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She laughs. “You know….” She pauses, leading into something. “I was in the barn that night….” Her voice trails off, leaving me to wonder. But I don’t wonder because I know exactly what she’s referring to. That night is frequently thrown up between us because it’s the night I lost my virginity to Noah. I always said it’d be him and knew it would be. So when he talked me into a date when I was sixteen and lead me out to his parents’ barn, I let him.
“Why were you in there?” I shout. “It was his parents’ barn.”
Her nose scrunches. “I was there dropping off a saddle I borrowed.”
Embarrassment heats my face. Noah basically fucked me up against a wall. “Did you see anything?”
“Just his bare ass, which I might add was very nice, but it was dark so not much. I think I heard more than I saw.” She giggles, and then sits up. Reaching over, she helps me off the floor.
I tuck my cell phone inside the back pocket of my jeans. “Why are you just telling me this now?”
She shrugs and tries to fix her hair. “My little secret, I guess.”
“You’re so weird.”
“I know.” Kelsey smiles, her hands on my shoulders. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to get ready.” She stops about the time she’s near the door and smiles. “Are you sure you don’t have it?”
I roll my eyes. “No.”
Kelsey retreats upstairs with her friends, and I make my way into the family room. I peek up at the window overlooking the field in search of my kids. I spot them out there with Grace and her sister, Aunt Linda, who also happens to be the groom’s mother. Small town. It might be weird for her to be having her wedding here, but Noah’s parents’ place on Lake Travis is where a lot of weddings have happened, including ours. Naturally, my sister wanted hers here too and Noah’s parents kindly agreed.
I focus on the little people Noah and I created together, memories of our own wedding, my five-month pregnant belly and him smiling ear to ear over ‘putting a ring on it’, as he commonly liked to say. Still crawling around on all fours, Sevi’s wrapped up in a set of twinkle lights, thanks to Hazel. You know, it might calm the little bugger down for a while.
“Long day?” someone asks from behind me. Wrapping my robe around me a little tighter, I turn to look over my shoulder. It’s fucking Maverick, of all people. My cheeks heat and my heart races as he sits on the couch behind me and twists his head toward mine, waiting on my reply.
“You could say that.” He really doesn’t know how long a day it has been. My heart continues to pound in my chest, my eyes burning from being dehydrated.
“The wedding hasn’t even started.” He laughs and then notices my appearance. “Have you been drinking?”
“My baby sister is getting married.” I take a moment to look over his appearance. He looks different from the high school baseball player I gave a piece of my heart to. “So yeah, I’m drinking.” I sigh and sit next to him, finally understanding what Noah meant yesterday when he mentioned how being back here made it worse. It does. “It’s this place, this town. Memories, ya know.”
“What happened?”
I give him a look. You know the one you give when the person asks you what’s wrong but deep down they know?
Maverick sighs, his face scrunching. “Sorry, I just mean… I don’t know what I mean. It just seemed easier to ask what happened rather than say, hey, sorry about Mara.” He exhales, long and drawn out, shaking his head as if he’s sorry. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
He stares at me patiently. I should say something, anything, but I don’t know what. I get this a lot from anyone who’s never experienced this kind of pain. They always say, “I don’t know how you do it.” In truth, parents who have lost a child don’t either. One day leads to the next. That’s the best answer I can give you. I feel my mouth open, but no words come to mind. It does, however, take everything I have not to break down and cry though at the thought of Mara and my constant battle to remain okay. I don’t want this look from everyone. The one that screams I’m so sorry for your loss.
“I just meant….” Maverick’s features shift, as if he’s upset for a moment and then corrects his features. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through. I look at my daughters, and I can’t possibly imagine the pain you and Noah are going through.”
I get this statement a lot since Mara passed too. They look to the mother and think that because they’re the mother of the child, they must have taken it the hardest. I suppose in some ways there’s some truth to it, but not for Noah. Mara was his baby girl. His firstborn daughter, and he took her passing just as hard as I did. Maybe even more because as a man, a father, her protector, he had to stand by and watch as she was taken from us.
“I ran into him last night in town,” he says, almost conversationally.
“You did?”
He nods. “I saw him at the bar. We actually talked a little bit. Probably because I think he was shit-faced by the time he got to the bar, and then it just went from there.”
I twist toward him. “What did he say?”
“Just some shit about a book and he let her die. He was pretty distraught over it.”
Not knowing what else to do, I nod because I know by giving him Journal, I made everything worse. “We got in a big fight last night after we got into town. The kids wanted to go see Mara’s grave, and Noah didn’t want to. I just got so angry at him over it.”
“I don’t think I would want to either,” Maverick admits, and then holds up his hand when my livid stare snaps to his. “Just hear me out. I know it might be hard to understand, but I can totally relate to him. He lost his daughter.”