Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

You Be Better

Summer

There are so many leaves on this bush. They conceal me, but while they’re concealing me, they’re also concealing too much of my father’s house.

Levi was the first—and only—person I told I was coming here, and I turned him down when he asked if I needed company. My heart swelled with the pain of knowing he wanted to be beside me, and my thumb short-circuited over that N and O for too long before I finally pressed down and sent it, adding a quick thanks before I shoved my phone away.

Adam seems to have gotten even busier and more and more unavailable.

But I would have told him no too—if I had asked him and if he had offered.

I have to face my father myself.

And not trusting Levi was a lie, so I’m here again, back behind the bush, going over what to say before I go in and say it.

How do I go in? Do I barge through the door, taking immediate control? That’s what my bones bounce for me to do, but that would give him another heart attack, for sure.

I just have to knock.

But that will give him more of an upper hand. He’ll open the door and I’ll just be standing there, handing myself over on a platter for him to poke at.

“You’re hiding?”

I jolt at my father’s voice, a wince throughout my body at the proximity of the raspy sound, deeper and tired, from age and from sickness.

Now I have no plan.

I think about when I finally saw that lizard again, this morning, dead on the bathroom floor, and then think of how those people who talk way too fucking much say that a lizard in the house is a sign of good fortune.

Being caught behind a bush in front of my old house isn’t luck turning around for me.

I’m officially firing them from talking.

“I wasn’t hiding,” I announce as I step out into the open, a breeze blowing my hair across my face in an attempt to conceal me again. I finger the strands away. “I was spying.”

My father smiles at me, so like the smile he’d give me most mornings at the table over breakfast, before he left me to eat alone. He looks how he sounds; tired, in a shirt and sweatpants, that he’s probably sweating in if he still keeps the house warm.

His hair’s thinner, his body’s thinner, and I try to keep my thick skin at the sight of him this way, so he can’t dig in and make me feel sorry for him.

“Wanting to confirm your old man’s dead on the floor, you need to get closer,” he says, gesturing to the front window.

My father’s delivering punchlines and I still feel like the joke. Unsteady. The ground coming up around my feet to swallow me whole. I press my wedges into the dirt like I’m welcoming it.

“This isn’t funny.” I sound so defensive, defensive of the girl who grew up with him, the girl I still am around him, instead of the woman I became away from him. I need to merge both into one person, but I can’t even think of what else to say right now.

My father’s smile has faded, with a quick raise of his hands, a submission that seems to freeze me.

“You coming in?”

Until he says that, and my lungs squeeze with the same suffocation I felt when I was inside those walls, my feet pulling me backward, an inner facepalm for thinking this would be good for my head.

I can’t go in there. I can’t see him.

“Wait, wait.”

Grass shuffles behind me, and I face him again at the desperation in his voice and for my own to stand strong.

He stops once I do. “You don’t have to come in. But…” He holds up a finger, then shuffles back inside the house, coming back out just a second later carrying a closed box.

My eyes trace the strip of thick tape holding down the flaps as he hands it to me, my arms automatically cradling the weight like it’s something prized before I find out it is.

“This is…your mom’s things.”

“Her things,” I repeat, a stumble and a breath. “All of it?”

“A lot of it,” he corrects the rise of hope and disbelief in my voice. “A lot that I kept from us,” he continues, the admittance lower, reminding me part of that thievery was from his grief, but it was still never an excuse. “But it’s yours. It should be yours. And I shouldn’t have done that.”

My vision blurs the box, and I chew the shake in my lip before managing a, “Thanks.”

My father makes a noise between a hum and a throat clearing, his you’re welcome .

“That, uh, Levi,” he says now, snapping the blur back up to him. “He’s a good man.”

I make a noise that sounds like a snort, even as my chest warms. “You know how he broke my heart when we were seventeen…”

“Mhm.”

“And you still think he’s a good man after breaking your daughter’s heart.” It’s more statement than question, my head shaking at him and my feet pulling me backward again. Though I also hear something teasing in my tone.

“Mhm,” he repeats, then tilts me a look resembling teasing, too, one I probably would’ve smiled at if I were still that age. “I said good man, not good boy.”

That snort sound leaves me again, and I think I’m trying and failing to laugh. “Yeah, that good man seems to think near death changed you.”

“It did with you,” he says, strong against my challenge, and my lingering disbelief shifts from the box to him, one of my shoulders now turned toward the street.

“It shouldn’t have had to take that.”

“It shouldn’t have, but it did. Not completely,” he rushes out with an about-face before his voice goes low again. “I’ve…I’ve been thinking about you a lot over the years.”

My world tilts at those words that have to be a lie. “You never reached out to me. And don’t tell me it’s because I deserved better,” I rush out now, a firmer grip on the box. “You be better.”

“I’m trying,” he tells me, with a promise, and a look at the box, holding what’s left of someone we both love and share and should’ve shared even harder and more often once she was gone. “Late. But you know what they say.” He tries for another smile and another noise escapes me to cut him off.

“I’ve shut them up.”

My father mouths oh like I’ve passed him a secret and the corners of my lips do a small jerk of their habitual lift to keep whatever kind of peace this is and to bask in the shine of my dad’s smile.

It’s enough to make my next breath a gasp as I back up again, my wedges kicking at gravel as I hurry off.

My father raises his hand like he’s trying to both stop me and wave goodbye. But he stays where he is and I don’t stop.

It isn’t until I’m walking the street that my well of tears cools my face, and I laugh a sob. My heart is tight, trembly beats as I hug just as tightly and trembly to the box.

My mom.