“It’s her birthday. I made a cake. Chocolate with buttercream, the one she always wanted. Earl and I ate it on the porch. There was a place set for you. There’s always a place set for you.” Silence. “Happy birthday, Rose.”
One year.
“One year today. Three hundred and sixty-five days since the world stopped making sense. Earl and I went to the cemetery. He’s getting thinner. Have you noticed? Of course you haven’t. You haven’t seen him.” Her voice cracks. “I miss you too, you know. Not just her. You. You were my family, Lee. Both of you. And I lost both of you the same night.”
I lost both of you the same night.
Rose on the highway and me into the silence.
Two deaths—one physical, one chosen. And Bex grieving both.
Eighteen months and her voice is quieter.
“Earl asks about you. Every time. ‘Have you heard from Lee?’ And I have to say no. I’m running out of ways to make it sound less terrible than it is.”
At two years, the calls come monthly now.
The anger is gone. What replaced it is worse.
“I got a dog. A mutt. Ugly as sin. Named him Hank because Rose always said if she had a dog she’d name him Hank after Hank Williams. He’s chewing everything I own and I love him. Thought you should know.”
She got a dog. Named him after a throwaway comment Rose made at a Sunday dinner about country singers and dog names that I barely remember but Bex held on to.
She was collecting Rose’s scraps. Keeping the pieces alive in whatever way she could.
Two months later.
“I shoed a horse today that reminded me of you. Big bay quarter horse, wouldn’t let anyone near his feet. Owner wanted to twitch him. I told her to give me an hour. Just sat in the pen and waited. Rose always said I was too impatient for everything except horses and her. She was right about most things. I think about that a lot.”
She’s telling me stories now.
That’s what these have become—not pleas, not demands.
Updates from a life I should have been part of, delivered to a voicemail box like letters to a man in a coma.
Christmas. Year two.
“Merry Christmas. I’m at Earl’s. He made tamales. Rose’s recipe. There’s an empty chair at the table. Two, actually.” A breath that sounds like it costs her something. “At least she has an excuse.”
I put the phone down and press both hands over my face.
I breathe through the pressure building behind my eyes, the tightness in my throat, the physical weight of two years of messages from a woman I abandoned.
I pick the phone back up and keep going, because I owe her this.
I owe every one of these messages the dignity of being heard.
At three years, the messages come less frequently—every six weeks, sometimes two months apart, but they keep coming.
“I’m in Lubbock for a client. Shoeing ranch horses. Thinking about you because the foreman has this way of standing with horses that reminds me of you—patient, still, like he’s got all thetime in the world. Rose used to say that was her favorite thing about you. The stillness. She said you were the only person who never made her feel rushed.”
Three and a half years.
“I moved to Amarillo. New start. New clients. I’m trying. That’s all I’ve got—I’m trying. I hope you’re trying too.”
She put two hundred miles between herself and Sharp because the town where Rose lived and died was too heavy to carry every day.
I understand that.
