Goldie grinned at him. “What a funny guy.”
The four Chesters huddled together with me. The girls worried they were missing out and hurried over to peek into our circle.
“Today sucked, but it was a blip in our life,” Blackjack said. “We are the Chester family. We stick together and handle our problems as a team.”
“Yeah,” Lyric said and smiled at me.
The same kind of family unity was on display a week later when I sat down for my first tattoo. Yarrow planned to get the same design.
“I want Goldie’s name on one forearm,” she explained to our tattoo artist and Crimson Guard member Haley. “Boone and Nova on the other. Under their names, I want two smaller hearts with the girls’ names and birthdates.”
“Whoa, now,” Goldie said, sitting nearby in the tattoo shop. “I don’t like the idea of my arm looking all bare compared to Boone’s.”
“Then have grandkids for me.”
“That’s not fair. Where am I going to find a guy with two kids?”
“Get on a dating app and only look for single dads,” Blackjack suggested. “Widowers would be best.”
“Or find a nice man with kids and thenmakehim a widower,” Yarrow suggested, winning chuckles despite her clearly being serious.
Despite the support from the Chester family, I was extremely nervous until Haley showed me the stencil. The sight of my daughters’ names and birthdates in a pretty heart design silenced my fears.
Yarrow went first, claiming she didn’t have the patience to wait. I sat with her and shared my daughters’ birth stories.
Yarrow smiled. “I’m going to mentally rewrite those stories to make it so Boone was there with you.”
I smiled at how quickly she embraced the idea of us as a family. She told me the other night how Boone never wanted a woman. Now, he was in love. To Yarrow, our relationship would obviously work out.
‘I believe in magic,” she said and looked at Blackjack nearby.
After her tattoo was finished, Yarrow held my free hand. The pain wasn’t as bad as I imagined. Haley played relaxing music, and I focused on how Boone and Blackjack were trying to turn Goldie’s hair into a mohawk.
“Do you have any gel?” Boone asked Haley.
“No,” she replied and frowned. “Stop distracting me.”
“Sorry, but my big sister needs cheering up.”
Haley smirked at his teasing while I admired Yarrow next to me.
“I miss my mom,” I told her. “But it’s a romanticized version of her. The real Laverne wouldn’t want me to get a tattoo.”
“People claim you should remember people the way they were. Like that keeps them alive after they’re gone. But I would rather remember the better version in my head. I’ve rewritten a lot of my early life to give me a better childhood. Who cares if it’s a lie? If the Laverne in your head is better, then makethatthe real Laverne. So, when you look at your tattoo, just remember how much your mom would have loved it. She was actually super into tattoos and had some herself.”
Grinning, I liked the crazy way Yarrow saw the world. I decided to take her advice and remember Laverne however I wanted.
When we returned home, Dan admired my tattoo. Seeing him smiling more easily, I asked if I could put a picture of our mom in the hallway where the other family photos were.
“I thought you’d want one of Boone,” he said rather than agree.
“I will eventually. But I think Lula would like this picture of us,” I said and showed him a photo of our mom with Dan and me back before we moved in with our maternal grandparents. Little Dan wore his cowboy hat. I was dressed like a tomboy. The photo was taken before our dad was caught. Our life was simpler then, even if it was based on a lie. “You were such a handsome boy.”
Dan smiled softly at the picture. I felt him considering our mom and how things went wrong for a long time.
“We’re stronger now,” I told Dan. “We have people who love us. Our family has grown. I think we can handle remembering a time that we were taught to forget.”
My brother wrapped his arms around me and held on tight. We’d both gotten lucky in love over the last year. Our lives were on the fast track to new adventures. Dan would soon beon his real honeymoon, while I planned to visit Rawlins for Thanksgiving.
