Page 11 of Colt

The familiar smell of newly cut hay fills my head and eases the tightness in my chest.

Dad and my brothers and I actually built my new house. There’s six of us Wallace kids, five boys and a girl. Always thought I’d have a big family like that, but…

Yeah, not gonna go there.

After Abby passed, I felt like Dean and I needed a fresh start. One day—Dean was three at the time—Dad showed up at the foreman’s cottage where we were living, a wad of permits tucked underneath his arm.

Next thing I knew, my brothers and I were learning how to pour a foundation. Billie, my younger sister, crunched the numbers so we didn’t go over budget by a single cent.

Dean and I moved in a little less than a year after construction began. Been living happily in our thousand-square-foot new build ever since. I figured we didn’t need a ton of space because it’s only the two of us.

As far as I’m concerned, it will always be just the two of us. Stability is my number one priority. The last thing my son needs is more upheaval. More change. He’s had enough of that to last a lifetime, and the kid’s only six.

So we stick to routine—to tradition—come hell or high water, and that’s how we survive from one day to the next.

CHAPTER 3

Tough Shit

COLT

The sun is rising through the juniper trees that line the road leading to Highway 67. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, I catch Dean watching the sunrise with wide eyes.

“Dad, is that God?”

I chuckle. My son has a tendency to get existential on the ride to school. Quite the one-eighty from the whiny mess he was twenty minutes ago at home. “God is everywhere, buddy.”

“Did he paint the sky blue? Like with a big paintbrush?”

“Maybe.”

Dean is quiet for a minute. “Mommy’s up there with him. I know it, because her favorite color was blue.”

An arrow through the heart. Damn.

I often wish my grief were as straightforward as my son’s. He loves Abby with his whole heart.

Me? I’ll always protect her memory for Dean’s sake, but my memory of her is a more complicated thing. I fell hard for Abby in high school. But by the time she got her diagnosis ten years later, we’d become little more than roommates.

“It was.” I clear my throat. “And she’s definitely up there with him.”

He waves. “Hey, Mom. Miss ya.”

I run a hand over my face and clear my throat again.

I wish my son had a mother. I wish that every damn day. Well, not a mother but his mother. No one’s ever gonna replace Abby for him. Obviously I have no desire to replace her at all. Not because I haven’t moved on from her, but because I refuse to be hurt like that again.

I hated how life seemed to spin totally out of control in such a short amount of time. The helplessness I felt then was terrifying. It haunts me to this day.

My parents helped me through it, my mom especially. She and I are close, and it makes me feel…not great when I contemplate Dean missing out on that kind of loving presence in his life. My dad was great, but sometimes…I mean, sometimes you just want your mom.

I can be that for him. Dad and Mom.

Haven’t they done all those studies about kids needing just one secure attachment in their lives? I can be that for Dean. I’m not sure how much he remembers of Abby, but he does remember enough to miss her.

I still bend over backward to make sure he has all the love he needs.

Case in point: We don’t drive through the carpool line at school. Instead, I park and walk Dean to the front door. Mrs. Gonzalez, the principal, is there chatting with students before they head inside the building.