Page 21 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Fourteen

I’m in a canoe with Ford. It takes thirty minutes of us being on the lake and him pointing out birds to me like a nature guide for this to sink in.

Every sound synonymous with the lake—birds, bugs, and boat motors—mixes with the soft splash of the paddles cutting through the water to form a surreal and soothing soundtrack.

The sun is low, the lake has emptied. It’s peaceful. I’ll never admit it to Ford, but it’s better than a bubble bath and any book I own.

“Tell me how you got the crematorium,” he says from the back of the canoe. “And the name.”

I tuck my chin to my shoulder, not fully looking back at him. His paddle cuts into the water; I rest mine on my lap.

I hesitate and think of him being so open about Wren. Himself. His job.

I take a deep breath in, forcing the words with my exhale .

“The police told me when my dad got the call about Zeb, he told them to burn him.” A bird cuts through the sky; I wonder if Ford knows what it is.

“So they sent the body to the crematorium and did just that. I was on that trip for college—you remember it. Two weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail with that earth science class. Seems stupid now.” I pause to watch a bass boat troll by, knowing I didn’t need to tell Ford that part.

I had talked to him on the phone just before I left.

“I’ll miss talking to you,” he’d said. “You’ll find some boy and live in those woods forever, I bet,” he teased.

Then the ones that lingered the longest and hurt the most after he was long gone: “You know I’ll still love you even if you do.

” I laughed then. I’d never once called him my boyfriend, never once told him I loved him, but he had to have known both those things were true.

“Yeah, yeah, Golden Boy. Have fun with my brother this weekend, and I’ll see you when you pick me up if I’m not shacked up in a tent with Sasquatch.

” That was the plan: he’d be there at the trailhead and pick me up.

While my brother stayed in Ledger working a job putting up fences, Ford and I went off to college.

Him at a big state school in Raleigh, me at a small college close to home.

Only an hour away from each other, we were together nearly every weekend.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, I didn’t even know he’d died—June couldn’t connect with the teacher in charge.

Cell phones were shit then, and the group SAT phone was down, but it didn’t seem that important.

What could go wrong, you know? Little did I know as I was eating beans from a can and laughing around a fire, my brother was being burned alone, not a soul there to say goodbye to him or play a good song.

” I laugh softly, but even to my own ears it sounds sad.

Like a cry from the bottom of an empty well.

“My dad went to get the ashes a few days later—after spending God knows how long pouring liquor down his throat—and Zeb was in a glorified trash bag and cardboard box. My dad was so wasted he drove right off the bridge into Crow Creek. Sometimes I wonder if it was on purpose—not that it matters. Dad drowned. Zeb’s ashes washed away. ”

Giving those words life is all it takes for me to viscerally relive every moment of that story like it was the day it happened.

The way I dropped to my knees and my muscles seized when I saw June’s face at the trailhead.

She was bleach white, crying as she spoke.

“Zeb died,” she blurted through her sobs.

“And your dad .” I was dirty, smelled like I hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, and couldn’t even get my backpack off before I vomited on her shoes.

I went into the woods for two weeks and the world fell apart.

I happily hiked on day one; Zeb got arrested.

I signed a logbook with a smiley face at a trail checkpoint on day two; Zeb somehow got released on bail.

I stacked rocks in a creek with my classmates on day four; Zeb lost his job, shoved one more needle into his arm, and took his final breath.

I finally figured out how to start a fire with a piece of flint on day nine; Zeb was getting cremated. Alone.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Ford on day thirteen; my dad got drunk, picked up Zeb’s ashes, crashed into the creek, and died while Zeb’s cremains wash away .

Somewhere in that timeline I never quite placed, Ford left; we never spoke again.

When I came out of the woods, the only things waiting were guilt and grief. Ford was gone, my brother was gone. I refused to go to whatever sham of a funeral my uncle planned for my dad.

Ford clears his throat, cutting his paddle into the water and bringing me back to the canoe and him.

“Anyway, after that, I came back to Ledger, hellfire in my veins, and went right to the crematorium. I sat on the front steps until he told me exactly how my brother was treated. I nearly punched him in the face when he showed me the process. ‘Bodies without directions are sent in naked and with a sheet,’ he told me. You can imagine the words I had for him.”

I turn around in my seat to fully face Ford now. His intense expression is wholly fixed on me. His paddle is on his lap; any movement of the canoe is now a drift.

“Turns out, I’m annoying enough, because he gave me a job. He said in that uppity voice of his—you remember him? Mr. Garth?”

Ford lets out a soft laugh. “I do.”

“He said, ‘Ms. Armstrong, if you think you can do so much better, why don’t you do it?’ So I did.

I dressed them so they looked like who they were and started playing music they liked.

Did it the way Zeb would have wanted, ya know?

” Ford nods again. “And then I just . . . never left. What would I have done, anyway? Only a year and a half of college credits on my resumé. I couldn’t bring myself to go back to school.

Seemed pointless. The next few months . .

.” There is so much to say, so much Ford has no idea about, but the narrowing of my throat tells me not today.

Not yet. “The next few months were difficult. And Glory—” I blow out an incredulous breath and give him a look that explains that shitshow.

“That woman had every excuse in the book for what happened and why she didn’t try and find me.

Mr. Garth gave me the apartment over the crematorium and paid for me to go through crematory training.

I did that for years. The Death Liaison, he called me.

” I smile fondly. I annoyed the hell out of that man, but he was good to me.

“He retired about ten years ago and I took out a loan and bought it from him.” I shrug.

“I changed the name to Happy Endings for shock value.” Ford chuckles and puts the tip of his paddle in the water, steering us away from the tree line. “And here we are.”

Stories like mine never get easier to tell, but in that canoe, for the first time, I feel a hint of relief. Like a deep breath after being under water for too long.

“I didn’t know,” he says as I start paddling again, steering us toward a floating dock in the middle of the lake.

“That nobody could reach you. June and I talked. And I called you—not that it matters. It went to your voicemail, and I didn’t know what to say—didn’t know how to explain any of it—so I didn’t leave a message. ”

“And never called again for twenty years,” I add.

“And never called again for twenty years,” he echoes, voice quiet.

At the floating dock, Ford ties off to a cleat with a small rope, and we climb onto it, taking in the lake around us in silence .

“After that, everything crumbled,” I continue, the words falling out of my mouth like a line of dominoes.

“It’s like I had tried to escape who I was, and this town and the universe felt it—sucked me back in like a damn vacuum and reminded me of my place.

Like God got pissed I was trying to act too big for my britches.

Had the nerve to hope for a better life.

If I never would have gone on that hike—or gone to college at all—maybe it wouldn’t have happened.

” Three ducks fly by; we both watch them.

“Anyway, twenty years seems like a good amount of time to try again. Get out of here. Nobody left to get wrecked if I’m gone except Glory.

” I laugh an unamused laugh. “Way that woman bitches she’ll probably throw me a party. ”

He stares at me; I stare at the water.

“You’re different,” he finally says.

“Well, I’m forty-one, so, that’s a given.”

He shakes his head. “Not that. You . . . you used to have this look when I’d pick you up from your house. Almost smug, you know? Defiant. Like, where you came from and what everyone else in your family did had nothing to do with what you were. Like it was the least interesting thing about you.”

“And now?”

His eyes squint just enough that lines web out around them as he looks at me like he’s seeing every truth that lives inside of me. “Now it seems like it’s the only thing you think of.”

I scoff. “It’s not.”

“Really?” He takes a wobbly step toward me as the dock bobs in another wake. “Why didn’t you show up for a drink? ”

At once, anger starts to swirl and collide against itself within me, and I don’t mask it in my voice. “I told you I was busy.”

“Why are you still single?” he presses.

“You’re single!” I argue, louder.

“Why are you alone?” He doesn’t wait for my answer before rapid-firing his next questions: “Why is there nobody in your life? Why do you want to sell the house? To move to the damn desert? Why won’t you look at me? Why are you dating guys like math-man Dean? Why can’t w—”