by Harlow Cole
Another puzzle piece fell into place. A bouquet my mother asked me to move to the table beside her bed that final morning. Bright purple blossoms surrounded by pure white.
“They’re the prettiest ones in the room. Move them closer, would you? I want them closer to me now,” she’d said. The pain in her eyes had softened when she looked at them. “Don’t know where he found tulips this time of year.”
“They’re from you, aren’t they? You have them delivered every week. They aren’t from my father.”
My eyes darted to his face. He held my gaze with confirmation.
“She liked boys who brought flowers.”
Something inside me crumbled around his words. Pieces that needed to cave snapped as I stepped forward.
Being close to him suddenly felt like a new connection to her. He knew things about her I didn’t know. New things.
When you lose someone, you lose all the newness. Retold old stories soften with age. The connection to them slips each time they’re reheard.
Every word he spoke, now felt like an untouched gift.
“The white ones are a symbol of love, the purple ones a symbol of forgiveness,” he added.
I sniffled and finally got the courage to ask, “What did she say to you that night?”
His fingertips brushed across my hairline. “She told me, most things happen for a reason, if you look hard enough. But you can always choose to make a reason for the things that don’t come with one ready-made. Even for the shitty stuff. Even babies born to mamas who didn’t plan on them. Car accidents and heart attacks. All of it.”
I smiled sadly.
“If life doesn’t give you a silver lining, that doesn’t mean you can’t stitch your own,” I muttered softly. “We went out sailing one of the last days she was still feeling pretty good. It was a gorgeous, clear day, and she begged to be out on the water. That’s what she said to me as we were coming back to shore.”
I brushed back my tears. “What else did she say to you?”
He paused to clear the emotion stuck in his throat. “She told me she’d always loved me like I was her own son. And she made me promise to wait for the time to be right.”
“The time to be right for what?”
“To put our family back together.”
Swallowing deeply, I turned my back on him to collect myself. I gazed out across the expanse of deep green, past the tall oak tree that shaded a statue of Mary, past the rows of neatly ordered headstones to the expanse of deep blue water that lingered across the horizon.
A single white sail hovered in the distance, blowing out toward the edge of the world.
Out toward happiness.
A place I could see, but never touch.
* * *
Brayden
I stared at the rigid shoulders in front of me, splayed out before a backdrop as close to heaven as I could picture. As final resting places went, this was a good one.
I just refused to let anything else I loved come here to die today.
I’d admired Mrs. F’s certainty and told her of my doubts that I’d ever find it myself. But, as I stared at her name beside those purple flowers, I knew for sure.
It was time to start laying my cards on the table.
“She told me to start back at the beginning without taking any shortcuts. So, that’s what I did. And she told me I’d know when the time was right to come back. Told me I could go back to my old ways and fight like hell if I had to. I had no idea what she meant about timing. I’d been killing myself, wondering how I’d know.”
I cleared my throat, fortifying my nerve. “I watched you, Ash. I never stopped watching you. I couldn’t. That’s my freaky addiction that no amount of rehab could ever cure.”
She rounded on me again, brows furrowed with confusion. Soft cheeks were marred by tracks of new tears. It hurt me not to sweep them away.
I could hear the good doctor’s voice in my ear. Telling me to make myself vulnerable. “Vulnerable fucking sucks,” I’d once told her. She’d assured me it was the only way to let people in, to form the connections I craved.
Time to let out my crazy.
“I think your mother busted my arm.” I chuckled at how stupid that sounded out loud.
Stupid. But true.
“Most guys with this injury lose it over time. They play through pain for a while. Mine wasn’t like that. The day I blew it out, I felt it snap. I knew the second it went. It hadn’t been sore. I’d been throwing full power, and then, suddenly, it was just gone. I was all over the fucking place. It was like someone turned a dial from ten to zero.” Instinctively, I flexed my right elbow, needing to prove to myself that broken things could be fixed. “I knew before they told me. I lay in bed for the first couple of days, feeling sorry for myself. ’Cause it was just gone. Everything I’d worked for. Everything I had left.” I snapped my fingers. “I thought, Well, this is pure shit. And then it hit me. It was. Total shit.”
My eyes searched hers, imploring her to hear me, to feel my next words.
“That’s when I knew. Just like your mother said I would. I knew there was a reason. I knew it was time. I was supposed to come home. To beg for forgiveness and try to move forward. Together. Like she wanted.”
She turned her back on me again. Her shoulders visibly shook. I couldn’t take that shit any longer. My hands wouldn’t keep to themselves. My feet closed the distance, so fingertips could lightly brush up and down over the soft skin on the sides of her arms.
“I don’t know how to forgive you when I can’t even forgive myself.”
“What?” My fingers stalled against her skin, squeezing a little.
“You don’t hold all the blame for my brother being in that chair, Brayden. Some of that burden is mine.”
My fingertips pressed into her skin, leaving a mark. “How the hell do you figure that? I’m the one who got whacked out of his mind and got in his car. I’m the one who plowed into Nathan, head-on.”
“But I’m the one who sent him.”
I froze.
Everything stopped. The breeze, the birds flying overhead, and my own heartbeat.
“What?”
She turned in my arms, looking up at me with fresh grief that counterbalanced my confusion.
“Nathan was coming to check on you. As a favor for me. I asked him to go.”
“Ashley—”
“He was home when I got there that night. He carried me in the house. Calmed me down. He got a text from Bobby about you going nuts. I was worried that you’d injure yourself or someone else and hurt your hands in the process. I didn’t want . . .” Her face twisted with the irony. “I didn’t want you to lose me and baseball in one night. If you broke your hands or hurt yourself, I knew it would screw up the draft. I didn’t want you to throw it all away. I needed to make sure you were okay. I had to save you one more time.”
Tears pebbled in her eyes.
“He did it as a favor. We’d made up that night. We’d talked. He didn’t want to leave me so upset, but I begged him to go. Everyone’s always assumed he was out, driving Cindi home. But you were coming to me, and Nathan was going to you. I’m the reason the accident happened. I put him right in your path.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I pulled at the ends of my hair and blew out a loud breath.
The spring after I’d turned fifteen, my team had gone to the district championship. On the ride to the field, we’d all bragged about needing more shelf space for the trophy. We had that game all sewn up. We’d over prepared for the other team’s quick bats and lightning-fast feet. They would have to call the slaughter rule by the bottom of the fourth. But, as we’d taken the field for the anthem, a six-foot giant sauntered out of our opponent’s dugout. They’d drafted a ringer—a kid who topped his Wheaties with screws and nails and looked well poised to spit them back out at us.
The sinking feeling I had while staring at that kid, was the same one I had now, trying to stomach Ashley’s new wild card.
&nbs
p; My hands shook her, more roughly than I intended, but the panic welling up inside me felt desperate to make her suck the words back in.
It had taken me years to learn how to forgive the people around me.
Hard, gut-wrenching work.
Unlocking your own cell door and claiming freedom didn’t come easy. I’d come here to teach her the same lesson. To show her that staying angry with me would only keep her locked behind bars.
I thought I could teach her what I knew. Could hold her little hand and lead her down that path. But there was one lesson I’d failed at miserably. One thing that remained an invisible ball and chain I’d made peace with dragging around.
Forgiving others? No problem.
I could teach that to anyone.
Forgiving yourself? Yeah, not so much.
I’d never forgiven myself. Never absolved my own actions.
I would never forget forcing Bobby to retell every small detail of the things my memory couldn’t form the next day. I’d wanted to hear it all. The desolation on Ashley’s face when she’d walked in that room. The smell, the words, the anger that had spread like wildfire. The way she’d hit Coral Lynn.
The shattered glass. A woman screaming. The blood. So much blood.
The images of my bedroom where I broke my best girl. The roadside where I broke my best friend. Scenes my mind had blocked to protect me. They’d warped and blended together over time, coming back to me in bits and pieces of nightmares that threaded together over years spent alone in the darkness.
Forgiving yourself was the hardest part.
I couldn’t teach her what I didn’t know how to do myself.
The wall of tightness spread across my chest. “Is that what you’ve been carrying around? Is that why you’re here, half-killing yourself, trying to keep everything afloat? Why you’ve forfeited all your dreams and chained yourself to this town?”
“Yes.”
“Holy shit.”
I started mentally counting backward. Warding off the tentacles before they could surround me.
Ten, nine, eight . . .
In. Out. Breathe.
Seven, six, five . . .
My hand fisted against my abdomen, feeling each breath, reassuring myself I could get this under control.
“None of this mess was your fault. Do you hear me? None of it. You’ve gotta get that shit straight in your head right now.” My finger waved at her. “I did this. Me.” I poked myself in the chest. “Blame me. Fucking hate me if you need to. But you let go of this silly notion of hating yourself. Let me earn your forgiveness. Let me fight for it. It’s gonna be hard enough a task on its own. Don’t add more layers, Soot.”
“I can’t help it. Every time I look at my brother, the guilt eats me alive. Being near you again makes it even more excruciating. You’re the worst kind of torture, Brayden. You’re old happiness and fresh pain.”
I couldn’t hide the tears that spilled over onto my cheeks.
Yep. Vulnerable still sucks.
Hers trailed even faster than my own.
I couldn’t take it anymore. My arms engulfed her, pressing the side of her cheek against my chest. Her back shook from the bottled-up emotion.
“I know, baby girl. God, I know.”
As I smoothed a hand over her hair, the tightness in my chest vanished. Having her pressed against me chased the demon away. I was still stuck in hell, but I could breathe easy again. I always could with her near me. That shit still worked. My lips pressed against the top of her head, willing my touch to somehow become a salve for her pain, too.
“People think my life is a fantasy.” My voice came out muted against her hair. “But I’m not living a dream. I’m living a nightmare. Every good thing that comes my way is a reminder of what I stole from the people I love. I feel like the worst kind of thief. The kind who got away with it and was left to rot in a cell made of shame. I don’t want that for you, Soot. Above all else, I don’t want you to live that way, too.”
She pulled back to look up at me with watery eyes. The pads of my thumbs scraped roughly across her cheeks.
“My mother told us both, everything happens for a reason, but what could possibly be the reason for all this grief? All this sadness?”
“I don’t know the reason for all the shit we’ve been through. It’s pretty hard to believe things were supposed to get this fucked-up. But I feel certain of one thing—we won’t find the answer alone.”
* * *
I watched Ashley’s taillights slip away from me, forcing myself not to pull out behind and follow her home. We were stranded somewhere between good and right. I’d made a deathbed promise to her mother; she’d promised Nathan she’d run me out of town.
Either way, we would break an oath and piss someone off.
She needed time to work things out with her brother. She’d used the one word that made any dude’s balls shrivel on impact.
Space.
She wanted a few days to think. I sure as fuck wasn’t gonna give her that long but tailing her bumper might’ve given that away too soon.
I leaned back against the headrest, letting the chill of the air conditioner settle over me along with my resolve. Everything was starting to unravel now. I had to be ready to lay down my whole hand, to go all in at any moment.
I fished my phone from my pocket, firing off a text.
Change of plans. Moving things up. Come as soon as possible. Bring her with you. It’s time.
Her response was immediate.
Squeeeeee!
She followed it up with a string of Xs and Os and a dozen goofball emojis. God help me, I really had missed her.
I smirked as I dialed another number from memory.
“S’up, boss?”
Steel drums played in the background.
“Afraid it’s about time for me to cut your vacation short.”
“Damn. I was just starting to like this assignment.”
“I’m sure you were.” I chuckled. “Need you to start tying up loose ends.”
“I comin’ to you? Or we meetin’ in the city?”
“I’m staying here for now.”
“Got it. Might take a little time to dry things up here.”
I sighed. “I was gonna send the plane. But maybe the slow boat is a better option.”
“Now, you’re just spoilin’ me. Guy could get used to this lifestyle. You wouldn’t believe the honeys down here. If I were ten years younger”—he whistled suggestively—“I’d be scoring left and right.”
“You’d better make my delivery and get your ass home to Theresa. She’s gonna have your nuts in a vise.”
It was his turn to laugh. “Hey now, I’m bringing her home one of those fancy shot glasses with the name of the hotel.”
“She’s sure to know you were thinking of her the whole time.”
“I’m joking, big man. I ain’t that stupid.” His voice sobered. “How you want me to play this one out, boss? Clue him in? Or strong-arm him?”
“I’ll let you decide. Do what you gotta do.” I quickly reconsidered. “Don’t make a scene, Vincent.”
“Ey-yo. You know me.” His Jersey leaked out. “I can blend when I gotta.”
Vincent was a six-foot-six school bus with a shaved head, Gold’s Gym arms, and a penchant for facial piercings. He didn’t blend in with any crowd.
“Seriously, boss, I got this. I’ll keep you posted.”
He’d also always had my back.
I ended the call and put the car in gear. Pieces were going to fall into place quickly now.
I stared out across the field of angels and prayed for the two who had raised me to watch over us.
The only way for this to work was to go through him.
It was time to break another promise.
“The difference between
the impossible and the possible
lies in a person’s determination.”
—Tommy Lasorda
Baseball Hall of Fame, Manager,
15
Plan B
Brayden
“Was wondering when you’d get the balls to show your face here.”
The sound of my former best friend’s voice stunned me more than it should have. I thought I had it etched into my memory like glass. I would replay it sometimes. I’d hear our voices calling out plays, make-believing we were in the bottom of the ninth, game seven, all tied up with bases loaded.
We always took turns pretending to hit the homer.
I’d see his face sometimes, too. The tears in his eyes as he charged me on the mound the first time we won a district title. His smile the first night he scored with Cindi. His rosy cheeks the first time we got drunk in the old shed behind Bobby’s house. The green tinge, that mirrored my own, as we hurled in the bushes afterward.
I tried to focus on those kinds of memories.
Not the ones full of ugly words that had come later.
When you part with someone on bad terms, you’re forced to play those mind games. You walk through all the things you should’ve said, creating whole dialogue that never happened.
That kind of make-believe was the only thing that had settled my stomach some nights. In my head, I’d already had this conversation a million times.
“Figured you were just gonna keep fucking my sister behind my back again.”
Nathan rolled his chair forward, out of the shadows. I held on to the porch rail, stuck halfway up the steps.
I thought I’d prepared myself for seeing him face-to-face in the wheelchair. I’d psyched myself up for the firsthand gut punch of just how much I’d cost him. But I couldn’t fight off the wave of nausea and doubt.
Part of me wanted to turn and run and never stop. The part of me that knew I didn’t deserve to be here. The part of me that used to sit in seedy hotel rooms in minor league towns and contemplate an easy way out. Me and a whole bottle of pills and a sob story about what could’ve been. I’d finally get what I should’ve had coming that night.
The night I threw away everyone I loved.
It should be me in that chair.
