Her face paled a shade. “Oh.”
“Being here brings it all up, I guess.”
She nodded, blinking rapidly. “When did it happen?”
“Six years ago, this month.”
“Cade’s mom?”
“Yeah.”
Upon learning about Laurel, most people apologized like they had some sort of hand on fate that day then never touched the topic again. Tip-toed around me like the mere mention would set off a land mine. I expected her to do the same. But Hollie took a deep breath through her nose. “Does he remember her?”
I shook my head. “No. He was only four.”
“I’m sure that’s hard.”
“For a while, I was angry he forgot. It didn’t seem right.” I lifted a shoulder. “He remembers a song she used to sing and occasionally draws something from his memory, but it’s always distorted, never real.”
“He draws?”
“Yeah, he’s incredibly talented, too. Laurel would be proud of him.”
“She was an artist?”
“Not in the slightest.” A laugh built in my throat. “She wished she was, but had enough self-respect not to quit her day job.”
That made Hollie chuckle. “Hey, someone has to admire it.”
“And admire it she did. She loved color, music, art, anything that made the heart dance.”
After a beat of silence, I glanced at Hollie. Tears had welled in her eyes.
I sat up suddenly. “Sorry. I’m?—”
Her warm hand clasped over my forearm. “No, Jesse. Don’t apologize. I just wish she was still here so I could meet her. She sounds lovely.”
A lump formed in my throat.
“Do you have a picture of her?”
I froze. It was a ballsy thing for Hollie to request, but my hands reached for my phone like it was a wrapped present under the Christmas tree. “I have so many.”
She waited patiently, watching the kids as I pulled up the album calledHeron my phone. I tapped on one. “This is Laurel in the doorway of our house in Oklahoma.” An ear-to-ear smile stretched across Laurel’s face and her hands were fanned open in front of our bubblegum pink door. I could still hear herTada! What do you think?and remembered my utter shock like it was yesterday.I chuckled. “She painted our front door and was pretty proud of it.”
Hollie giggled behind her hand. “That isquitethe color choice. Goes great with the off white siding.” Her tinge of sarcasm gave the conversation the levity it needed.
“Colors made her happy, and nothing else mattered.” For a few minutes, I showed off Laurel, telling miniature stories and explainingher antics. The tension in my shoulders drained and my smile came easier. It had been so long since I’d been invited to talk about her. I probably came off like a kid in a candy store. There was so much to say, tell, I didn’t even know where to begin.
A laugh rose from my throat as I scrolled to the next one. It was Laurel hanging upside down in a parachute hammock with toddler Cade pressed into her chest. Their hair hung toward the fall leaves piled on the ground below them, mouths wide like they were laughing. “This is the fall before she passed away.”
Hollie’s voice was quiet, unobtrusive. “How did she die?”
“It was a freak accident.” I whispered. “We were riding at her parent’s ranch. An agitated bull spooked her horse, and the horse threw her…” I tilted my head to the side. “Before she could get off the ground, the bull hit her in the chest. The blunt force trauma broke her ribs and punctured her lung. By the time we got her help, uh, it was too late.” I hated how detached I sounded, like I was reciting the damn times table rather than recounting the worst day of my life. But after all this time, the words felt like simple facts. What cost me more were the memories, the images I pondered alone in the dark.
“Were you…there?”
I gave a slow nod. “Saw the whole thing.”
