“Best friends get dibs over girls,” Chris counters.
“Not if he ever wants to kiss me again.”
Elizabeth’s shoulders shake as she tries to hold in her laughter as the two of them bicker while Grant says nothing.
I want more of this. Nights like this, spent with the woman I love and the family that isn’t mine, but the one I want more than anything.
Chapter Forty-Four
ELIZABETH
Nature Just Shit on My Face
Kneelingon the foam pad and pulling weeds that had sprouted around the tomato plants, sweat drips down my neck, but I don’t bother wiping it away.
“When you asked me to come over, I didn’t expect to be put to hard labor,” Meredith says. She swipes the back of her gloved hand over her cheek, leaving behind a streak of dirt. “Great. Nature just shit on my face.”
“It’s dirt, drama queen.”
She pulls off her gardening gloves and scrubs her face clean using her tank top. “Insects and worms live in the dirt. Where do you think they defecate? A bunny could have taken a dump right there and now its crap is on my face.”
Meredith isn’t a fan of the outdoors, unless it’s to lie out on her lounge chair and work on her tan.
“Compared to last week, a little earthworm poo is nothing.”
Her expression morphs into disgust. “I never knew a child could vomit that much. I thought I was going to have to call in a priest to do an exorcism. I’ve Lysoled every surface of the house, but I can still smell it,” she says while fake gagging.
“Try having three kids and a husband down with the norovirus at the same time.” That was a week from hell I’ll never forget.
“So, how excited was Christopher to start his senior year?”
Today was the first day of school. Senior year for Christopher and tenth grade for Charlotte. It seems like only yesterday I was walking them into kindergarten class.
“Very. Grant is a senior this year as well. Charlotte’s already worrying about what will happen when he graduates and goes off to college.”
“Oh, the pains of young love.”
“Tell me about it.” My knees are starting to get sore, so I lower down and sit cross-legged on the pad. Pulling a ripe tomato from its vine, I place it in the wicker basket beside me. “Take some of these home with you.”
“You know I’ll never pass up free food.” Mimicking my sitting position, she rests her elbows on her knees and stares at me. I know that look. “Are you going to tell me what’s bugging you?”
I both love and hate how easily she can read me. But that’s what a good friend does. They know you inside and out.
“I learned something this weekend at the cookout that I’ve been struggling with understanding,” I reply.
I’m still upset, but I don’t know what to do about it. It feels like wasted energy to yell about something that happened so long ago. Even if I knew, even if Ryder or Fallon had told me, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I still would have married Ryder, and Fallon still would have left.
“Lay it on me,” Meredith says.
I watch a swallowtail butterfly. It flutters wildly while sipping nectar from the milkweed blossoms that have started to bloom, and I notice one of its wings is damaged.Beautiful broken butterfly. Peter’s voice rises from the dead, but I block it out.
“It’s honestly not important,” I tell her because I’m tired of thinking about it.
“Is it about Jayson?” she hedges. “Or about your trip to Seattle with him next weekend?”
Jayson is another thing I’m grappling with. Because Charlotte, Christopher, and Marcus came with me, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him last Sunday when we went over to the Jamesons’ for Sunday supper, and the days that followed were filled with start-of-the-school-year chaos. I’m hoping he and I can talk more while in Seattle when we go see our daughter. Fallon hasn’t said anything about the trip, and that’s what worries me. He’s nothing if not blunt, so when he gets quiet, I know something is wrong.
I pick at the dirt beneath my nails. “Jayson has changed, Mer. He’s…I don’t quite know how to describe it. More like the Jayson he used to be before everything went wrong, I guess. He’s not the angry, resentful version of himself he turned into after I was attacked and lost my memories. He’s the boy I used to know. The boy I—” I cut myself off and mash my lips together.
