“I'm no saint,” Walker continues. “But Sadie makes me want to summon all my better angels. She makes me want to be a better man.”
There’s a brief silence.
“Well,” she says finally, “You've got your work cut out for you.”
He laughs at that. His eyes meet mine, glinting with humor and tenderness. “Yes, ma’am.”
As we drive, some of my background anxiety fades. Walker is totally at ease here. Totally with me in this moment, like we’re a team.
If I thought the grungy trailer I grew up in would scare him away, it seems I was wrong. If I thought the ornery mother who comes with me as a package deal would scare him off, it seems I was wrong about that too.
Out the window the familiar sights of Marble Falls slidepast. The diner, the hardware store, the turn-off for the ranch road. My town.
His town, too, the one he came back to when he could have gone anywhere.
Walker keeps his hand in mine.
I hold onto it the whole way to the hospital.
The ER waiting room is the same fluorescent misery of all ER waiting rooms everywhere. Uncomfortable chairs. A TV mounted high on the wall with the sound off. The smell of antiseptic.
Walker goes to the vending machine and comes back with a coffee for me and a soda for my mother, along with a packet of peanut butter crackers and M&Ms for each of us. He sits down beside me and stretches his long legs out in front of him and says nothing.
I lean my head on his shoulder.
He puts his arm around me.
My mother, across from us, watches over the rim of her soda can.
She doesn't say anything, but I feel her cynicism in action. She doesn’t see a real relationship, I know that. She doesn’t see two people who truly care about each other. She sees her daughter hired as a nanny by a rich famous man, now “playing wifey” just as she predicted.
A nurse comes to the door. “Linda Sullivan?”
I go to help my mother to her feet, and Walker helps her on the other side.
“We’re going to take her to radiology for a CT scan first,” the nurse tell me.
“CanI come?” I ask.
“Not to the CT. You can meet her in a room afterwards. It might be awhile.”
My mother waves a hand. “Go on. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“I’m not leaving!” I say to her back. “Text me! Keep me posted on what’s going on.”
She doesn’t look my way again as she disappears through the doors.
I didn’t expect her to, but I was still hoping.
There’s a certain kind of loneliness that only your mother can produce. The one that lives in the void between what you need from her and what she knows how to give. I've been feeling it my whole life. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.
I let out a breath, and Walker just drapes his arm around me and kisses my temple. “You getting hungry for some real food yet?”
“You don't have to stay,” I tell him. “You heard the nurse. It could be hours. Jonah’s coming home soon.”
“I texted Dad already. He’s gonna keep Jonah at Rosemont as long as we need. That kid’s gonna be living the high life, don’t you worry. Ice cream and cartoons and pony rides. We’ll have to drag him back home.” He rubs my back. “I’m not leaving you, baby.”
He says it so simply. Like of course he would be here with me. Like there’s no universe in which we don’t handle this kind of thing together.
