Chapter Thirty-Six
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Lincoln/ Four Years Ago
M y mother hosts Georgia’s twenty-fifth birthday party, baking her a double chocolate cake with the help of Hannah. Dad grills burgers and chicken breasts on the back deck, where I hang out with a beer and a cigar. Georgia stays indoors, and talks to the girls about God knows what.
I woke her up with a soft kiss on the cheek, breakfast in bed, and a wrapped jewelry box with a pink ribbon tied around the top containing a silver customized necklace.
I helped her put it on, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck after doing the clasp, then watched her touch it the entire way here like it grounded her.
We went our separate ways when we got inside, and I didn’t fight it. Didn’t have the energy to, if I’m being honest.
There’s a dark cloud looming over us that won’t go away. We don’t talk about it, but we both know it’s there. Always hovering, darkening our days like a storm brewing.
I don’t know the last time she let me touch her, and I don’t cross that line until we’re on better terms.
It wouldn’t feel real then.
I needed real.
Dad offers me another beer, cracking the top off with the end of his spatula. “Something going on with you two?” he asks, addressing the elephant in the room.
“I don’t know.”
Every time I think we’ve talked it through, when I believe I’ve reeled her back in, she pulls away. Fights me. Fights us.
I don’t show back up to the bookstore to prove to her I trust her. I ask how her day is, but her answers are short, held together by caution tape and a fake smile. She’ll ask me how my day is, and I don’t want to bore her with the details of another traffic stop or DUI arrest.
It’s made things…quiet.
It gives me a reason to stay at work longer.
To keep building my arrest record to prove that it wasn’t the captain’s words of encouragement that’s getting me the job at BCI, but because I work my ass off too.
I don’t ask Conklin for any more information he may have dug up on Nikolas Del Rossi because I know it won’t help us.
Dad hums. “Women get weird about their birthdays.”
I stare at the steam billowing from the grill when he opens the top. “She’s twenty-five, not forty-five, Dad.”
A reflective expression crosses the old man’s face as he flips the burgers. “Your mother bawled her eyes out when she turned thirty. Her coworkers told her it was all downhill from there.”
I snort, remembering that story being told at every birthday we had for Mom. She would always reevaluate life, saying getting older wasn’t so bad. Like how she didn’t have to pay a lot of money for highlights because mother nature was doing that for her. And I’ve definitely noticed how her once dark hair was now speckled with silver in ways it never was before, and the laugh lines around her lips and eyes that never existed ten years ago. It’s no different than Dad’s graying beard and how his hairline is receding in ways I pray mine never will.
Time is a bitch.
“Yeah,” I relent, glancing into the window at the girls sitting around the kitchen table talking.
Georgia is holding her necklace as she talks to my mother and sister.
A silver heart pendant with her initials in the middle—GD for Georgia Danforth.
It was a way to remind her we were in this together, even when it felt like we were at odds.
She must sense the attention because she turns in my direction and sees me staring. It’s hard to tell from this distance, but I think she smiles. From here, I see the tiniest lift of her lips, and it gives me a semblance of peace.
Something I haven’t felt in a long time.
It tells me we have a chance.
Dad says, “You’ll get through it. Every relationship has its rough patches. Do something nice for her. Women love that shit.”
For our sake, I hope he’s right.
“Maybe I will,” I murmur, thinking on it.