Page 12

12

EMMETT

I don’t know why I feel so compelled to tell her, but watching the sun sink lower on the horizon, the blues starting to turn pink, the girls frolicking in the water, splashing each other and throwing sand, I feel the urge to let it all out.

“My wife died,” I tell her quietly, unable to meet her eyes. I sit, toes buried in the sand, as I watch the girls ahead. Heidi’s eyes feel like hot laser beams. “She died when Juni was young. Six months.” I bite my cheek. “We were high school sweethearts. She followed me to college and got pregnant.” I feel the anxiety within me spike, my hands growing sweaty as the sand starts sticking to them more.

I open my mouth to start again, but no words come out. Instead, I close it, licking my lips and trying to think of what I want to say.

“Take your time,” Heidi whispers, her hand touching mine.

I look over at her and find that she had shifted to her side, her head propped up by her left wrist. I follow her other hand down to where it makes contact with mine, the feeling a weird mix of comfort and shame, and I can’t really place why.

“She dropped out of college before graduation, and in that time, I had graduated and was just about to get drafted. She had Juniper, and it was the best day of my life,” I tell her truthfully.

Better than the draft. Better than anything that’s ever happened to me. Better than the day I married her mom at the courthouse while she was six-months pregnant, and that day was pretty close.

The way her blonde hair was curled, and the way her baby-bump looked in her white dress she bought from the thrift shop with a couple days’ worth of tips from the diner job she got to make some money before the baby came, just in case I didn’t make it past the Combine.

We were two broke kids trying to get by, excited at the thought of maybe making it one day.

“She died days before draft day,” I say flatly, shutting my eyes. “It was heart failure. Peripartum cardiomyopathy.” I take a deep breath, the salty air stinging my watering eyes. “We didn’t know. But we should have gone to the doctor more. We should have gotten her tested more. I don’t know.” I feel my hands ball into fists at my side, the warmth of Heidi’s hand leaving as she takes it back, and I don’t have it in me to ask her to put it back.

I don’t want to think about why I want it there.

“There were, well, are, a lot of coulda, shoulda, woulda. But I can’t travel back in time. It happened and there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

We sit in silence, and although part of me wants Heidi to say something—anything, a larger part of me is happy for the reprieve.

Heidi sniffles quietly. “She would be proud of you, you know that, right?”

My lips tighten. “I don’t know about that.”

“You didn’t give up.”

“I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t. You wanted to so bad, and you didn’t give up. So many people would have.”

Licking my lips, I watch as the girls walk halfway up the beach back to us before sitting down. As they start to dig in the sand with no one else around, I lay down, turning my head to look at hers. She’s so close I can almost smell the fruity perfume through the scent of ocean. “I wanted to give up. I nearly did. I had met Leo briefly at the Combine and then at the draft we talked more. He saw through the facade. It was either continue with my dreams so I could support my daughter or give it all up and not know what’s next. I had to keep going for her.”

Heidi’s brows pinch together as she watches my fingers absentmindedly run through the sand next to me.

“He pulled the truth out of me, took me in, helped me get on my feet, and he’s been like my brother ever since.”

“You haven’t told anyone else this story, have you?” she asks quietly.

“No,” I say honestly. “I think Owen knows some of it. A few of the guys know I have a daughter now. But no, no one else really knows what happened.”

Heidi thinks for a second before sitting back up, looking out to the sunset. “Sunsets have always been my favorite,” she tells me, her hands in her hair as she puts it up in a high bun.

“They were our favorite, actually,” I tell her. And it’s the truth.

“What was her name?” Heidi asks, the green of her eyes piercing mine.

“McKenna.”

“I love that name.”

We slip into silence once more as the sun sets further and further.

“She loved sunsets her whole life,” I tell her, and I start to wonder why I suddenly want to tell her everything. “You know how when you’re young and in school, everyone kinda knows one thing about you? Like one thing that as a kid you decide to make your whole personality? Sunsets were her thing. In elementary school she’d come in with her big backpack and huge smile,” I feel my lips tip at the memory. “And she’d ask when everyone got up that morning. She’d go “Did you see that sunrise this morning?” and shake her head like an eighty-year-old man.”

I pause, the memories weighing down on me in full force, and yet somehow I feel lighter than I have in a long time. “She was made fun of all throughout elementary school. While I was the weird kid who was the first person out on the field during recess throwing himself a ball, she was the weird girl who couldn’t stop talking about sunsets.”

Heidi chuckles next to me. “You threw yourself a football?”

I shake my head. “Nope. At the time I was actually obsessed with basketball.”

“All American Boy,” she nods.

I sigh, the smile I’ve been trying to keep back spreading further and further. “It wasn’t until fifth grade graduation that we learned that she had been raised by her grandparents. Her parents had passed away in an accident when she was four. A lot of her mannerisms as a kid started to make sense. People stopped picking on her by then.” I take a deep breath. “When we got together in high school, things kind of stayed the same. Because she loved them, I loved them. They were our favorite part of the day and she always made sure we would see every single one. If we were busy, she’d say we needed to take a break. If we were fighting, it was a small little moment we could take a breather, recollect ourselves, and the second the sun set, nothing ever felt as heavy.”

“Every single one?” Heidi smiles. “There’s been some crummy sunsets.”

I chuckle. “There’s been a lot of crummy sunsets. But for whatever reason she loved them. And I did too. Even the crummy ones.”

“They’ve been my favorite too,” Heidi says quietly with a sigh.