Chapter 28 Still Loves You
STILL LOVES YOU
“Hey, bud, you want to run in and grab the grub for me?” Holt fishes bills from his wallet, handing them to Owen in the back seat.
“Sure,” Owen says quietly. Then he’s sliding from the truck and walking across the parking lot into the pizza place.
I twist in my seat to see that Mabel is fast asleep.
The box of Holt’s truck is jam packed with plants and soil—more than I ever would have bought with Tate.
But everything I even remotely looked at went into the cart.
I tried to protest, but Holt just carried on.
I not only have flowers for my pots, but shrubs.
Mabel stirs, sighs big, and slumps back into sleep.
When Holt suggested we take his truck, I’d thought I’d have to transfer the car seat.
I’d been surprised and warmed to realize that he’d already bought one.
And when I say it’s the bougiest of the bougie, I’m not exaggerating.
I don’t think I’ve even seen this one in the stores. So, he definitely ordered it online.
I wonder how many reviews he read. I can already see it, Holt hunched over his phone reading safety reviews on car seats.
“She seems like a good little sleeper to me.” Holt’s deep rumble consumes the space.
“The car always gets her.”
He chuckles, and his eyes drag over me again like they have at least a hundred times today. When I dropped my cardigan earlier, the way his eyes heated, I felt it like a lick of flame on my flesh.
He swallows. “You look really good in that dress, Faye.”
There’s a moment where I forget it was Tate’s favorite. Then I remember. “Thanks.”
Owen appears holding four massive boxes of pizza. I feel my eyes snap wide. “How much do you think we can eat?”
“I can eat a lot,” Holt tells me. “But I wasn’t sure if Doug and Candy would come by again, so I got extra.”
“What did you order?”
“One ham and pineapple. One pepperoni with extra olives. One with everything. And one meat lovers.” My heart clenches. The man listens and takes notes, obviously.
Owen opens the door and sets the pizza on the middle seat before climbing in after. Mabel doesn’t stir through the ruckus or the drive home and I already know it’s going to be a long night.
I wipe at the sweat on my brow as I drop down onto my booty to pull my gloves from my hands.
The day turned out hot, and only got hotter as we worked.
Holt is a beast and has clearly made this his workout for the day.
He dug all the holes for the shrubs, after I debated and changed my mind a thousand times about where they were going.
In a few years, the space under the porch railing is going to be blooming with snowball viburnums, hydrangeas, and lilacs.
Gardening has always been a happy place for me, but today it was bittersweet. This has always been something Tate took care to do with me. Every year, he’d teasingly groan about the greenhouse torture, but I knew he loved the time he spent with me there. The man loved me.
I thought it would hurt more doing all this without him.
I’m not sure how to feel now, because it didn’t hurt the way I thought it would. I’m not sure what that says.
I don’t want to replace Tate with Holt.
“Looks good, Mom,” Owen says around a mouthful of pizza. “Dad would have loved this.”
I stiffen and hope it’s not too obvious.
“Yeah, he always loved the flowers.” My nose stings as I recall Tate watering them every morning before he left for work. “Even though he pretended not to.”
“I don’t mean just the flowers.” Owen cracks the top of his pop and takes a swig. “I mean Uncle Holt.”
Now, I know my stiffening is obvious. “What do you mean?”
Owen shrugs as he watches Holt instruct Mabel on where to set a petunia for the last pot. It’ll hang on the post that’s sat in the front yard since Holt was a kid. Since then, Tate affixed a solar light to it, so now it looks like a lantern. I’ve always thought it was lovely.
“Dad started talking to me about Uncle Holt a few months before he died,” my son admits.
My eyes snap wide and my head swings to take in my son. A single word pushes from my suddenly burning lungs. “What?”
I think my heart is going to tear from the cage I’ve kept it in all this time.
“He just said they were close once, you know?”
I nod. I can do nothing more.
“He told me about you and Uncle Holt.” Owen looks bashful for a moment, and I’m taken back to a time not long ago where I asked my son how he’d known of me and Holt. Now—now the truth comes out.
“So, it’s not people at school—people around town talking about us? It was your Dad?”
Owen’s eyes come to mine. Pools of warm espresso. “I wasn’t lying. They talk, too.”
“Just omitting a good portion of the truth, then?”
Owen bobs his head a moment, his eyes moving to the front yard again. To Holt and Mabel. “Dad said sometimes people aren’t ready for the truth. I figured you might be one of those people.”
“God, Owen.” I wheeze. I feel emotionally bludgeoned. “When did you become so old?”
He looks straight into my eyes. “When Dad died, I think.”
Ruined. God, it hurts.
I did this to my baby boy. Made him grow up too fast by falling too long into my grief.
But did I really grieve too long? I’d tried to pick myself up, to hide the pain under grueling workouts and pretty outfits and smiles that felt so close to shattering.
Did I fail?
I scoot closer to my son, resting my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Owen. I’m sorry I didn’t shield you from it all, better.”
“You can’t shield someone from death, Mom.”
How did my baby become so mature so fast?
“You’re a good man, Owen.”
“I miss him,” he tells me, and there’s a crack in the steady of his voice. Hearing it is the quake that rattles my heart, splitting the wreckage of it into something I’m not sure will ever be right again.
“Me too.”
“But I’m happy Uncle Holt is here, you know? Dad said he hoped he’d come back some day—and here he is.”
“Yeah.” I can’t say more.
“I wouldn’t be upset, Mom,” Owen says softly, carefully.
I pull my head from his shoulder to look at him. “About what, baby?”
“If you loved Uncle Holt again.” He’s still looking at Holt and Mabel. “I think he still loves you. And I think—I think Dad would be okay with it, too.”