Chapter 17
Cal
Idon’t get home until after nine. I spent most of the day hanging out at the office, hoping Frankie would change her mind and come back. When I pull into the driveway, the house is dark except for one light, and I’m relieved. I don’t want to face anyone, Junie most of all.
I pushed Frankie to go, but I’ve been wrestling all afternoon with whether I did what I thought was best for her or for me.
Right now, her leaving doesn’t feel best for any of us.
I don’t want to go inside knowing she could have been here with me if I hadn’t pressed her to decide if she was staying in Serenity Cove for good.
When I finally do walk inside, I follow the light to the big room where Mom’s reading a book with Junie asleep on her lap.
“She asleep?” I whisper, and Mom nods.
“Refused to go to bed until you and Frankie got home.” Mom glances over the top of her readers at me, then turns a page in her book.
“You didn’t tell her Frankie wasn’t coming back?”
Mom shakes her head. “Not my job.”
I sigh. Not because I’m mad, but because Mom’s doing the same thing to me that I did to Frankie, by not rescuing me from the hard thing I was trying to avoid.
I scoop up Junie and her stuffed Bluey, wearing an old T-shirt, falls from her arms. Mom hands it to me, and I shift Junie in my arms to take it.
“What’s this?” I nod toward the shirt Bluey’s drowning in.
“Frankie’s tee. Junie insisted.”
I let out a soft groan. I’m in trouble.
I carry Junie to her bed and tuck Bluey next to her, breathing in the smell of Frankie as I do. I kiss Junie goodnight, trying not to think about Frankie reading to her…was it only last night? How did she slip into our lives as seamlessly as if she’d aways been here?
I leave Junie softly snoring and turn toward my room. But Mom is making enough noise in the kitchen to signal she’s expecting me back there. I can only run for so long, and I’ve reached the end of the road.
Mom greets me in the kitchen with a bowl of mac and cheese, and I’ve never felt like a bigger coward.
“Busy day,” she says, with the kind of loving accusation only a mother can deliver, making a show of pulling on her dishwashing gloves to tackle the stack of dishes in the sink.
“Had some things to clean up at the office, then Hank called with a colicky mare. Thanks for looking after Junie.” I’d texted her after Frankie left, telling her I wouldn’t be back for a while, and Frankie wouldn’t be back at all.
When Hank Black called about his mare, enough time had passed for Frankie to be close to LA and for me to give up hope she’d change her mind.
I was grateful for an emergency to take my mind off her.
Unfortunately—for me anyway—the case was mild and instead of a distraction, it only reminded me of the last time I was at Hank’s when Frankie stepped in like a pro and helped me birth the foal.
“Everything okay?” Mom asks.
“Yeah. Pretty mild case. Banamine and a nasogastric tube is all she needed.” I shovel mac and cheese in my mouth. “This is delicious. Thanks.”
“It’s just Kraft. And I wasn’t asking if Hank’s mare is okay. I was asking about you.” She corners me with a look, then doubles down with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m fine. All good,” I lie.
“And Frankie? Is she fine?” Mom scoops more mac and cheese in my bowl before I can stop her. I’m trapped.
“I think so…” I keep my eyes on the mac.
“Flo says she picked up her car and said she’s headed back to LA.”
“Her dad’s sick.” I keep my voice neutral.
Mom nods. “According to Flo. She said goodbye and took off.”
I stab at my mac and cheese. “Did she say where in LA she was going?”
“If she did, Flo didn’t tell me.”
I should have asked her. Made sure she had a place to go.
I could have paid for a hotel. I still could.
All I have to do is call or text. But I don’t know if that’s okay.
I told her to go because I was afraid of getting my heart broken.
Do I have the right to reach out to her?
Or do I wait for her to get in touch with me?
I stab more noodles on to my fork, even though I’ve lost my appetite. “Did Junie go to bed okay?” I ask, then remember where I’d found her when I got home.
Mom doesn’t answer, just stares me down between hard, slow blinks, waiting for something from me.
I’ve got an idea what it is, but she’s going to have to drag it out of me.
I’m a man who appreciates directness, but if I can avoid talking to Mom about what went down today with Frankie, I’ll do it.
I don’t think I’m ready to hear what I did wrong. And I’m sure she’ll find something.
“You want to tell me what happened between Frankie leaving here and you coming back without her?” She asks.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“I’m sorry, Son,” she says sweetly, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “I should have phrased that differently,” she continues, all sweetness and sympathy gone. “Tell me what happened with Frankie.”
She leans on her elbows across the counter, resting her chin in her hand. This may be the most attention she’s given me since I was a kid, and I’m deeply uncomfortable with it.
But I can’t escape it either, so I wipe my mouth on the napkin and sit back, creating a little distance between us. “Her ex-husband showed up. Said her dad needed to see her. So, she left.”
Mom bolts up. “With him?”
I shake my head. “In her own car.”
“And you saw her leave? You’re sure she was safe? I thought he was why she was staying with us.”
“He is…was. But not because he’s dangerous.” I don’t know how to explain anything else.
Mom’s questions bring up new worries to add to all the ones I’ve been trying to quash all day. Because, the thing is, telling Frankie she should go because I was worried about getting my heart broken didn’t work. My chest feels hollowed out.
But I quickly walk back from the guilt. I did what I had to for Junie. She’ll be sad tomorrow, yeah, but she’d be inconsolable if she was anymore attached to Frankie.
“Frankie made the choice, Mom.” I push the bowl away, in case she’s thinking of filling it again. “I couldn’t bring her back out here. Her whole life’s in upheaval. I couldn’t let Junie get attached to her and then have her heart broken when Frankie left.”
Mom’s mouth tightens. “You thought it’d be easier for Junie not to say goodbye at all?”
I stare at the blue flowers dotting the bowl. This isn’t the first conversation I’ve had with Mom about a girl over mac and cheese served in that same bowl, but this is the most uncomfortable one.
Mom stretches across the counter to rest her hand on mine. “I’m not saying you didn’t do the right thing, but Junie’s fallen as hard for Frankie as you have, Cal. She’s hurting the same way you are, but she didn’t get a goodbye.”
“She’s three, Ma. Give her a week and she’ll forget.” I swallow hard to push back my growing doubts.
“Almost four, and she’s sharper than you're giving her credit for.”
I sigh and sit back, pulling my hand out from under hers. “When Frankie’s ex showed up, I worried things would get really messy. She did too. We said goodbye not just for Junie, but for all of us.”
I circle my finger in the air to indicate everyone under the Holloway roof, including Mom.
She tips her head, her misgivings drawn in the tight line of her lips pressed together. “I don’t doubt you both had good reasons for breaking up—”
“—It’s not a breakup if we were never together, Ma.”
She raises her hand, and I stop. “I just want to make sure you’re not walking away from happiness because you’re afraid of getting hurt again.”
I wince at her words—at how wrong she is. “If you mean I don’t want Junie going through another loss like she did with her mom—”
“—I mean you don’t want to go through that kind of pain again either…right?”
When I don’t answer, she does. “Kayla hurt you long before she died.”
I shift in my seat, but the more I try to avoid Mom’s eyes, the more she stares at me, right through all of my excuses, all the way to my fears.
I’ve never told my family what was going on with Kayla when she died. That she’d packed her stuff, ready to leave me for someone else and take Junie with her.
I kept it to myself because Mom and Dad were going through enough trouble trying to keep the ranch in the black. I would have told them eventually, but by the time I was ready, they were in the middle of fighting BIG to keep from losing essential pasture leases and water rights.
But mostly I didn’t tell them because of the guilt I felt finding a silver lining in her death.
As hard as things were taking care of a brand-new baby while trying to finish up my vet training, I was grateful I didn’t have to share custody of Junie.
And how could I admit that to them? So, I just chose to not tell them about our problems. Seemed easier to just keep it all to myself and move on.
Or, at least, tell myself that’s what I was doing.
Mom, though, is looking at me like she knows everything. Maybe not all the details, but her Mom radar is fine-tuned. She probably sensed what was happening with Kayla and me from two states away.
“All I’m saying…don’t let your past get in the way of your future” She holds my gaze, probably reading my mind.
“What does that mean?” I ask. I can be hard-headed when it comes to admitting someone else may know what’s best for me.
That someone is usually Mom.
“Leave the past in the past, Cal. Leave what’s happened with Kayla behind. Not just her death; everything before and after. It’s not going to happen again.”
Her certainty knocks the wind out of me. Not because it hurts, but because I didn’t realize I needed someone to say those words. It’s not going to happen again.
And I want so bad to believe them. To believe Mom. But the worry that another woman will leave me is more deeply etched in my brain—in my heart—than the worry I could end up a widower a second time.
“How do you know for sure?” My voice comes out both pleading and hopeful.
“Oh, my sweet boy.” She holds out her hand, a lifeline I gratefully grasp. “You can’t go into every relationship afraid of how it will end. You go into it planning how you’ll make it work, and then you keep working at it every single day.”
“I tried that with Kayla. I swear.”
She tips her head. “Something meant to last forever takes both parties working at it.”
Something physical happens with her words. An uncoiling in my belly, like a knot that’s finally been pried loose. There’s still more tugging and unwrapping to do, but this feels like a beginning.
“How can I be sure if a woman I’m interested in is the kind who’s willing to put in the work?”
Mom’s expression turns wry. “Oh, you’ll know. You knew with Kayla, didn’t you?”
Reluctantly, I nod. Then, to loosen the knot even more, I unload everything on Mom.
“Things were good at the beginning—when we first got together. Then they weren’t. I knew when it was time to break up, and I waited too long. Kayla got pregnant. We got married.” I look down and shrug. “I tried to make things work. And maybe I could have kept trying, but I gave up when she did.”
“Well, I think we’re all grateful you waited too long to break up.
No matter how things would have ended between you and Kayla if she hadn’t died, we have Junie because of her.
We’ll always be grateful for that.” Mom squeezes my hand, and I’m able to return her smile, feeling lighter than I have in years.
After saying good night to Mom, I creep into Junie’s room to check on her one more time. She’s curled in a ball, on her knees with her butt in the air. She snores softly, cheek smushed into her pillow, still clutching Bluey in Frankie’s tee.
On her bedside table, a slowly rotating night light projects ocean animals on the wall and illuminates her face. Even asleep, she’s not at rest. Her eyebrows pinch together, she flinches and lets out a quiet sob. My heart drops. Is she missing Frankie even in her dreams?
Then the corner of her lip tugs. My heart shoots back to my chest and expands near to bursting. This daughter of mine stretches my emotions in so many different directions so many times a day, I don’t know how I ever really lived without her or how I’ll survive fatherhood.
I smooth her hair away from her face, kiss her cheek, tuck Bluey a little closer to her. Then I tiptoe out, leaving the door open a crack so I can hear if she wakes up in the night.
Back in my own room, with Mom’s advice and Junie’s tear-stained cheek fresh in mind, I debate whether it’s too soon to text Frankie. I told her we’d be here when she was ready to come back, but I also pushed her away.
I recognize fear is what motivated me, but that doesn’t make me any less afraid to try to keep Frankie close. She could still slip away, and Junie and I would hurt even more than we already are.
Or…Frankie could come back, knowing this is exactly where she wants to be, here with Junie and me.