“Nolan. Because his life was just as dysfunctional as ours.”
She gestured toward the dining table. “You might as well sit.”
He really hadn’t expected to come up and talk. But here they were.
He sat down, and she pressed the lever on an electric kettle on the countertop.
“Tea?”
“I’m not a big tea drinker. But I’ll have one.”
“So, it was you all and Nolan a lot of the time?”
“Yes.”
“When did you meet Zane?”
“The rodeo. And he needed a place. Needed something, because once he retired from the rodeo, he didn’t have anyone or anything.”
She frowned. “Is he okay?”
“No. But are any of us?”
“I think some of us seem a little more okay than others.”
“It’s just all about the degree to which you can put a mask on over your trauma, I suppose. Zane isn’t very good at hiding it. Walker is great at hiding it. I think I’m better at it than I am.”
She laughed. “Fair. But you’re pretty good at it. I have a feeling, though, that you’ve been exactly like this since you were a child.”
There was something about that he didn’t like. It madehim feel like she had opened up his chest and taken a quick look inside. It made him feel like she was getting a look at things he preferred to keep private. Hidden. Why that felt like such an intrusive observation, he wasn’t entirely sure.
“You just strike me as somebody who’s had to be grown up your whole life. Maybe because I recognize it.”
But right then, he wondered what that sort of thing did to you. Because he could see it. They’d both had to be adults when they were children, but he wondered if they were still adults with parts of themselves completely undeveloped because they had missed crucial things along the way.
Because children weren’t adults. And they weren’t doing it perfectly.
They were missing things like fun and friendships and how relationships ought to go. It put her in the situation she’d been in, with a husband she didn’t see clearly because any sort of affection had seemed like a gift.
And as for him, he had never learned how to attach much to anyone, beyond the people that he had been trying to help survive. It was still what drew him in.
It was how he had gotten to know Zane, because he could see that Zane desperately needed a place, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was so altruistic. No. He was sure it wasn’t.
But he didn’t know how else to matter.
Didn’t know how else to measure his own performance except the degree to which he was taking care of other people, because it was the thing his dad hadn’t done.
It was the thing his mom hadn’t done.
That made the back of his mouth ache.
“It was tough,” he said. “But we had each other. I’m sorry you were by yourself.”
“It’s okay,” she said. Then she grimaced. “You know, it’s not okay. It really isn’t. But I never had another option. Neither did you. And it’s frustrating to realize I made so manydecisions because of trauma that was forced on me. It’s so frustrating. Because I don’t know who I would’ve been, or what I would’ve done, what I would’ve explored. I feel like I’m having some kind of secondary adolescence right now. Where I just want to rebel against everything. Kick out all the lights that I kept burning all this time.” She wrinkled her nose. “That sounds crazy.”
The tab on the electric kettle popped, and she took two cups out of the cupboard, along with a couple of teabags. Then she poured the steaming hot water into the mugs.
“Cream and sugar?”
