Page 54 of Guarded By the SEAL
Six Months Later
Teslyn took a deep breath of the thick bayou air. No place else on earth smelled like this, the rich odors of growth and decay underlying the heavy scent of flowers. Sunlight reached her eyes through the weeping canopy of trees, and Ivy squeezed her right hand more tightly.
In her left, Teslyn held a cardboard box with Marilyn’s ashes, the mother she’d thought she hated and fought so hard to escape. Pritchard’s words came back to her as they often did these days.You didn’t know her like I knew her. Before the drugs, before the drinking. She was a different person. A beautiful person. I never stopped loving her, not through all of it. I never stopped loving either of you.
A simple DNA test had proven what he’d said. Teslyn and Ivy were full sisters, not just half. And though she’d never see the pictures Pritchard had promised to show her from her childhood, she liked to believe they existed, and that they showed the kind of love she’d never thought her mother had experienced.
Wyatt’s hand touched the small of her back, the three of them walking past the ground where the trailer once stood as they headed toward the water. The charred earth was already covered with vegetation, bright greens and golds filling in the darkness.
The bayou was where Marilyn had always belonged, and this was where she would stay.
They came upon a great fallen tree, its bark missing and its trunk extending into the water. Teslyn sat on it, scooting out so Ivy could join her. “Are you ready?” she asked the girl.
Ivy’s big blue eyes peered up at her, and she nodded earnestly.
Teslyn opened the box and picked up a small scoop of ashes. “Just take a little at a time.” Tess sprinkled the ashes over the water, remembering her mother. The fights and angry words, but also the laughter and love.
Marilyn hadn’t had a lot to give, and she’d wrestled long and hard with her demons. But as Teslyn scattered her mother’s ashes, she was filled with the certainty that Marilyn had loved her as best she was able.
And now Teslyn was raising Ivy.
She sprinkled more of the ashes over the water, a dragonfly dancing on the surface nearby.
I’ll take good care of her, Momma. Just like you wanted.
She turned her head to see Wyatt straddling the log, staring at her with such calm contentment, it resonated inside her belly. He was such a good man, and one she knew she would be with for as long as he would have her.
She’d rented an apartment when she got back to Atlanta, not sure how Wyatt would play into their future, and unsure if she should go through with buying a place of her own. Already, that was proving to be a wise choice. Wyatt had asked her and Ivy to move in with him, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she gave in.
The sisters already spent more time at his house than they did in their own place, with Teslyn and Wyatt cooking together, quietly reading books, or dancing to Ivy’s favorite songs over and over again, the girl joining along in her sequined recital outfit. For her part, Ivy loved Wyatt almost as much as she loved Jett, the little girl and the goofy black dog always running around together or jumping off the dock, thick as thieves.
Wyatt wanted to marry Teslyn, but that wasn’t something she was ready for just yet. It had taken three months for her to tell him the whole truth of her childhood and adolescence—the things she’d done to survive, and the rock bottom that had finally made her leave for good. She’d been so afraid he would look at her differently, but he’d kissed her forehead and told her she was strong, that most women wouldn’t have been able to withstand all that she’d gone through.
She looked back over the water, her throat working to fight back tears, whether of gratitude or mourning, she couldn’t be sure. So much had changed since her mother’s call had brought her racing home to Osprey, and only one thing could have made it better. “I wish she were here,” she said quietly.
Ivy curled her arm around Teslyn’s elbow. “She is. She’s right here in the bayou, where she belongs.”
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