“Wow,” Alex said. “How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“That’s pretty sad.”
“Yeah, I cried all the way home. But when I got there, Jackson was waiting for me like usual because we always rode our bikes down to the creek. But I was so upset, I didn’t want to go.”
She smiled to herself as she remembered the uncomfortable way Jackson had looked at her that day, especially when she’d threatened to run away again.
“So he ran back home and wrapped up one of his mother’s necklaces and brought it over to me and wished me Merry Christmas.”
“Well, that was nice of him.”
She laughed, remembering the awkward smile on Jackson’s face that day.
“All he wanted was for me to stop crying so I’d go fishing with him. But it cheered me up.”
“He must be a good friend if you’re still wearing the necklace.”
“I hope so.”
“More than a friend?”
“Does it really matter?”
He shrugged. “Just curious.” He stepped back, studying her closely. “Come on, spill it. I know you must have at least dated the guy.”
Her nerves tangled inside of her. She hadn’t thought about how she might explain her feelings about Jackson, and she wondered why it even mattered. It’s not like she and Alex were dating. Then the crackle of the radio granted her a short reprieve. He tilted his head and listened as the dispatcher gave him instructions. Then he looked back at Lily.
“I gotta run, but I want to hear more about this best friend. Can I see you again tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“I’m off duty, but I’m working security outside of Brogen’s tomorrow night. Will you come by and see me?”
“Of course.”
He brushed his lips with hers again and started out of the alley. Then he turned back as if he’d remembered something.
“Oh yeah. Will you bring your address and phone number tomorrow night?”
“You don’t have to do that.” She fiddled with her fingers and tried to avoid looking directly into his eyes.
“Do what?”
“Get my phone number and pretend like you’re going to call me.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
He walked back to her and took her hands. “Hey, I know we’ve only known each other a few days, but I’ve really enjoyed it. I just want to get to know you better and to be able to stay in touch with you, okay?”
She dropped her eyes, afraid her hope would be written all over her face.
“Come on, Lily. I’m not really the bad guy you seem to think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re a bad guy. I just don’t want you to feel obligated to do something you don’t want to do.”
He smiled and leaned closer, taking her chin in his fingers. “I never do anything I don’t want to do, I promise.” He kissed her again and turned to go. “Bring it tomorrow night, okay?”
She stood in the shadows for a few minutes after he left, her body not yet fully recovered from the onslaught of adrenaline. The whole encounter had left her skin throbbing in time with her heart. She took a deep breath and steadied her nerves; then she slipped out of the alley.
As she walked along the dark streets of the island, she thought back on their conversation, wondering if he would really stay in touch. What if he wanted more? It seemed so silly to get her hopes up. They lived over six hours apart, and she would be so busy with school and volleyball, how would they ever see each other? It would be impossible. She was just setting herself up for more heartache.
She rubbed the necklace once more, repeating the inscription on the back from First Philippians.
“I thank my God every time I remember you.”
It hadn’t been there the day Jackson first gave it to her—only the praying hands on the front. But as a gift for her graduation, he’d had the inscription placed on the back with a promise between them to always pray for each other. And just as she had nearly every night for the past twelve years, she prayed for Jackson, for his safety and his peace of mind, and she wondered if he still kept his promise.
Birmingham, Alabama
“So how was your session with Dr. Kipling the other day?”
Jackson continued chewing his potatoes and concentrated on the yellow and white checkered table cloth, pretending not to notice the attempted nonchalance in his mother’s question. Why couldn’t they just have a simple meal together without her probing the depths of his misery?
As usual, she’d tried to be subtle for about a minute, and then quickly turned to a more direct approach when she didn’t get what she wanted out of him. But tonight he was determined to get through one meal without a discussion of his progress.
“It was fine,” he said between bites. He could feel her eyes on him, like she was picking over his wounds deciding which one to open.
“Have you read any of the book she recommended?”
“Mm hmm.” He refused to look up from his plate, knowing she was staring at him from across the table with those soft brown eyes that still invited him to confess everything. How many times had they sat over this very table in this tiny kitchen talking and laughing into the early hours of the morning? He hated denying her the closeness they’d once shared, but the only way he knew to maintain balance was to push away the good along with the bad.
“Well, how is it?” she asked.
“How’s what?”
She sighed and pushed herself up from the table, carrying her plate of half-eaten meatloaf over to the sink. He could hear her frustration in her strokes as she scraped the food into the disposal. She dropped the plate into the sink with a loud clank and turned around.
“You can’t keep pushing your feelings down, Jackson. You’re going to erupt one day.”
He glanced up at her as she leaned back against the sink and crossed her arms over her chest. She was still as slender and graceful as he remembered from his childhood, though the weight she’d lost recently made her seem frail. She frowned at him, and the lines that used to frame her warm smile now accented the deep sorrow in her eyes.
“Mom, do we have to talk about this every time I come over?”
“We don’t talk. I talk. You just sit there and give half answers to appease me.”
“Why can’t we just have dinner? Why can’t we talk about work, or what we did today, or the state of the economy? Anything except what Dr. Kipling said, or how I feel.”
He picked over the remains of his food, his stomach churning. Every time. Every freaking time he came here for dinner, he ended up puking by the time he got back to his place, and it was because she insisted on poking and prodding him to death.
She returned to the chair across from him and laid her hand over his, stroking it with her thumb. Her hand was cool and soft, the same gentle touch that had soothed his scraped knees and twisted ankles, and for a moment it was enough to make his nausea subside.
“I’m just trying to make sense of all this,” she said. “We’ve been through so much lately. I know it must feel like God’s abandoned you.”
“No.” He jerked his eyes up to hers. “Not abandoned. He’s beaten me to a pulp. I’m just waiting for the next blow, and I have no idea why he’s doing this to me.”
She squeezed his hand as her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh Honey, no. He may have allowed some difficult things to happen, for reasons we don’t understand, but he’s holding us as we go through it. And he’s working in you to bring you closer to him.”
“I don’t feel like I’m being held, Mom. I feel like I’m trying to swim across a river that keeps getting wider with every stroke I take.”
He felt the dam he’d spent months shoring up start to give, but the flood of anger and fear behind it threatened to overwhelm him. It hurt too much, and he pulled his hand out from under hers. Picking his plate up, he walked over to the sink and washed it off,
focusing on breathing.
“Jackson, please talk to me.”
“I can’t do this right now.” He turned and faced her, hardening himself once again. “We can talk about anything else you want. Just not this.”
“Alright then.”
“Thank you.” He leaned back against the sink and let out a breath of relief.
“So are you dating anyone?”
He could swear she smirked at him like she had won some battle he’d been unaware they were fighting.
“Well, I guess I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
She grinned, and for the first time that evening, he shared her smile.
“Well, are you?”
“No, and don’t start getting all nosy about anything Matthew’s said. He’s full of it. And don’t think I haven’t noticed the little conspiracy going on between you two.”
She raised an eyebrow and tapped her fingers on the table.
“What about Lily?”
“And there we have it. The circle of off-limit topics is now complete.”
“Oh, Jackson. Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Sorry. I know I said we could talk about anything, but if you’re going to try to talk me into calling her, we can just skip over that and move to the next topic.”
“I just don’t understand. She’s practically been a part-“
“A part of the family for as long as you can remember,” he finished, exasperated by the constant reminder of the intricate weaving of Lily’s life with his own. “I know. I’ve been here too.”
“Then why? You two were inseparable for so long. Why suddenly cut her out of your life? Especially now.”
He looked down at the floor, unable to bear the concern in her eyes.
“Look, Mom. I can’t explain it. I just can’t be with Lily. The past is over. It was nice, and we might have had a great life together, but it’s just not possible anymore.”
“Why?”
“Just because.” He leaned over and placed his hands on the chair across from her, determined to stop her questions. “Lily is everything about my past that was perfect and good. God has yanked away one thing after another. First Dad, then basketball, then my future. Sooner or later, he’s going to take her too. I mean, life isn’t forever, you know?”
“Jackson-“
“No! I can’t. I can’t lose her like you lost Dad.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she scrunched her eyebrows like she was about to scold him. A sob escaped instead, and she pushed away from the table, bolting from the room.
Jackson dropped his head and swore under his breath. He’d let his frustrations get the best of him again. She was only trying to help him, he knew that. But why couldn’t she back off and let him deal with it his own way? He let out a long deep breath and pushed his hands through his hair. He’d have to go apologize.
He walked through the living room and down the hallway toward her bedroom, but he stopped when he heard a sniffle from the room on his left. He stepped into the open doorway and leaned against the frame, sucking in a breath at the sight.
His dad’s office was exactly as it had been the day he died, from the papers on his desk still needing signatures, to the newspaper he’d read that morning still open to the sports section. His green UAB basketball jacket—the one Jackson had given him on signing day nearly five years earlier—hung over the back of his desk chair.
His mom sat there poring over a picture album spread out in her lap, wiping tears from her eyes with a tissue. As he watched her and looked around, a tide of frustration and anger rose up in him that propelled him into the room.
“Mom, you have got to stop this.”
She startled and looked up at him.
“Stop what?”
“This!” He gestured at the walls. “This shrine you have going in here. Dad’s gone! You have to let him go and move on with your life. Stop sitting in here waiting for him to walk through the door.”
Even as he heard the words coming out of his mouth, he knew they were meant for himself as well. They both had to face reality.
“I can’t.” She laid the album across the desk and leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper. “I can’t just pack him away and put him on a shelf.”
Jackson walked over and knelt in front of her, grasping her hands.
“You’ve got to let him go.”
“Like you? The way you let go of everything? You think you have this all figured out, don’t you? That if you push away everyone and everything, you can push away the pain. Well, I don’t want to do that.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Yes you are! Look at what you’ve done to Lily.”
He stood and turned his back on her, afraid she’d know how right she was if she saw his face.
“I’m not talking about Lily.”
“You might as well be. At least I lived my life with your father. I didn’t bury my head in the sand to avoid any chance of pain. It may hurt now, but at least I got to spend over twenty five years loving him.”
“And was it worth all this?”
She walked around and looked up at him, poking her tiny finger into his chest like a needle.
“Without a single doubt.”
“How can you say that after all the pain you’ve been through these past few months?”
Her face softened, and he saw the tiniest hint of peace in her eyes.
“Look, it’s not the memories of the good times with your dad that grieve me. It’s all the time I missed with him, the time I wasted chasing after things that didn’t matter. It’s the silly fights, and the big ones. I wasted a lot of time with him being selfish. That’s what haunts me when I can’t go to sleep.”
He pulled her into him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, stroking his back like she had when he was little.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” he said.
She pulled her head back and looked up at him. “Don’t let her go. She’s still here. You and Lily already have more memories than most people get in a lifetime. Don’t throw it away because you’re scared, or you lose her anyway.”
He hugged her again, and the tension that had been tying him in knots began to seep out. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was still hope for him and Lily.
It wouldn’t be easy. She had every right to be angry with him, and she was the most stubborn person he’d ever known. But in the end, she was his. Always had been. Nothing could change that.
Chapter Seven
July 5
Brunswick, Georgia
Alex knew the moment he stepped through the front door that dinner with Chloe and Steve was a bad idea, but Steve had been so hopeful, and it was hard to turn him down when he simply wanted peace. But Alex knew better.
After polite greetings and small talk, they’d sat down at the cramped kitchen table in Chloe’s apartment. It took less than ten minutes for her to deliver a shot across his bow.
“Any takers on the house yet?” she asked.
He chewed slowly, wondering if he should exit now and spare himself the argument. Maybe she was just making conversation, and he was overreacting, but his instincts were rarely wrong.
“Not yet,” he answered.
She pushed her thick auburn curls behind her shoulder before taking a bite, and then looked over at him with wide innocent eyes.
“Not even one?”
She dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin, folded it precisely, and then laid it beneath the rim of her plate.
“It’s been on the market for less than a month,” he said.
“Still, maybe it’s a sign.”
Here we go, he thought. He glanced over at Steve who was engrossed in his plate of food. The poor guy had no idea what he was getting into. Frankly, he wasn’t sure what Steve even saw in her.
“Maybe it just means I need to give it time.”
“Why rush into this? You could hold onto it for a little longer.”
; “No, I can’t. But that’s none of your business.”
He shoved another bite into his mouth and wished Chloe would do the same. She arched an eyebrow and lifted her glass to her lips. When she put the drink down, she folded her arms over the table, and he let go of any hope that she would leave him alone.
“I don’t understand why you’re so set on selling the house,” she said. “You’re rushing into decisions that you should take time to think through.”
“Stop lecturing me about things you know nothing about.”
“I know enough to see you’re just making things worse. If you just give it some time, let things settle down-“
“Shut up, Chloe.”
“Excuse me?” Her jaw dropped.
“You heard me. Now drop it. I’m sick of talking about this.” He dropped his fork onto the table and pushed his chair back. “Thanks for dinner.”
As he headed into the living room, both Chloe and Steve followed him voicing their objections. It didn’t matter. He’d lost his appetite as well as any desire to make peace with Chloe.
“Don’t leave like this,” Steve said.
Alex grabbed his keys off the coffee table and headed for the door. He threw it open to leave, when Chloe finally spoke.
“She’s here, Alex.”
He spun around. “What?”
“She’s in town. She just wants to talk.”
He pointed his finger at her, trying to maintain control.
“Stay out of this, Chloe.”
Then he slammed the door behind him.
St. Simons Island
It had been a stupid, stupid idea. As a general rule, Lily hardly ever wore heels because of her height, but also because they were just plain awkward. As athletic as she was, they had always been her downfall, literally. So what had possessed her to allow Kara and Rachel to dress her up in a skirt and heels for a long walk to the village to meet Alex?
As if the shoes weren’t bad enough, she had let them convince her to wear one of Kara’s skirts—one that she had spent the past five minutes tugging on as she walked the darkened streets. Sure, Kara could have pulled off the look with no problem, but combined with the slinky cami, Lily was sure she looked like a hooker, and had told the girls as much when they had finally let her look in a mirror.
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