Round Thirty-Six
BILLY
I saw the announcement in the newspaper earlier this week. Maggie’s having a yard sale.
Everything must go, the ad said. Furniture, decor, rugs, silverware, and more.
It was listed as a one-day sale. No reasonable offer would be refused.
Fuck.
I watch from my prime position on my porch as Maggie’s yard floods with scavengers begging to tear through another person’s private property.
As little old ladies trample Maggie’s lavender garden and pick through boxes laid out on trestle tables.
They find teapots I remember Patrice pouring from over the years.
Cups and saucer sets I’ve drunk from. Wall paintings I personally watched Patrice paint herself.
These people flick through her clothes, all hung neatly on a rack, and gossip noisily among themselves.
I remember when she’d wear this godawful dress to bingo! Don’t you?
She doesn’t even have nice things.
That girl is overcharging. Why on earth would anyone pay these prices for secondhand goods?
I wrap my hand around the armrest of my chair, grind the enamel from my teeth, and stare at Maggie most of all.
Because I didn’t say goodbye to her that last time at the hospital.
I just let her go. Like a fucking asshole, I let her walk away, even after Rose told me the statistics behind MV accidents to and from the hospital.
Like I haven’t already lost enough, I practically fucking dared the universe to take her from me. Without saying goodbye. Without asking her to stay.
The roads didn’t get her—thank God—but if the ad in the paper is anything to go by, and the people currently trampling her yard, then I’m forced to admit I might’ve lost her anyway.
No one hosts everything must go yard sales if they’re planning to stick around for much longer.
Something heavy crashes inside my house. Then a door slams.
Others might assume they were being robbed. I simply know my son is grieving.
“I wish I lived with Maggie!” He slams another door so hard, the windows rattle.
And all the while, I stay exactly where I am, because if my kid tries to make a run for it, I have to be here to stop him.
“I hate living here with you! I hate living in this dumb house with this dumb stuff and with you.” He throws something. “Because you’re dumb!”
The chatter next door shields Maggie from listening to my son’s agony. His tantrum. His pain.
“You’re just letting her leave!” he screams. “You’re letting her, cos you’re dumb! So now I hate you.”
Yep. I glance down at the small picture frame I caught just ten minutes ago, when my son decided to peg it at my head in his rage. Locking eyes with a beautiful, alive, Aria, I exhale a shuddering breath and hope my nose will stop stinging soon.
I hate me too, buddy.
“Just tell her no!” He shoves through the front door and hits me with a glare.
Red-faced, puffy-eyed, rage-driven, and ready to fight.
He balls his fists, and his shoulders swell with adrenaline.
Stalking forward, mindful enough to sneer instead of shout, he stops a single foot away and grits his teeth. “Tell. Her. No.”
“I can’t tell her no.” I draw a shuddering breath and risk a glance across to Maggie’s yard to make sure she’s not focusing on us.
“I can’t tell her what to do.” Sighing, I bring my eyes back to his.
“It wouldn’t be right, and you know that.
Which is why you’re right here, snapping at me, instead of over there, bossing her around. ”
“I don’t want her to leave!” His sweet little eyes spill over. “I didn’t get long enough with her yet.”
“I know,” I rasp, my voice shaking. “Me neither. But when you love someone, there will never be enough time, buddy. Even if she stayed for fifty years, it wouldn’t feel like enough.”
“I hate you,” he seethes, his breath coming in fast, short pants. “I hate you because she told me she loved me and that she would never leave. But you’re always mean to her! You’re always rude and grumpy and not nice, and nobody would stay when somebody is always rude and grumpy and mean.”
“I know.” I hold my breath, suppressing the ache in the depths of my chest. “I know, buddy.”
“Don’t call me buddy! Don’t call me anything, because I’m not staying with someone who is always rude and grumpy and mean, either! I’m gonna go wherever Maggie goes.”
“No.” I swallow the thick lump of heartache from the base of my throat. “You’re not. You’re staying right here with me.”
“I don’t want to!”
My throat is dry. My tongue. My lips. My entire fucking soul. Glancing over my shoulder, I get caught up in Maggie’s golden-eyed stare. She’s surrounded by old biddies vying for her attention, cash in one hand, and a small bag of… things outstretched in the other. But her eyes are for us.
Does she know how much this hurts? Does she know how much I wish she could stay?
I keep my voice low and bring my eyes back to Jeremy’s. “I understand that you’re mad at me. And I understand that you love Maggie. But she’s not—”
“You don’t understand anything!” he roars. “Because if you did, you’d tell her not to go.”
“Jeremy—”
“I hear you, ya know?! When you think I’m not listening. When you argue with Uncle Ollie about Mom, or with Ramone, and say she died and we didn’t get a choice.” He surges forward and kicks the leg of my chair. “You get a choice now, and you suck at it. Maybe that’s why she died. Cos you suck!”
“Jeremy—”
“I wish it was you who died and not her.”
My heart fucking stops. It stutters. It shatters and aches, and then it simply keeps beating, cruelly and consistently, because I’m not so lucky that death would be so swift and easy.
Tears burn my eyes, blurring my vision and searing the image of my son’s devastation onto the backs of my eyelids. His trembling jaw and the wet spots on his shirt.
My breath comes out on a shuddering exhale, because where I would have once expected anger in retaliation of his hurtful words, all I feel is grief. And agreement.
“Sometimes, I wish it were me who died, too.” I clear my throat and swipe my cheeks dry. “Other times, I’m really, really thankful that I’m the guy who gets to be your dad. Because you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and it’s an honor to be your family.”
“I didn’t mean it.” He breaks down in loud, keening sobs, stumbling forward and crawling onto my lap. His body jerks and hitches, his sorrow wringing him out and leaving us both a soggy mess. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean what I said.”
“I know.” I sit back in my chair and stare up at the porch roof, blinking through my tears and sniffling back the run in my nose. “It’s not your fault that you say hurtful things when you’re mad.” I press a kiss to the side of his head. “You got that from me.”
“I’m just so angry,” he sobs. “And sad.”
“I know.”
“If I didn’t burn myself, I wouldn’t have had to go to the hospital, and if I didn’t go to the hospital, none of this would’ve happened.”
“No.” I cup both sides of his face and draw him back.
I want to look into his eyes, but all I manage is a whole new heartbreaking image seared into my retinas.
His perfect face, scrunched with agony and grief.
“You getting burned has absolutely nothing to do with anything else. That was an accident, Jeremy. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t Maggie’s fault either. It was nobody’s fault.”
“But you said you were mad at yourself. You said—”
“All sorts of dumb shit, because that’s what I do when I’m mad or sad or stressed.
I trusted Maggie to take care of you—I still trust Maggie to spend time with you—anytime either of you like.
You’re the most important person in my life, the only thing that truly matters to me, so when I found out you got hurt, and I was already feeling big, crappy feelings from other things, I needed to see you.
To know you were okay. I was trying so hard not to say unkind things to Maggie or anyone else, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but because I was so focused on not saying anything mean, I didn’t have any brain space leftover for anything else.
I couldn’t even think of anything nice, and when she got up to leave, I couldn’t think of an excuse to stop her. ”
“But you could tell her now.” He crushes his eyes shut, squeezing fresh tears onto his cheeks. “Go over there before she sells the stuffed cat. Ask her to stay.”
“But she has free will,” I croak. “She has a right to live anywhere she wants, with whoever she wants, and it wouldn’t be fair of me to ask her to stay when I’m the guy who is rude and mean and grumpy to everyone.” I drag my thumbs beneath his eyes. “No one wants to stay for that, remember?”
“I wanna stay for you.” Sobbing, he escapes my hands and surges forward, his arms going around my neck and the sharp tip of his shoulder digging into my windpipe. “You’re not actually mean or grumpy in your heart. You’re just scared sometimes.”
Yeah. Pretty fuckin’ much.
“I wish Maggie would choose us.” His chest bounces with wracking cries. “Mom didn’t get to choose, cos she died at the hospital and didn’t even get to come home with me one time.” He sniffles a long line of snot. “I wish Maggie was my mom, too. Cos then she would have to stay.”
I drop my head back and close my eyes.
Put a fuckin’ stake in my heart and end my life. Please.
“Molly’s mom spends time with Molly cos she’s her mom.
But Molly told me Maggie only spends time with me because it’s her job.
” He digs his head uncomfortably under my chin.
“I said Maggie loves us and I was gonna maybe marry her someday, but Molly said I was being dumb, and that Maggie was only my friend cos she was being paid to do it.”
Exhaling a long sigh, I pull him back again and search his soaked eyes.
“Maggie’s job was to help me get ready for my meetings.
To help me pick ties and choose nice jeans.
But every single time she sat with you on the grass…
” I glance across to the boundary garden.
“Every time she threw balls with you, or baked cookies, or wrote a letter and put it in the window… that was because she wanted to. Because she loves you. Every time she hugged you was because she loves you. Every time you stood in the garden and shouted her name, and she came outside with a big smile, that was because she loves you.”
“But—”
“That’s like saying I only hang out with Ramone because it’s my job.
But it’s not.” I swallow the bubbling ache burning my throat.
“I spend time with Ramone at work, because that’s my job.
But when we’re not at work, when we’re here, or at his house, we hang out because we want to. Because we’re family.”
“Is Maggie my family?” His breath hitches and catches. “Do you think she loves me like family?”
Yes.
No.
I don’t fucking know.
“I think she loves you very much. She didn’t have to bake cookies, and she didn’t have to leave notes in the window, or sit with you in the garden, or throw your balls back over the fence.
She didn’t have to do any of that stuff.
But she did it anyway, and none of it was because she was being paid to. ”
“Oh my gosh. That clock is just divine!” Barbara, Bitchy Barbara of the Bitchy Book Club, crosses Maggie’s lawn, wringing her hands and grinning wide enough to make her face stretch. “I remember when your grandmother bought this.”
Maggie turns to study the old woman, her expression a direct contrast to Barbara’s. One of them beams, the other is flat. One takes great pleasure in picking through Patrice’s things, and the other…
Peeks this way.
Maggie’s golden stare stops on mine, as a soft breeze tugs her hair forward, and a deep breath forces her chest higher. Her gaze shifts just a fraction lower and stops on Jeremy, her brows pinching in response. Then she brings her beautiful eyes back up again and releases a sad sigh.
“I heard you’re Plainview’s resident matchmaker!” Barbara grabs Maggie’s hands, even the one wrapped in a crisp white bandage, and elicits a grimace of pain from her captive. “It’s the talk of the town!”
“Oh, well…” Maggie carefully drags her sore hand free and exhales a fake laugh to appease the woman who doesn’t handle rejection well. “I don’t know about that. It doesn’t appear I’m very good at it, does it?”
“You should set my Dara up!” Barbara’s eyes swing boldly across my lawn, then back again, before she notices me here. “Detective Caster would be a good match for her, don’t you think?”
“Well—”
“It’s tragic what happened to Norma Sinclair’s granddaughter. But it’s been a while now, and Dara is recently out of a relationship. Perhaps the timing is right.”
No. Fucking. Thank you.
“Come on, buddy.” I scoop Jeremy up and push off our chair, carrying him all the way to the door. “Let’s go inside for a little while.”
“Please don’t marry Dara.” He leans back and searches my eyes, his nose wrinkled with distaste. “I’d rather speak to the grass at Mom’s grave.”
I choke out a laugh and step inside, crossing the threshold and slamming our door behind us. “I’m definitely not marrying Dara. Not in a million years.”
“You should marry Maggie. Cos even if she was annoying and horrible and ugly—which she’s not,” he adds quickly. “But even if she was…” His lips quirk high. “Her homemade donuts are really, really good.”
“I wouldn’t know.” I walk into the living room and drop him onto the couch.
“You’ve never shared them with me, greedy guts.
” Snatching up the television remote, I spin and plop onto the couch beside him, then I turn the TV on and navigate across to The Bodyguard.
Fuck it. Why not? “Maybe I’d be less mean and rude and grumpy all the time if you shared your baked goods sometimes. ”
He opens his legs wide, leans forward, and yanks the couch cushion up.
Reaching under, he comes back out again with a Tupperware container and a shaky grin.
“I got one more left from the last batch.” Peeling the lid open, he glances my way with tears still in his lashes and red splotches on his cheeks. “Wanna go halfsies?”