by Caro Carson
They started walking toward the car, still hand in hand. It sounded odd to him to only mourn one family member at a time, but he was here for Brooke. Questioning her about her mother’s choices wouldn’t make this easier on her. “We’ll do this again in two weeks, then.”
She took a deep breath, an obvious attempt to prepare herself for something, and stopped him by tugging on his hand. She stepped in front of him, facing him with her doctor’s difficult news expression.
“He committed suicide.”
“Brooke.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Say it isn’t so. Say you haven’t had to deal with this in your life. He hated that she’d been through so much pain.
“I didn’t want to shock you, but I thought you should know. My mother does not pay her respects today or any day.”
Her expression took on the bitterness in her voice, adding to the ache he felt for her.
“Do you visit him?”
She nodded.
“If you want to visit now, I’ll take you there. Your mom can wait in the car.”
“No, I don’t want to. It’s been a long enough day already, and we haven’t even attempted dinner yet.”
Her mother, apparently tired of waiting for them by the car, chose that moment to open the door herself, get in, and slam it shut.
Brooke’s worry wrinkle appeared. “Maybe we better take her home now.”
“And start the reheating of the soup? You’ve been running for hours on two bites of a hot dog.”
“I’ve upset her enough by having you here.” She surprised him by suddenly raising their joined hands to her lips and kissing him hard on the knuckles. “But I’m not sorry that I said yes. Thank you for coming.”
They’d only taken a few steps when she stopped once more. “Wait a second.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out one of those river rocks that were used in landscaping. She dashed back to her sister’s grave and placed it on the headstone.
He didn’t ask for an explanation. He just escorted her back to the car in silence and drove straight to the restaurant to get her some decent food. He gave her mother no choice in the matter.
The rest of the evening was going as Brooke had predicted, and Zach resumed playing his part. He’d rocked the boat enough. Besides, it was almost entertaining to look at photos of a very young Brooke. He was sitting in the center of an oversize sofa from the nineties, sunk into the deep cushions and large throw pillows, with Brooke on one side and Mrs. Brown on the other.
“Here’s my sweet Chelsea’s last Christmas on earth.” Mrs. Brown passed him the framed five-by-seven.
“She really was cute, Mrs. Brown.” Zach studied the photo of two sisters, a preschooler and a preteen, wearing pajamas in front of a tinseled tree. “Look at that Elmo doll. I remember seeing those on the news. There were riots at the stores over the shortage of Elmos. How did you manage to get one? I’ll bet there’s a story behind that.”
Mrs. Brown only stared at him as if he’d started speaking in gibberish, alien being that he was.
He passed the photo to Brooke. “What are you holding up for the camera?”
“That was a Tama-something. Those little digital pets in a key chain.”
“I remember those.” He turned back to Mrs. Brown. “You must have been a great Christmas shopper. Those were the hottest toys around.”
She sniffed. “Thank goodness I got that Elmo toy. It was her last gift from Santa. Nothing was too good for sweet Chelsea.”
And Brooke. Sweet Brooke deserved her cool toy, too. Say it.
When Mrs. Brown kept staring at the photo in silence, Zach handed it back to her. “Looks like both of your daughters had a great Christmas that year.”
“That digital pet thing was a waste of money. They actually died when they weren’t fed often enough. I can’t imagine who thought it would be clever to entrust children with toys that had to be kept alive. Brooke’s died within weeks, and I had to deal with her disappointment.”
Okay, then. Clearly, no one was supposed to share a fond memory or talk about a happy time. He would have loved to hear about Mrs. Brown’s battle royale in a toy store over key chain pets and furry red dolls, but that wasn’t going to happen.
He’d been to funerals and wakes before, of course, which was really what this was: the eighteenth wake for Chelsea Brown. Always, at gatherings for relatives or even fallen firefighters, funny stories had managed to pop up through the grief. Smiles and tears mixed together as treasured memories were shared.
Not here.
Zach hauled himself out of the quicksand of the couch cushions and started strolling about the living room, trying to imagine the house with a lively family of four in it while Brooke was growing up. It was a clean, spacious, upper-middle-class house, even if the decor was a couple of decades old. He had a feeling that couch was the last couch on earth on which sweet Chelsea had sat.
Check yourself, Zach. You haven’t walked a mile in her mother’s shoes.
He was trying.
The bookshelves and mantel were covered in framed photos. Baby photos, kindergarten photos, and a really charming one taken at Halloween with Brooke dressed like a baby—a lanky, braces-wearing baby who was really in middle school, beaming at the camera.
He smiled back at the Brooke in the photo. She held a pacifier and a stuffed bunny in her hands. Chelsea was in a bunny costume at her feet, smiling up at her, too. Poor Brooke. She’d obviously lost her biggest fan the day her sister had died.
Behind him, he heard the real Brooke offer to heat up the leftovers. At the restaurant, her mother had sat on the edge of her chair and refused to even pick up the menu, but once Brooke had ordered things she liked, she’d relented and at least tasted her entrée. Brooke had insisted on bringing the rest home.
“It will taste better now than if you wait until tomorrow to reheat it. I can bring it to you right here on the couch.”
“Taste! I couldn’t care less about how food tastes.”
Zach kept staring at the Halloween photo. He wanted to like Brooke’s mother. He wanted to sympathize with her for her loss, but he was having a hard time being a good audience for what was obviously a well-rehearsed routine.
“I’m not like you,” Mrs. Brown said to her only living child. “I couldn’t enjoy my food at that restaurant, chomping away like nothing upset you.”
Zach turned around. “Where are the photos from high school?”
Mrs. Brown, interrupted mid lecture, glared at him. “She was only four when she died.”
“From Brooke’s high school.”
Zach caught Brooke’s eye. Quite intentionally, he smiled at her. “I want to see what kind of nineties prom gown you wore. Did you want to be a sexy Britney Spears, or were you already doing your classy librarian look?”
The corners of her eyes crinkled with the smallest of smiles. “I had the same straight slip dress that everyone else had that year. Floor-length and shiny. Very, very shiny satin.”
“Let’s see it.”
She glanced at her mother, her ghost of a smile fading away. “I don’t think any of those pictures made it into frames.”
“How about a graduation photo?”
Brooke frowned at him and shook her head quickly.
Her mother dabbed at her eyes with the tissue Brooke had pressed into her listless hand a while ago. “Yes, there should have been photos of my babies grown up in caps and gowns. Oh, the milestones that never happened. The year that Brooke finished medical school, Chelsea would have graduated from high school, you know. That was such a difficult year. I could hardly think of anything else.”
Zach rubbed his jaw.
Mrs. Brown looked at the photo in her lap mournfully. “Two graduations in the same year. Those photos would have made a beautiful double-framed display, d
on’t you think?” She dissolved into tears so that Zach barely made out the word “think.”
He could hardly keep cool and think himself. Brooke was alive. She had graduated high school, college, med school. Nothing in this house indicated that Mrs. Brown had a daughter who’d achieved so much. A daughter who was still here, waiting to be noticed, waiting to be valued.
Zach hated the stricken expression on Brooke’s usually fearless face. She was beautiful and smart, a lifesaver in the hospital, respected by everyone who knew her. There was more to her, though, a side he’d bet very few people glimpsed. He’d only come to see it himself these past few weeks. She had an almost childish curiosity to see more, to do more. She took a great interest in every Austin hot spot they visited, always wanting to know everything about the band or the building or the bartender’s best drink. Today, instead of sitting in this house for hours, she’d wanted to see a firefighter competition. She’d wanted to cheer him on.
She wanted to live life.
Now, he got it. Looking around this house, it was easy to see that once her sister had ceased to exist, Brooke had ceased to exist as well, at least for her parents. Perhaps if Chelsea couldn’t live, then Brooke didn’t deserve to live, either.
The injustice of it infuriated him, but if Brooke could keep her emotions calm and cool, so could he. “I’m sorry Chelsea didn’t have the chance to graduate.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Brown said, still dabbing with the tissue.
He kept his voice even. Friendly and curious. “But why don’t you have Brooke’s photo on display?”
Both women gaped at him.
“If I’d graduated from medical school, my mother would have a poster-sized blowup of my graduation photo in your face when you walked into the house, I bet.” He shrugged. “That’s just the way moms are.”
He saw it then, the narrowing of Mrs. Brown’s eyes, the shrewd look, the way she sized him up, the interloper in her kingdom.
That’s right, ma’am. I don’t take kindly to the way you’ve treated your daughter. To the way you treat her still.
He waited where he was, standing in front of the mantel with its row of photos, young braces-Brooke beaming at him through a long-ago camera lens. The next move was Mrs. Brown’s.
Or so he thought; it was Brooke who made the next move. “Zach and I have to be going.”
“You can’t.” Mrs. Brown looked as surprised as Zach felt. “It’s too early. I’m not ready to retire for the evening.”
“I am. We were up early for a community event over at the hospital. I’ve had enough.” Brooke extricated herself from the couch and looked down at her mother. “The leftovers are in the fridge, when you get hungry. I’m glad the weather held for us today. It was beautiful, wasn’t it? Good night. I love you.”
She bent to kiss her mother’s cheek, straightened the Christmas photo where it sat on the end table, and turned to Zach. “Ready to go?”
He knew he was witnessing a turning point in her relationship with her mother. She was drawing a new boundary line, setting a limit to how much time she would spend with someone who didn’t appreciate her.
He appreciated her. He loved her, and all the incredible courage she possessed to keep trying, to keep striving, no matter how unfair life had been to her.
She led the way to the front door, but her mother called out before they reached it. “It’s in the bedroom.”
They stopped.
“What is?” Brooke asked.
“Your graduation photo. It’s in my bedroom, on the bureau, if your...if your young man wanted to see it before you go.” She waved her white tissue toward the hall, a little flag of surrender. “Go ahead and show it to him, if he wants to see it.”
Zach felt Brooke slip her hand into his.
He nodded gravely at her mother. “Thank you, ma’am. I’d like that very much.”
* * *
Zach didn’t take his eyes off the road as he drove, but he felt Brooke shift in the passenger seat of her own car, restless. Restless good, because she’d gotten past something she’d been dreading? Or restless bad, because she’d relived so many hard moments?
They were driving back to their side of Austin, so he’d have to turn toward either his house or her apartment shortly. He broke the silence. “Your place or mine?”
She shifted in her seat again. “That line may be even older than ‘Can I buy you a drink?’”
Restless good, then. She was making a joke.
“Lady’s choice. Your place or mine. We’re getting close to the Mopac, so choose soon.”
“Your truck is at my apartment. I have to work tomorrow, anyway.”
“Your apartment, then.” After a few more minutes of silent driving, they pulled into her complex, which he’d taken to privately calling Senior Citizen Land. Such a strange place for her to live—
No, it wasn’t. It made perfect sense now. No children. No triggering of painful memories.
She stopped him on the sidewalk and gestured toward his truck. “I’m just going to sleep and get up for work in the morning. You might want to head back to your place.”
Everything in him rebelled at the idea. She’d opened up to him today, lost her cool veneer and let him see the real woman underneath, with all her past sorrows and current worries. If she retreated into her retirement home, she’d close out the world once more, and him with it.
“I’m not much fun tonight,” she said. “You should have a night off from all this drama.”
“This isn’t drama. You didn’t cause this. It’s just life.”
“Whatever it is, you don’t need it. You already helped me after that car accident patient got to me yesterday. You were really wonderful with my mother today.”
“I pissed her off.”
“That was kind of wonderful, to be honest. I think she liked you by the time we left.”
“Good.”
Brooke’s smile was fleeting. She rubbed her arms against the light chill in the night air.
“Do you really want to be alone tonight?”
She closed her eyes in pain or resignation or some other emotion. “I’m trying to give you a chance to take a break, a graceful exit after a solid forty-eight hours of probably the most difficult girlfriend you’ve ever dated. Take it.”
“Unless you’re planning on leaving me at the altar, you don’t get to wear the most difficult girlfriend crown. It’s been taken.”
Her eyes flew open at that.
He cupped her face in his hands. Had he really been foolish enough to think he’d contain these feelings for her? This fire wasn’t going to burn itself out, not anytime soon. Not ever. She was too special—but she didn’t know that. She’d lost her fan club at age twelve.
“These past two days have been intense. You’ve been the girl with the tragic past for a long time, haven’t you? That’s not how I’ve ever seen you. When I met you, you were a kick-ass ER doctor who didn’t fall at my feet. That’s who is telling me to leave now, too. But I know something else about you. You want what I want.”
“I do?”
“You don’t want to be the girl with the tragic past. You want to be the woman who has fun outdoors on a Saturday in May, and you want to have that fun with me. You know why? Because we’re two of a kind. We’re ready for some happiness in our lives, and part of that happiness is finding someone who understands us. Someone who isn’t afraid to try again and again. Someone who’ll never run away. Someone who’s brave enough to stay.”
And suddenly, he didn’t know if he was talking about her wants or his own, but it didn’t matter because she reached to hold his face in her hands, too, and they were kissing, warm and full and fulfilling.
The distinctive sound of a trash bag being thrown with some force into a Dumpster was followed by a disgr
untled man’s voice. “Take it inside!”
They did.
Sex was out of place on a day like today, but there was comfort in the little routines of living. Formal black clothes were shed and well-worn flannel pants, undemanding in their shapelessness, signaled sleep. So did a cold glass of water, the reaching for a lamp switch, the sharing of a pillow.
Brooke’s breath was warm on the skin of his neck. Her fingers smoothed their way over his hair, a soothing good-night gesture. He kissed her gently, and then she kissed him twice more, once as he cupped her cheek, once as he rested his hand on the side of her neck. Her loose sleep shirt slid off her shoulder, and then she was turning to him in the dark, her unhurried hands pushing aside bedding and shirts and flannel in sleepy silence. Everything was softness, skin, and warmth between them.
It wasn’t a night for sex, but for making love.
Afterward, he felt her breathing slow as she drifted to sleep with her cheek resting over his heart. He lay with his arm tucked behind his head, contemplating the ceiling of the apartment he wanted her to give up.
They should live together. They were always grabbing clothes and leaving vehicles at one place or the other. She liked his house. It was small, two bedrooms and one bath, but the land was pretty enough, and Brooke spent a lot of time on the porch enjoying the modest view of a simple creek. Money wasn’t plentiful for a firefighter, but he could swing some renovations, doing the work himself. An updated bathroom, a bigger tub. Yeah, it would be nice.
There were no kids around his cabin to send Brooke into a dark place. The house was so remote, there was no worry about it being quiet enough when they had to sleep during the day. If it was their only address, they’d always know where to find each other. They’d always know where they’d be sleeping. Together.
As he tried to imagine the conversation, the invitation, it left a bad taste in his mouth. “Hey, Brooke. We should live together. You like my place, right?”
It was all wrong. Living together sounded like a matter of convenience, not a commitment. Knocking out a closet wall to make a bigger bathroom wasn’t as symbolic as sliding a gold band on a ring finger.
