Chapter 29
I’d always found cemeteries to be pretty fucking creepy. Some shrink somewhere would probably tell me it was leftover trauma from watching them lower a casket holding my mom’s body into the ground when I was just a kid. But if I was being honest with myself—and apparently this was the day for it—it wasn’t any easier when I’d watched them do it to my dad.
Age didn’t make any part of loss easier. It just made you that much more aware of what you were really losing.
I hadn’t been there since the burial because every time I thought about it, my blood went thick and sluggish, and there was always something else to be done. Some excellent reasons I shouldn’t go, or why it wasn’t necessary. My sisters went. Sheila went at least once a week. I didn’t know about Cameron because I didn’t really want to ask.
Uncertainty about the big things in life had a way of making you realize who you trusted the most. Whose voice you wanted to hear when you couldn’t make sense of what was going on in your own head.
In the span of a week, everything about my life felt turned upside down, not to mention the fact that I couldn’t make heads or tails of why something as simple as trying to be happy was so fucking difficult for me. In that upside-down space, the voice I wanted to hear more than anyone else’s was my dad’s.
No one else was there, so I parked next to the tree on the paved road that wound through the small cemetery. Instead of talking myself out of it, I got out, tucked my hands into my pockets, and walked past the rows of headstones—some flush with the grass, some jutting up toward the sky, some blackened with age.
When I got to his, it stunned me to see how much of the grass had grown over the dirt in the last few months. It was a tangible sign of the passage of time, something I could feel between my hands. Against the glossy rectangular headstone were a few bouquets of dried-out flowers, and a drawing that had been pinned down by a heavy rock. I crouched down to look at it, and through the absolute gut-wrenching way it broke my heart, I smiled sadly. She’d drawn a picture of some flowers and two butterflies above them.
To Granpa Tim. I miss U. Luv Olive.
I ran my hands over the soft blades of grass, already yellowing from the cold weather.
“Hey, Dad,” I whispered. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come here. I wasn’t really sure what to say.” I laughed quietly. “I don’t even know if I believe you can hear me.”
What if he could? I wondered. I closed my eyes and pretended I was sitting on their front porch with him. What if this same sharp, cold air was in my lungs, the kind that smelled like the first snow, and he was sitting next to me with his favorite blanket over his lap while he patiently waited for me to unload what was weighing down my heart.
Just like that, tears threatened, thickening my throat and blurring my vision.
“Fuck, I wish you could hear me, Dad.” My voice sounded like I’d gargled with acid, and no matter how hard I swallowed, I couldn’t make that roughness go away. “I wish you could tell me why I’m like this. You always saw things that no one else saw.”
The first tear slid down my cheek, and I rubbed a knuckle underneath my eye, but something about feeling the wetness against my skin—tactile proof of all the things boiling over inside me—just made it worse.
A sob stuck in my throat, a pressing, thick pain that felt like it would never leave.
“I feel like there’s no way I won’t mess this up,” I admitted in a hoarse voice. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eye sockets, still crouched there in front of his grave, that dirt-filled hole that couldn’t give me advice and couldn’t make me feel better about any of this. “And I can’t mess up with her.”
The words held a desperate edge as they came out, choking me in a way that I’d never experienced. But something was liberating about letting them be said. So I did. And I let the clear, bright day and the yellowing grass, the cold hard stone in front of me bear witness to the thing I’d been terrified to admit.
“No matter how hard I tried not to, I fell in love with my best friend, and nothing has ever scared me more than this.”
I sank my head into my hands and breathed hard for a few minutes, the truth of it washing over me, wave upon wave of warm comfort, utter rightness, swallowed by uncertainty and icy fear. Then the cycle would repeat, and fuck if I didn’t want to just settle on one.
“What do I do, Dad?” I whispered brokenly. “God, I wish you were here to tell me what to do. I have lost so much in my life. I’ve buried you and Mom, and I already know what it’s like to live without Harlow, and now that I have her back in my life, I cannot fucking handle the thought that she’d be one of those things I’d lose again. Everyone thinks this should be so easy, to change something this big between us, but it’s not. There’s no going back once we try this, and it’s not just me and Harlow. I … I would never forgive myself if I hurt them, if I lost them.”
Letting the words out, yanking them out of wherever they’d been hidden didn’t free me. I didn’t magically feel lighter. But I could breathe through the pain of knowing what held me back, the understanding bringing the last few days of indecision into focus.
The sound of a car door had me standing, frantically wiping at the wetness on my cheeks with the heel of my hand.
“Ian?”
When I turned, Sheila was approaching with a small bouquet of red roses in her arms.
“Hey.”
The tear-thick sound of my voice had her pausing, her eyes going glossy. “Oh, sweetie. Please tell me I’m allowed to give you a hug right now. I don’t think my heart can take it if I don’t.”
With a quiet exhale, I opened my arms, and Sheila walked straight into them. She was so much shorter than me, and when I tightened my grip, she felt so small. Since Dad died, she’d lost weight, and that had my ribs squeezing uncomfortably.
“You don’t have to tell me what brought you here, Ian,” she said quietly, refusing to let go. “And I know that I don’t give nearly as good of advice as your dad did, but I love you as if you were my own, and I’ll listen if there’s something you want to talk about.”
My eyes burned again because of all the things I’d lost in my life, gaining this woman was such a fucking gift.
It was almost identical to what I’d said to Sage on the front porch, and I tried to imagine a version of my world where they wouldn’t be there, where I couldn’t throw a football after school, or let that kid braid my fucking hair, or help with a tangled necklace, or watch Harlow’s favorite movies or dance with her in the dark.
Impossible. It was impossible to imagine, clawing straight through whatever walls I’d built until they were reduced to ash.
I pulled away and stared off at the trees and mountains in the distance. The immovable mountains, unshakable and strong and true.
“I’m in love with her.” I swiped a hand over my mouth, not pausing to consider what dominoes might tip over as a result of letting it be said. “And I’ve been afraid to admit it because if she doesn’t love me back like this, or if I do something to screw it up, I am completely terrified to lose her forever.”
I quickly glanced at Sheila and found her watching me with infinite patience. There was no I told you so, no triumphant smirk, no we all knew this would happen.
Instead, I found the kind of understanding I would’ve seen in my dad’s face. Eventually, she nodded, letting out a thoughtful sigh.
“Loss is one of the hardest parts of life, isn’t it? No one’s immune to it. Sometimes we know when it’s coming, and sometimes we don’t,” she said quietly. While I watched, she crouched down and gently laid the roses in front of the headstone, then smoothed her hand over his name while her chin trembled. “Your father was my best friend, too, you know. We could talk about anything, and that man understood me in ways no one else ever has. Choosing to love each other after everything we’d been through was the biggest gamble of our lives.”
Sheila sucked in a deep breath and stared at the lifeless rock in front of her, voice hardly above a whisper when she continued. “Some days I still wake up and think, oh God, I don’t think I can do this without him. I miss him so much that I can’t believe I’m still standing.” With tears streaming down her face, she stood and cupped my face. “Even if I had half the time with him that I did, there is not one second of this heartbreak that I wouldn’t do a million times over because of what it was like to be loved by him, to build a life and a family with him.”
I wrapped her in another hug and held her close while she cried. Even through the heavy pang of sadness, knowing she still felt this way, knowing that the only way to lessen the power of those fears was to simply step into them, I could finally think clearly as I allowed Sheila’s words to knit something back together in my head.
“You just have to talk to her, Ian. The biggest changes in our life always come with a little fear and a lot of honesty.”
“And if she doesn’t feel the way I do?”
Sheila pulled back and looked up into my face. “I won’t speak for Harlow because it’s not my place. But that woman has always seen straight into your heart. So let her see all of it.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “You do him credit, you know. Taking charge of the family.”
She pulled back and emitted a watery laugh. “That’s hilarious that you think I’m in charge, sweetie. I’m just along for the ride.”
“No one’s ever called me that except you.”
“That’s because you hide it well. You always have.” She gave me a meaningful glance. “Except with her, of course.”
I rocked back on my heels and hummed quietly. “So I’ve been told.”
She smiled. “Plus, you forget that I’m Greer’s mother, and I’m well-versed in spotting the sweet where it’s a little hidden.”
I barked out a laugh, and God, it felt good. The pressure holding my chest tight had eased, and I glanced at my watch.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I should get going. She’s at some dinner meeting thing, and I promised I’d be at the house when she got back.”
“The coach,” she mused.
I sighed wearily, and I briefly wondered if I had time for a nap before Harlow got home. No one warned me about the soul-draining tiredness that came with emotional epiphanies. “Does everyone know?”
“Of course everyone knows. I wouldn’t be shocked if your sisters planted a bug in your house so they could overhear what happens when she gets back.” At my dry look, Sheila laughed, then patted my arm. “I think it’s time for you to go home, Ian.”
Dropping a quick kiss on her cheek, I gave one last look at Dad’s headstone and swallowed hard. “I think so too.”
Getting back to the house didn’t take too long, and my body screamed for a hot shower. Let myself decompress a little bit, wash away the dull headache and tension in my neck and shoulders after holding everything in for so many days.
Then I could think about what I’d say to her.
With a tired sigh, I turned the truck into my driveway, but what I saw there had my gaze sharpening, my heart rocketing dangerously. Because beyond the familiar car parked in its usual spot, sitting on the front porch—very much not at dinner with the coach—was the woman who had my heart.