Natalie reaches across the two feet of space separating us and curls her hand around mine. “You had the best smile. I used to call it my sunrise smile.”
Had, nothas. Her verb choice isn’t lost on me. Harper basically intonated the same thing to me last night.
Like someone hitting a button on a television remote and changing the channel, Natalie switches from solemnity to laughter. “Do you remember when you broke your arm and were in a cast for six weeks?”
Since I arrived, she has asked me a lot of “do you remember” questions. It’s as if she’s trying to force an imprint on her brain, willing it not to forget. Trying to stop the illness from taking those memories from her.
Unfortunately, this particular “do you remember” question she asked is something I do want to forget. It’s one of those memories I keep locked away and seldom bring out. It happened a few months after Mom died. I had told Natalie I’d fallen off my bike, when the truth was, Amelia had pushed me down the porch stairs. It wasn’t the first time my sister had hurt me, and it definitely wasn’t the last. But Natalie never knew about any of it. I was good at hiding my pain, and my sister was good at being duplicitous.
“You asked me to buy you every color of permanent marker I could find,” she continues.
I hated the white cast I was forced to wear. I doodled flowers all over it in a rainbow of colors. Pink carnations, yellow sunflowers, bright red roses, purple violets. I would add one flower a day, drawing myself a garden full of blooms on that stupid plaster cast like I was Monet reincarnated. I wanted to make something ugly look beautiful. If only I could’ve done the same thing so easily to myself.
I quickly finish my coffee, not wanting to delve into any more childhood memories.
“I’ll go make breakfast, then we can plan out a grocery list,” I tell her, getting up. “Bacon and toast okay, or do you want scrambled eggs?”
“Just toast,” she replies, looking back out over the yard as the sun quickly rises and travels toward its zenith.
I hesitate before going inside, my hand gripping the pull for the screened door. “If I don’t say it often enough, thank you. For everything. I love you, Aunt Natalie.”
Tears pool when she softly replies, “You may be my niece by birth, but you will always be my daughter in my heart.”
I let the tears fall as soon as I cross the threshold and walk back inside the kitchen. I’d thought losing someone I loved unexpectedly was hard butknowingI’ll lose a loved one and watching it happen right before my eyes is a soul-shattering agony all unto itself.
You don’t know how many more days, hours, seconds, you have left before it’s too late. The most you can do is make those final, precious moments matter.
Chapter 8
The big yellow ball in the morning sky crests above the tree line as my feet pound on the soft, spongy grass. Sweat drips down my bare back and chest as I suck in metered breaths of air. I gave up on sleep around five in the morning after tossing and turning all night and decided to go for a jog around the property, hoping it would help clear my head, or at least bring some clarity on what to do about Douglass.
The house comes into view as I reach the ridge of the hill the estate sits upon. A statuesque, massive brick structure with dark brown terracotta tiles lining the roof. There were many times in the past several years I would stand out here, looking at it, and wonder why I hadn’t sold the place yet. If Harper and Bennett hadn’t moved in when they did, I probably would have.
When Grandpa Jack and Mom passed away, it was difficult to live in the house. It held too many ghosts. It was too quiet. It felt too empty. It was too…nothing, if that makes sense. The home I grew up in became my prison.
The Hammond Estate was built by my great grandparents on my mother’s side. It speaks to days gone by when oil was the main currency of Texas. ThinkDallasand the Ewings, and you know what I mean. Grandpa Jack sold the family business to his partner, Franklin Ross, when Mom was a child. The interest from the money and the dividends from the stocks keep the house going and the bills paid. I refuse to touch any of the Montgomery money Fallon gave to each of us when we learned who our bio dad was. I don’t want it, and I don’t need it. Which is why I’m trying to find something good to use it on. A worthy cause that will help people. Make an impact in someone’s life. I could think of a no better fuck you to Phillip Montgomery.
Turning the volume down on the music pumping through my wireless earbuds, I slow to a walk when I reach the gardens that fill the back courtyard. It was Mom’s favorite place. Every morning, I’d find her kneeling on her garden mat, dirt streaked across her cheeks as she weeded the flower beds and pruned her prized rose bushes. My fingers caress the silky petals of a blood-red hybrid tea rose before plucking it. I keep a glass bowl filled with rose blooms on the counter island in the kitchen. Little things that keep her memory alive.
Speaking of memories, this thing with Douglass is making me crazy. Every time I closed my eyes last night, I would get these brief impressions of soft lips, pale skin, and dark red-brown hair. Tiny snapshots that would disappear before my mind had a chance to grasp hold of them. Part of me is afraid to remember because I have this sickening feeling I won’t like it if—no, when—I do. But not knowing is eating me alive. I’m stuck in the space called damned if I do, damned if I don’t. And damn me even more for doing it with Douglass. The one woman in Woodspire I had no business touching, or fucking, in the first place, for so many reasons I refuse to cogitate on.
I touch my earbud and clip out, “What?” when a call comes in.
“Good morning to you too,” Bennett replies.
“Sorry, man. Had a bad night. What’s up?” I stop and sit down on a bench that faces the small garden fountain.
Lifting my wrist, I glance at my Apple watch. Florida is an hour ahead so it’s almost eight there now. Shuffling noises come over the line, then Bennett shouts at someone that he’ll be there in a minute. He must be heading out to practice. Train. Play a game. Whatever the hell they do during spring training.
“Nothing’s up. Just wanted to see how you were doing.”
My eyes narrow even though he can’t see me do it. “Uh-huh. What has Harper told you?”
It doesn’t surprise me that Harper went and blabbed her mouth to her husband at the first opportunity she got.
“How did you know… You Montgomery siblings are freaky with the mind reading.”
I sit back and stretch my legs out in front of me. The air is colder this morning after the rain blew through overnight. Goose flesh erupts over my skin as the sweat dries and my core temperature drops.
