Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The following Friday night after the wedding, Erika strode up the familiar sidewalk that led to the front door of Nikki and Bruce Cantrell’s home, her mother and father-in-law. Her late husband Blake’s parents had bonded with Erika during the three years of her and their son’s marriage, and when he died so unexpectedly and so young, those bonds had only strengthened.
She took in the pale green siding and the dark green shutters, the shabby chic wooden sign on their porch that said, “Home is where the heart is” with the shape of a red heart replacing the term for itself. The paint had faded badly enough that it needed a touchup, but she decided against mentioning it to Nikki and Bruce. The couple weren’t big on change.
Erika wasn’t big on change, either, if she wanted to be brutally honest about herself.
And that was in spite of the fact that she and Blake had met and married after only knowing one another for two months. They’d each graduated from high school weeks prior to that—him coming from another small town before his parents had moved to Rocky Ridge—and it’d been love at first sight. Erika hadn’t known if she believed in the phenomenon or not before meeting Blake, but when it happened to her, she couldn’t deny it.
Life had been challenging. She and Blake had been too broke to do anything but live with Nikki and Blake at first, but slowly and surely, they saved enough for a down payment for a home. Erika still lived in the teeny tiny cottage-style house she and Blake had purchased together. If not for the life insurance he’d bought while with his employer, she might’ve lost it.
But that payout had been enough to pay it off.
It’d also allowed her enough to grieve without having to work for a while and even enough to go to nursing school. Not medical school, no, but she didn’t mind. Things had worked out for her regardless, and looking back, all those events felt like they’d been meant to be. At least as far as her career went. She’d never stop regretting that her husband had died at only twenty-one.
Never. Ever.
Blake had been a type one diabetic. She’d known that from the start and had become accustomed to her husband pricking his finger to check his blood sugar, then how he’d injected insulin into his stomach daily.
He’d been diagnosed with his condition extremely early on in life and had dealt with the need to monitor his diet closely and give himself shots for years by that point. Erika had understood the dangers of the disease. Or at least, she thought she had. And Blake had been so careful. He wouldn’t go out and binge on ice cream or soda. He wouldn’t even eat that many carbs. But the condition still took him away from her in the end.
Much as she sometimes wished she could, she couldn’t forget what it’d been like to come home that night. She’d had to work the late shift at the local grocery store, while he’d been working as an automotive tech at one of the fast lube oil change places. Erika had even gotten up early with him that morning to make him eggs and sausage because they hadn’t been seeing much of each other that week due to their schedules.
She’d always been appreciative of the fact that they’d shared those additional minutes together.
Still, for whatever reason, he’d apparently skipped his lunch. He passed out there on their sofa, going into a coma. Despite her transporting him to their local clinic, and the clinic having him airlifted to the hospital in Billings, he never woke up.
She knew the doctors had done all they could. But his kidneys had failed, and his heart stopped. All their attempts at resuscitation didn’t work.
He was gone.
Now, as she scrutinized the lavender clematis flowers that had draped themselves all over the shrubs lining the Cantrell’s porch, she felt that loss like a dull ache. She breathed in the sweet almost almond-like scent, recognizing their aroma like an old friend.
It’d been a long time since Blake’s death had felt like the acute bleeding wound it’d been at the beginning. But she doubted she’d ever quit mourning him altogether. And much of that was due to the two people who greeted her as soon as she knocked on their door.
“Erika, that you?” they asked in unison. It was kind of their thing.
“It’s me.”
“Come on in, sweet girl.” This came from Nikki.
Erika hugged the woman who physically resembled her son so much—or rather, her son had resembled her—that the family had joked that he’d been the male version of his mother. Blake had been the spitting image of her so much that pictures of them as children at the same age were nearly identical.
Her late husband had his mom’s sandy blond hair and blue-green eyes. Even her freckles across his nose. The main thing he’d inherited from his dad was the shape of Bruce’s mouth and his quiet, hardworking nature. That and his father’s tenor singing voice. Bruce and Blake had each been talented in that manner, both of them becoming highlights of their church’s choir and standing out during performances, especially during holidays.
Erika loved hearing Bruce speak because it was so similar to Blake’s voice.
“I made Hungarian Goulash,” Bruce said, stirring a pot on the stove.
“In this heat?” Erika asked him, fanning herself. That explained the excess humidity in the house. “You’re a brave man.”
He shrugged. “Nikki had a hankering.”
Minutes later they all sat down at the round kitchen table with its oak finish. Erika could still remember sitting here with Blake when they’d been dating then after they’d married. That stain in the center had come from spilling some cooking oil that never quite came out. And that scratch right in front of her from a wrought iron trivet when Nikki had scooted it while beneath the weight of a huge Thanksgiving turkey.
On the wall behind Bruce’s spot at the table were all the family portraits including Blake’s school pictures and various candid shots that his parents had framed. Or maybe memorialized would be a better word. As Erika took a bite of the somewhat bland goulash—it always tasted this way, but she’d never complain—she knew the picture they’d bought at the wedding chapel down in Vegas was stationed on the wall at her back.
Beneath that large ten by sixteen frame sat a collection of framed photographs across three separate shelves, all of them of her and Blake during their fleeting courtship and marriage. Nikki had made a hobby of amateur photography, so she took pictures of everything.
It was all there.
Their first date. Their first kiss—Erika hadn’t realized they were being scrutinized until after the fact. Their first meal with the Cantrells. The day they returned from their wedding and honeymoon. Them standing in front of their new cottage home.
Initially, Erika had been embarrassed and even intimidated by Nikki’s need to capture every moment for perpetuity’s sake, but after Blake died, she’d been grateful. At least once she’d been capable of looking at those images without sobbing. By taking all those photographs, her memories had been preserved in a way that her memory might eventually allow to fade.
She peered up at the wallpaper in this dining room kitchen combo and the little apples lined up throughout. She studied the silverware with its floral motif and the kitschy salt and peppers shakers in the shape of a squirrel and a rabbit. Even the wood smell of this room seemed to go back for years into her past.
Erika inhaled and felt soothed by the bevy of memories all these enmeshed aromas elicited. Being here with the Cantrells was like returning to a childhood bedroom and again sleeping on the same mattress. People said you couldn’t go home again, but she did it all the time. Nearly every Friday, in fact.
“Sweet girl,” Bruce addressed her, both he and his wife had referred to Erika like this since shortly after she’d commenced dating their son. “Do you remember that time we had to push Blake’s old Mustang into the driveway?”
“Sure do.”
“You two had only been married six months,” he went on even though this story had been told multiple times. Also, Erika remembered it because she’d been there. But that wasn’t about to stop Bruce. Retelling the same stories over and over was he and his wife’s forte. “It was lucky he was only a block away. We had you sit behind the steering wheel while the rest of us pushed as hard as we could.”
“And my white slacks got so filthy it ruined them,” Nikki added, just like she always did.
“I remember,” Erika said on cue.
“We were lucky none of us were injured,” Bruce went on, and Erika found herself wondering which one he’d tell next. The time the next-door neighbor’s Doberman chased Blake? The time he caught a fox clawing around one of their shrubs to discover a nest of robin’s eggs which he then moved to a safer place? The time he climbed up too high in the sugar maple in the backyard, causing the thin limbs to give way and make him fall, breaking his left arm?
“Like that time baby boy broke his arm after falling from the sugar maple,” Nikki put in.
There it was.
Blake was “baby boy” just like she was “sweet girl.” Bruce took up the reins of the tale and told all the details that Erika had heard a million times over. How he’d gone up there when his dad was at work and his mom was busy using the vacuum cleaner inside the house. How he’d been screaming for who knew how long—Blake had been five—before she’d heard him. How she’d panicked and raced him to the local walk-in emergency clinic.
“We were lucky it wasn’t a compound fracture, or he would’ve been more in a world of hurt than he already was,” Bruce finished up. Erika had heard this so many times that she could’ve recited it by rote. Not that she said anything to this effect. She felt pretty certain the repetition comforted them, and she didn’t want to negatively impact anything by interrupting.
Or even by telling the truth about the number of times she’d heard it.
After dinner, they had banana pudding with no sugar added vanilla cookies—now this, Erika truly loved—and some unsweetened iced tea with lemon. All the low sugar stuff came from dealing with Blake’s diabetes for so long. If her husband—or their son—couldn’t eat lots of sugar, then they abstained, as well.
Also, every time Nikki passed a picture of Blake standing by his mustang the same day he’d purchased it, she patted it like it was the top of her son’s head. She did this now as she collected everyone’s dirty dessert saucers.
It kept Blake alive to them and to her. All this reminiscing and reliving how their lives had once been. It seemed like a sacrilege to do anything else, despite the comments some of her family and friends had unleashed.
She’d made the mistake of mentioning this little weekly ritual to others, and the results weren’t helpful. At first, her parents had been fine with it, even supportive. But everyone else had made comments that were just this side of snide.
One of the people she and Blake used to hang out with said, “It’s been years, Erika. Do you think that’s healthy?”
Even her parents had ultimately changed their tune. They said nothing against her relationship with Blake’s parents for ten years, then out of the blue spoke up.
“We think you should wean the Cantrells off,” her mom began.
“Wean them off? What do you mean?”
“Well…” Her mom had rubbed her throat, a classic sign of emotional discomfort. “They’re not moving on from this, and as long as they don’t, we’re afraid you won’t, either.”
Her dad hadn’t said a word, but she could tell from his expression that he agreed with her mother. It had infuriated Erika. Made her absolutely livid.
“Why don’t you let me worry about if I want to move on? It’s my business and nobody else’s.” She’d left their house and hadn’t gone back for weeks.
Since then, Erika simply didn’t divulge those particular details about her life to anyone. Really, it wasn’t anyone else’s place to tell her when she and Blake’s parents should give up mourning him. No one else had loved him like they had. No one else truly understood. Nor could they. Blake Cantrell had been the love of her life and soulmate. She’d known it within seconds of meeting him.
That was why—she was sure—dating never worked out for her. No other man could hold a candle to Blake. No one had his shy smile or told jokes the same way. No one else had ever kissed her like his life depended on locking his lips to hers.
No one could ever compare, so why should she even try?
Besides, Erika’s life was good. Sure, her job wasn’t all she’d hoped it could be, but she’d soon be altering that reality. Permanently. As soon as she finished her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, she’d be good to go. She’d already met the requirements Montana demanded otherwise. She’d completed the courses in pharmacology and disease management. She even already applied for Prescriptive Authority so she could prescribe medications just like a doctor.
Erika had dotted every I and crossed each T. Now, in the next three months, with the completion of her degree, she was within arm’s reach of her goal and dream to practice independently.
Yes, she and Tim Blum now got along fine. He didn’t cut her off or refuse to listen to her as he once had. But despite the improvement of that working relationship, she wanted more. She wanted freedom. She wanted to help her patients as she saw fit without the necessity of someone else lurking over her shoulder.
After all this time, Erika couldn’t believe she was almost there. But she was excited. Thrilled to finally get there.
She even put out several feelers for little medical offices that she could run by herself. Those had been few and far between in Rocky Ridge. To the point that her realtor kept asking her if she wouldn’t consider larger locales like Billings or even Bozeman. But Erika had zero desire to leave her hometown. Everyone and everything she loved was here.
Why would she ever want to abandon it?
Erika thought of her family and friends. She thought of the Cantrells. Even Blake’s gravestone was here in the cemetery just outside of town. For years, she’d gone to visit his grave daily. Over time her visits became less frequent, and now, she tended to only go monthly. Sometimes, less often. But she made a point of never missing the day they met, their wedding anniversary, or his birthday.
Those dates were sacrosanct.
And she knew his parents went, as well. Nikki and Bruce liked to bring him bouquets like she did, but theirs were silk instead of fresh cut flowers like hers.
“We need them to last,” they’d say, and every time they did this, she couldn’t help feeling it was just the tiniest bit of a slight against her choice. Her flowers would dwindle and wilt, while theirs wouldn’t. But hers smelled fresh and alive, and she liked to honor his life with them.
Erika would never bring up how she felt about this with them, though. No use causing an unnecessary fuss.
Randomly, the handsome face of Cody Stiers entered her mind, along with his expression when he’d asked her out at Callie and Zeke’s wedding. She didn’t know why, but as she pulled out of the Cantrell’s driveway in the little gold twenty-year-old Toyota Corolla Blake had bought used when they’d first married, the farmer’s image remained. It was as if the recent thought of him was attempting to overwrite the usual memories she kept in her brain.