Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 131455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“I'll, uh, wait by the car and keep a lookout,” Nathan offers as I start walking toward Mom's grave. He seems even more uncomfortable now than when I strong-armed him into coming with me. Some people don't like cemeteries, I guess. Even big tough guys who carry guns.
My sigh of relief sends birds fluttering from the nearby trees when I find Mom's headstone in good condition. There are dandelions and clumps of overgrown grass around the base, but for the most part it looks alright. I wonder if Dad's been here recently as I drop to one knee and begin pulling the weeds. I feel like I need to do something to prove I care.
Once everything's cleared away and there's nothing to do but sit with my thoughts, I settle back on my heels with my hands folded in my lap.
“Hi, Mom,” I whisper, cringing at how awkward this feels. Do people usually speak out loud to their dead loved one's graves? It feels better than doing it in my head, plus there's nobody around to look at me like I'm crazy. “I'm sorry I haven't been here to see you as much as I should,” I continue. “I hope you know it's not because I don't think about you. I still do. I think about you all the time. Right now, there's not a day that goes by when I don't think of you and remember who you were and wish you were here. In fact, I think about that now more than ever. With a sigh, I look up, taking in my surroundings. “This is a pretty place. Some of the trees were just saplings back when we first buried you here. I was just a little girl then, right? And now look at me. Your baby is going to have a baby.”
A baby she'll never hold. A baby who will never know their grandmother–and Callum's mother has been gone for a long time. He rarely mentions her, but I know his father raised him alone.
Closing my eyes, I try with all my might to imagine Mom as she would look now. There might be gray at her temples, lines at the corners of her eyes, and around her mouth. No, definitely. She'd have deep laugh lines after another fifteen years of filling the room with her bawdy laugh. I've never heard anyone laugh quite that way since, with their entire body.
I smile at the memory while a soft breeze stirs the hair at my temples. I can almost make myself believe it's Mom doing it. Like she's brushing my hair back with the tender touch I didn't get to enjoy nearly enough of when she was here. Comforting me the way she was so good at doing when I was younger.
“It's so unfair, and I know life itself isn't fair, but I didn't get enough time with you. I mean, I guess there's no such thing as enough time, really. You could have lived to be eighty years old, and I still would have wanted more time with you. But I feel cheated.” The thought tightens my chest until it's hard to breathe. It isn't sadness. It's anger. I'm fucking angry that somebody took her away from me–from us. Dad's never been the same, and only now do I understand why. He didn't just lose his wife. Somebody took her away, and he's spent every day since then clutching me tighter to keep the same thing from happening again.
I reach down, plucking a long blade of grass before trying to remember how to whistle with it. She taught me when I was little, but it's been too long since I've tried. All that comes out is a burst of air, which somehow stirs my anger again. “I don't want to forget the little things about you,” I whisper and start twirling the blade between my fingers until it blurs, thanks to the tears in my eyes.
The last thing I want is to break down weeping at my mother's grave, so I blink them back and wait for the wave of emotion to pass before speaking again. “Maybe it makes me think about when my baby will start forgetting things about me. It's scary. I never thought about that sort of thing before. Is this what happens when you become a parent? You start questioning the things you used to take for granted?”
I toss the grass aside with a sigh. “God, I wish you were here. I have so many questions, and I'm so scared. I know you would make me feel better, the way you always used to. I've never needed you more than I do now, and yet somehow, even though you've been gone all these years, you've never felt so far away. What should I do? Where do I go from here? I can't tell Dad about what Callum did—I'm honestly afraid he would kill him, or at least attempt to. That would cause more problems for him. And I don't want to tell Tatum, since she's already messed up enough over everything that's happened. She no longer needs knowledge of how crazy her father is, and the lengths he's willing to go to keep me at his side.”