Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Delilah
Tru leans back against Dad’s bedroom door once it’s shut, exhaustion heavy on his shoulders. “He’s fast asleep. All that fussing really tuckered him out.”
I pull the throw pillow tighter to my chest, like I can brand the words Ridgefield Family into my sternum if I squeeze hard enough. My body sinks into the couch cushions. I stare straight at Tru, straight through him, without blinking.
Truett sighs, a heavy, bone-weary sound. Then he rounds the side table and kneels in front of me, hands braced on my knees. “It’s just a bad day, Delilah. They happen every now and then.”
My gaze lands on his hands. On the steady circles his thumbs impress upon my skin. “The doctor upped his meds. It feels like things are progressing. Aggressively.”
I’ve heard that word used to describe a multitude of diseases throughout my life. Things like cancer. Heart failure. Kidney disease. “An aggressive form,” they’d call it. I never understood how accurate a word it was until now.
It feels like an attack. Not only on my dad, but on me too. It feels malicious. Hateful. Like the universe itself has a bone to pick with my family.
Truett’s thumbs pause. I glance up, fully allowing myself to absorb his gaze for once.
Perhaps it does, I muse.
He claps my knees. “You’re coming with me.”
“What?” My gaze shoots to Dad’s door. “I can’t. What if he wakes up and needs me?” What if he doesn’t want me and instead needs you? My pride is barely holding together as it is, but I’m not above begging Truett to stay. Anything to keep my dad from hurting like he was earlier.
He couldn’t figure out the shower. Truett told me once he’d helped Dad bathe, given him a fresh set of clothes, and left him to dress himself. Dad had gotten confused trying to remember how the faucet works, and if he needed to take off his socks or shorts first. When his clothes got soaked with blazing hot water, he started throwing things out of fear. “ It’s no big deal, ” Truett said, shrugging. But it was the biggest deal to me.
The corners of Truett’s gaze soften. He’s dressed casually, in jeans and a faded T-shirt. No hat this time. His hair looks so impossibly soft. I clench my fists against the pillow, trapping desire in my grasp.
“He took some melatonin to help him sleep. He’ll be out all night. Besides, we aren’t going far.” As if he senses the war that rages inside me, Truett reaches for one of my hands. His touch is gentle, palms calloused. I’m too tired to fight. Not tonight, after the day I’ve had. I let myself be pulled from the couch, guided to the door, and escorted out into the humid night. Crickets and frogs cry out to one another, filling my head with the cacophony of summer. My focus never leaves our woven hands.
“Where are we going?”
Truett releases me to straddle his four-wheeler. He leaves enough space between him and the handles that I know I’m meant to fill it, but I hesitate. Glance over my shoulder. Between my worry over Dad and the waking wet dreams about riding the lawn mower with Truett that have been popping into my head all week, I’m certain this is a terrible idea.
He pats the seat, smirking up at me. “Come on, Temptress. I don’t bite.”
“Hate it when you call me that,” I mutter. I do my best to mount the vehicle without sliding my ass against Truett’s hips. I’m only partially successful.
He shifts, and something hard presses against my ass. I swallow thickly, tilting my hips forward ever so slightly to relieve myself of that particular temptation.
“Do you really or are you just saying that to be contentious?”
I stiffen against my urge to shiver as his words tickle the back of my ear. “I didn’t realize you knew what that word meant.”
He starts the engine and steers us toward his house. “I’m not some dumb cowboy, despite what you may think.”
I’ve never thought that, I want to say. But we’re going faster now, veering left around the base of the hill behind his house. Warm summer air slices at my cheeks. Roars in my ears. If I spoke, I’m afraid my reply would be lost to the wind. So I keep it to myself, nestled in the hollow of my heart with everything I’ve never been able to confess to Truett.
We roll to a stop in front of a rusted iron gate at the edge of the open pasture. We’re in the farthest field from the house, the one they use as a feeder lot. Here at the perimeter, the shade trees huddle close, blocking out all but a few silvery streams of moonlight. He dismounts, approaches one side of the gate, and makes quick work of the chain link holding it in place. It swings open with a groan that a nearby steer echoes.
“Can you drive it on through?”
In another lifetime, this was second nature to me. But I find myself grateful for the cover of darkness when my first attempt at pulling forward results in a lurch that sends a blush straight to my cheeks .
“It’s okay; just try again. Slower this time.”
I do as he says, easing forward at a snail’s pace.
“Well, not that slow.”
A scowl he can’t see distorts my face. “Do you mind?”
He cocks his head. The moonlight turns his blond hair to silver, like a spider’s silk. “I like it when you’re testy.”
I ignore him, but something like a growl rumbles in my throat.
He closes off the gate as soon as I clear the opening. When he settles back into the space behind me and his arms come around mine to grab the handles, he huffs, “Don’t want any tagalongs.”
I glance back at him. “To where exactly?”
An eyebrow lifts. “I’m shocked you don’t remember this place.” Something like disappointment ripples across his features, but it could just be a trick of the light.
He nods toward a break in the trees ahead, and I follow his gaze as we pull forward.
The shaded path spits us out into a small meadow along the edge of the river that flows through his pasture. A sandy shoreline is framed by knee-height switchgrass. In the center of the meadow, the thick tendrils of a willow tree brush the ground, creating a whispered song all their own. Fireflies weave in and out of the branches. The bench Truett built in shop class freshman year sits at its base, weathered but otherwise unchanged.
Recognition washes over me. Here, upstream from the farm, we spent countless days splashing in the water. Climbing the eroded bank on the opposite side of the river and swinging out on a frayed rope that gave my mother a conniption. We’d lounge in the shade of the willow tree and do homework or talk about life.
The memory of the last time we were here, of the kiss that we shared, flushes my skin.
I’m a grown woman. I realize that feeling this way about a childhood crush is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve had better kisses, some amazing sex, since then. Well, standard sex. But standard sex is still more amazing than an innocent kiss, right?
So there’s no reason I should feel like this. But my stomach turns to liquid and my face grows hot and my hands leech of all warmth. Truett, meanwhile, drives us to the perimeter of the tree’s swaying branches without so much as an ease of the throttle to let me know he, too, remembers what we shared here.
Because for him, it was just practice. But for me it was everything.
Once the engine is cut off, the chorus of a country night looms close. Those frogs and crickets are accompanied by flowing water and the whisper of willow branches tangling together on the breeze. I close my eyes and draw the air deep into my lungs. A familiar comfort seeps into my skin. My taut spine relaxes. The headache that was forming disappears.
I hear the rustling of clothing. My eyes split open.
“What are you doing?”
Truett, whose shirt is already off, stops fiddling with his fly. “What do you think?”
Without hesitation, he strips his Wranglers off and leaves them discarded beside his boots. His body is toned and painted with a farmer’s tan from days spent working in the fields. My gaze flits over his broad shoulders. The defined slopes of his biceps. The sinful V-shaped dip that disappears beneath the waistband of his boxer briefs.
His thumbs hook there, and I hold up a finger. “Don’t you dare.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “A little skinny-dipping never hurt anyone.”
“Except for the person who has to witness it.” I cross my arms. “I’d like to keep some things about you to the imagination, thanks.”
“So you’re saying you’ve imagined what I look like naked? ”
“No!” Yes. The heat in my cheeks is unbearable. “I’m saying— You know what I’m saying. Just keep your underwear on.”
“As you wish.” He bows, then turns and takes a running leap into the dark, swirling river. The current carries him a few feet down. He comes up hollering, his cheerful cries mingling with the melody of the forest around us. His arms sweep outward, drawing him toward me until he finds purchase in the soft sand of the river bottom. He plants his feet and rises, silver rivulets of water spilling down his chest beneath the light of the full moon. There’s a dark spot on his ribs, a tattoo of some kind, that I can’t make out in the shadows. “You coming?”
I scoff. “I am not getting naked in front of you.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
My feet cement to the ground. Any oxygen left in my brain drains completely, leaving me dizzy. “Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about?”
He crosses his arms over his chest and uses one hand to scratch his chin thoughtfully. “Let’s see, would’ve been early 2000s. You were knee-high to a grasshopper, and hell, so was I.” He laughs, his teeth flashing. “We got into some mud where the river cuts through the north pasture, and Mama hosed us off in the backyard. She was so pissed at me.” His chuckle dissolves into soft hiccups as his arms drop to his sides. The water parts around his fingertips where he swirls them along the surface, the reflection of the night sky rippling apart. “You’ve forgotten so much since being away.”
The words gut me as thoroughly as if he’d used a blade.
I stagger forward, through tall patches of switchgrass that tickle my exposed calves. There's a smooth expanse of sugar-soft sand near the water’s edge, and I collapse onto it with my legs stretched out before me. The water laps at the shore, nearly brushing the toes of my new Keds. I draw them close, wrap my arms around my shins, and rest my chin on my knees .
“So that’s a no on skinny-dipping?”
I stare straight ahead, to the far riverbank. “Dad brought up memory care facilities today.” Again, I almost add. Though it feels like admitting to some sort of failure to do so.
“Like the one your nana was in?”
I nod, blinking slowly. I’ve been away so long I’d forgotten how it feels for someone to know your history as thoroughly as you do. To not have to fill in the blanks.
He wades into my line of vision, face solemn, and for once he reminds me of his dad. The hollows of his cheeks, the slight cleft of his chin. Waylon wasn’t around much when I’d come over. He’d be out working the cattle with their farmhands or in town doing God knows what, but the few times he came to dinner with my family or passed by me in their kitchen on his way to retrieve a beer from the fridge, his expression was always stern. It made the chiseled lines of his face seem so harsh.
Paired with the gentle slope of Lucy’s nose and her soft gray eyes, however, it makes Truett look like a man lovingly carved from stone. Like artwork set free from a column of marble.
“If you need money for it, I can help. I’ve got enough set aside?—”
I stiffen. “I’m not putting my dad in a home.”
“No one said you had to, yet. I’m just saying, when the time comes?—”
“The time won’t come!” Sand flies in every direction as I shoot to my feet. “How could you think I would do that? Would you have put Lucy in a home when she was dying?”
My words echo through the meadow, reverberating back to me in harsh staccatos. Tru’s eyes are too dark for me to read, but the muscle in his jaw ticks. It’s enough.
I stumble backward, lungs aching. “I’m sorry, Tru. I didn’t mean to… I know it was different. But I can’t do that. Not to my dad. I can’t abandon him again. ”
There it is. My thoroughly guarded secret, laid bare for him to dissect. I’m tempted to cave in on myself, to reel in the words I’ve already spoken, but I force myself to stand still. Not strong, but strong-acting.
Water falls off him in streams as he wades forward, rising from the dark river like some sort of aquatic god. He strides toward me, closing the distance in the time it takes my heart to remember to keep beating. He’s close now. So close I can make out the small bundle of flowers tattooed onto his rib cage, begging my fingers to trace it.
“There wasn’t time for Mom to need a home. Pancreatic cancer moves too quickly. By the time we knew she had it, it was everywhere.”
My hand covers my heart, a pathetic balm that doesn’t begin to soothe the ache. For a moment I forget my confession. I’m too busy drowning in grief.
“You’re right; it’s different with your dad. It may be moving fast, but we’ll still have years with him. Years that won’t always be pleasant.” He grimaces like he’s seeing something I can’t possibly imagine. “At some point he may need care that even Roberta can’t provide. And that’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad daughter to get him the kind of help he needs. In fact, it makes you the best daughter.”
My chin wobbles. I clamp down on my lip, hopeful to stop the trembling. Truett’s gaze drops to that place. He reaches for me and I flinch. His hand pauses midair, and then his fingertips find my bottom lip, which he tugs from the grasp of my teeth.
His hand drops. “Did you know he was diagnosed a year ago?”
A sharp gasp stings my lungs. “What? W-why? Why would he wait?” So much time lost, I think. Not just the year, but those that preceded it, too.
“He wanted to take care of things first. ”
Dad’s words in the voicemail filter through my mind. “ I’m getting it all figured out. Well, me and that Parker boy…Truett. You remember him? ”
I blink up at that Parker boy. The one I could never forget.
“What kind of things?”
Truett lowers himself to the sandy bank. Once seated, he reaches up for the hem of my shirt and tugs. I allow myself to be pulled down, mostly because my feet are unsteady beneath me. We sit thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the brimming river.
“The first thing he said when he got the diagnosis was your name.”
I close my eyes, steeling myself. A sharp, quick breath breaks the barrier of my pinched lips.
“His biggest fear was that you’d give up your life trying to care for him. He wanted to make sure everything was in order so that you didn’t have to be stuck here working things out like…” His voice trails off. When I glance over at him, his mouth is a firm line.
I nudge his shoulder. “Like what?”
He fills his cheeks with air and releases it. “Like you were the parent.”
I briefly forget how to breathe. Awareness brushes over my skin in the form of goose bumps. How often have I thought of myself like that? The parent to two people who had me too young, who made mistakes that I suffered the consequences of. I always assumed Dad didn’t see how his affair affected me, how it forced me to grow up overnight. That he wasn’t thinking of me at all. Mom, I was used to managing. But suddenly both of them were falling apart, and who did that leave to take care of things?
Me. Always me.
“He’d already pulled back at the music school after Mama died. Once he got the diagnosis, he switched entirely to at-home lessons. But even those petered out eventually.” He clears his throat. Swipes his hand under his nose. “I helped him get the tests. Figure out his meds. Filled out the disability application. Made a list of homes to look at when the time came. We made a plan for how this would all end, how he’d afford it. Hell, we even picked out a headstone.”
Tears spill over my cheeks. Disability I thought of, but headstones? Funerals? I never even considered the possibility. My chest feels impossibly tight. “Where does he want to be buried?”
“Remember the little cemetery on top of the hill? It’s where we buried Mama. Your dad asked to be next to her.”
A half-bitten sob passes through my parted lips. I shove my fist against my mouth to cover it, but he hears. Of course he hears. To my surprise, I feel his arms come around me, and one hand presses my head into his chest. He cradles me there, chin tucked against the crown of my head, breath rustling stray strands of my hair. He smells like fresh air and vetiver-scented soap. I drink it in with each gulping sob, desperate for something light in all this darkness.
“He didn’t want to tell you until everything was squared away, so that if you decided to respond at all, to be involved in any way… Well, he wanted you to be able to focus on whatever it is you’re feeling, instead of letting obligation get in the way. Grief. Or relief.” His chin rolls against the crown of my head as he shakes his. “None of the fucking logistics of dying.”
I flinch away from him. Run a hand through my mussed hair. “Relief? Why the fuck would I be relieved?”
He finds my gaze and holds it. “He hadn’t seen you in nine years, Delilah. Neither of us knew what you’d think. Or want.” Each word is clearly articulated, a blade perfectly honed.
“You don’t get to judge me for how I handled things.” I shake my head. “You weren’t there, Tru. You couldn’t possibly understand. ”
His brows rise. “It happened to me, too. Did you forget about that?”
“I didn’t see people cornering you in the hallways. Passing you notes with horrible things about your parents written on them.” I study his face. The ripple of regret. “No one tricked you into coming to a party so they could film you being sexually assaulted, did they?”
He reels backward as though I’ve hit him. And I hope I have, right where it hurts. Because I’ve been bearing the brunt of it for far too long. All by myself.
Just like Dad thought I would. Knew I would.
“I didn’t know that part until you were already gone, Delilah, I swear. I—I wanted to say something the minute you showed up at that party. And then when he kissed you, and you seemed so into it… I?—”
“You walked away.”
He winces. “What?”
“You walked away when I needed you.” I stand, putting as much distance between us as possible. Hating the desperate plea in my words when all I want is to show this man I’m strong enough to do this alone. I didn’t need him back then. Not really. I’ve never needed anyone. I’m practically an expert at handling myself.
I correct myself with my next words, hoping to convince us both. “My world was falling apart and the only person I wanted was my best friend, but you shut me out.”
His mouth parts, but I cut him off.
“You became yet another person who left me to deal with everything on my own. How am I supposed to forget that, Truett?”
His gaze searches my face. For what, I don’t know. But I stopped waiting for a response from Tru nine years ago.
“Take me back to the house.” I turn toward the four-wheeler, leaving him standing among the switchgrass. “It’s been a really awful day.”
I don’t watch as he gathers his clothes and tugs them back onto his damp body. This time I’m not even tempted.
We ride in silence. Or as silent as the engine and the insects and the animals can all get, which is still magnificently noisy. But we do not speak. I sit behind him instead of in front, hands braced on the rack behind me so I don’t have to hold on to his waist. I ignore the way his T-shirt clings to the damp ridges of muscles cording his shoulders. I also ignore his hand reaching for me as I dismount and walk away, leaving him as alone in my front yard as I was all those years ago.
My phone lights up the moment I drop it on the dresser. I glance at it, fully prepared to delete whatever message he’s sent me before I remember he’s blocked. Instead I see my mother’s contact photo.
Mom
Miss you. Can’t wait for you to be home.
Guilt blooms in my chest, right along with all the raw pain this night has brought forth. I collapse into my bed, sand-covered shorts and all, and close my eyes. I pray for sleep and enough good sense to stay the hell away from Truett Parker.