you run the Garden Shed idea by anyone?”

  “Dad seemed positive.” I smiled. “He especially liked the name.”

  “I’m glad.” He pulled me close and wrapped an arm possessively around my shoulders.

  After that, there was no more to be said. I knew it was all going to work out.

  All of it.

  ****

  “You wanna have a shower?” Quentin asked as he pulled off his tee.

  We were in the living room at my place. After a gourmet dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and carrot slices, we’d started drinking. It had been a huge week of revelations and drama, with the promise of more to come. And since Quentin wasn’t working that night and Billy said he’d be staying with Miles after they closed the bar…

  I was nursing my third strong, icy, lemony, ginny cocktail my boyfriend had made for me.

  “You can go first,” I told him.

  I was distracted, my lips at the side of my glass as I melted into the couch in my tank top and jeans. But I should’ve paid better attention. See, I was all about getting cozy and watching TV.

  “Rylie,” he said, his voice deep and serious.

  “Yeah?” My reply was a distracted one as I gingerly removed the brace on my wrist to see it was now an array of circular purple bruises where Miles had put the most pressure.

  And then Quentin was behind me, pushing me to the edge of the couch. His fingertips splayed on my shoulders, moving beneath the straps of my bra and tank to pull each one down. Treasuring every touch to my body, I sat completely still while his hands took on the task of removing my clothes. It was beautiful, his revere
nt kisses placed at the top of my spine to the middle of my back.

  “My sky…” he whispered and gripped the denim at my hips, pulling up as the ridge of fabric at the rise created a delicious friction between my legs. My jeans were suddenly pushed to my ankles as he twisted the sides of my panties, creating a thin strip of fabric to move between the folds of my sex.

  “You like that?” he asked.

  God yes.

  When he pulled up sudden and hard, I gasped and threw my good hand behind me to find the thick hair of his head and pull him down to touch my tongue to his. His fingers played at the soaked satin between my legs, desperate to feel him inside me.

  I pushed away from his chest and turned in his lap, dropping to my knees and using my good hand to wrench open the button on his jeans. Quentin assisted in freeing himself, his hand wrapping around his thick cock as he stroked, his blues eyes aimed at me.

  “Take me in your mouth, Rylie.”

  That first touch to silken skin, the first taste of him on my tongue, I took the head between my lips as if I was kissing his mouth, swirling and licking and never wanting the pleasure I could hear escape him to end.

  I stood up and climbed onto his lap. He reached between my legs and pulled my panties to the side as I slowly lowered myself. Our eyes locked until he was buried inside me, deep, connected. With my forearms balanced on his shoulders for support, he gripped my hips and pulled me up. I felt him take his cock in hand and slide it forward to my clit. My eyes rolled into the back of my head at the extraordinary sensation. But it was when he pushed inside me briefly, pulled back out and moved to my ass. He rubbed the head of his cock, pushing and teasing just a little.

  “Look at me.” I opened my eyes to see his were burning with the same lust as my own. “Do you like this? Do you want this?” he asked.

  I kissed him deeply, a languid pursuit of more…and more…hoping that would give him all the prompting he require. And that’s when I felt a welcome surge. A welcome tease. I wanted to be possessed by him in every way possible. To the depths of my body, to the depths of my soul, we shared something larger than love.

  He broke the kiss with a labored breath as he eased into me. “Touch yourself for me, Rylie. I’m close.”