Chapter 24
Ava
After three solid days in bed where Tucker and I called in sick to everything, we finally felt ready to go out into the world again.
I swear, everything looked different. I saw love everywhere. Old couples, young couples, people on first dates. I could spot the people who were clearly doing all these crazy things with each other and liked it. And I could even figure out when one person liked it more than the other.
It was all in the gaze, the way their bodies shifted toward each other or away. How comfortable they were touching.
Tucker and I had it now.
I wanted my whole life back. All of it.
We started making expeditions to places around town so I could practice with my camera. Austin was so big!
We went to the State Capitol building to photograph the towering trees and intricate architecture. We spent sunset under the Congress Street bridge waiting for the bat colony to fly into the sky to begin their nightly scavenging for food.
Graffiti murals. Kayaking on the lake. Bull Creek Park.
I started taking more photos of people, handling all the families with small children that Vinnie was relieved I could do. I figured out Photoshop and increased my time at my computer.
I only rarely worked shifts at Big Harry’s.
The photos I took began to look like the ones from before. I made more money and worried less.
Tucker moved back into our blue house.
I met Maya, hanging out on her flower-filled porch next to the one where I’d lived with my mother, where Tucker would sneak me out the window when we were teens.
When I got my license back, we drove to Houston for weekends with my father and Tina and my half sisters.
We added to my scrapbook, new photos and stories. I thought hard about what would work to get my attention if this happened again. I left the warnings about my mother, but made sure Tucker was represented early and often in the pages.
Maybe getting my life back would simply always be hard no matter what we did. But I wanted to shore everything up while the feeling of loss and fear were still close, to remember what helped me and what didn’t.
I hadn’t been to Mount Bonnell, even though I’d seen photos from there in my old albums.
As Thanksgiving approached, Tucker suggested we have a picnic at the top of the massive staircase that overlooked the river snaking through the city.
“This is a lot of exercise,” I huffed as we climbed the stone steps.
“One hundred and six stairs,” Tucker said. “You used to practically run up them.”
“Really?” My thighs ached. I guessed old Ava was more active. “A person could go right into a seizure from this level of exertion.”
That stopped Tucker cold. “Maybe we shouldn’t go up.”
“No, no.” I passed him on his step. “Have I ever had a seizure from working out?”
“No.” He hurried to catch up.
“There you go. Did I used to jog or something?” Dang, this was hard.
“No. You rushed around more. I think you’ll feel more in shape when you do more outdoor shoots.”
That made sense.
When we made it to the top, several people stood by a stone wall. We approached it as well.
Down below, houses clustered into neighborhoods. The water sparkled as it wound its way through. Homes way fancier than ours stood on the shore, jutting out with perfectly manicured lawns, and, inexplicably, swimming pools.
“Why do they have pools when the lake is right there?” I asked Tucker.
“Beats me. I’ve never been a rich person.” Tucker took my hand. “Come on.”
We went off to the left of the overlook and walked down a rocky trail through the brush.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Here,” he said. A small clearing had a concrete table and benches. “For our picnic.”
He shrugged off the backpack and unloaded containers of fruit and potato salad and ham and cheese sandwiches.
The water bottles were icy from being partially frozen. I stood on top of the table so I could see the city. “It’s a different view from here.”
“We can walk along the other side after we eat. There are lots of great spots for photographs.”
“Oh!” I had totally forgotten I had my camera, overwhelmed by the view.
We sat on the table while we ate so we could see above the scrubby brush. The wind was high up here, sending my hair flying. I tucked it into the collar of my sweatshirt.
“Why does the food taste so much better here?” I asked Tucker, having gobbled my sandwich and a good portion of the potato salad.
“The exercise, I think,” he said. “Maybe the great outdoors whets your appetite.”
I stood on the table again, this time with my camera. “I feel like I could take a thousand photos and never capture what it’s like to be up here.”
He stuffed the leftovers into his pack and climbed up beside me as I snapped shot after shot. “There are some things we can’t capture with images alone, not even video with sound.”
“The wind whipping your hair,” I said.
“The smell of dust and green.”
I elbowed him. “Green doesn’t have a smell.”
“Doesn’t it?”
I sniffed. “Okay, maybe it does.”
When I felt I had taken all the shots I could, we jumped down.
This time, when we returned to the stone wall, it was empty.
I photographed more of the view, zooming in on the details I’d missed.
A small boat motoring along the surface of the lake.
A bird nest almost hidden in the branches of a tree below.
We wandered down a broad path of gravel and dirt, with boulders bordering the edge.
Here, there was no wall or brush to keep you from tumbling over the edge. My fear spiked, but I pushed it back down. I knew how to be careful. I didn’t have to be afraid.
“Where does this path go?” I asked.
“Back to the road where we parked,” Tucker said.
“You mean we didn’t have to walk up all those stairs?”
He laughed. “One time we came up here, we took the path, and you complained that the stairs would have been faster.”
“I guess you can’t win.”
He took my hand. “Coming here with you is always a win.”
We spotted a big flat boulder and sat down, looking over a new portion of the lake. “I love this city,” Tucker said. “I’m glad this is where I was born.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I’m glad Dad didn’t take me away to Houston. That city has its good points, but it mostly smells like car exhaust.”
Tucker grinned and squeezed my fingers. “I love how you describe things.”
I sighed. “I still talk a little weird. Sometimes I don’t catch it until after I hear my own words.”
He lifted my hand to kiss the back of it. “It’s perfect. And I don’t think I’ve said it in a while because it seemed like you didn’t want to hear it, but I love you, Ava. I didn’t stop loving you at any point in all this.”
His soft gaze was already familiar. I’d captured this expression on him a hundred times. Based on the sheer volume of the printed images, it was always my favorite.
I leaned over to bump his shoulder. “I think I love you, too, as much as I can tell what love is. Cosmopolitan isn’t a very good source for relationship advice, it turns out.”
He laughed at that. “It’s fun to read, though.”
“Movies aren’t good either,” I said. “It’s like they meet, they montage through a bunch of dates, and then, bam, they’re in love.”
“I think David and Patrick are a good example,” he said. “They took their time. They had problems. They had great moments.”
“Like when David sang to him.”
“Just like that.”
“But remember when Alexis and Ted had to say goodbye? That was so painful.”
He wrapped my hand in both of his. “We won’t ever have to do that. I will go wherever you go.”
“But you’re in school! You have a job.”
He shook his head. “Those things don’t matter.”
“You do love me, don’t you?”
He leaned in to brush his lips on mine. “One thousand times over.” Then he pulled away to tug a box from his pocket. He placed it in my hand.
By now, I knew what a small velvet box meant.
I opened it, and a diamond ring sat inside.
I recognized it, too. I’d worn it in lots of pictures before our wedding day.
The only reason I hadn’t had it on me in the limo was that it had been passed to Tucker’s friend Bill to hold until the right moment in the ceremony.
“Are you ready to wear it again yet?” he asked. “Because I still want more than anything for you to be my wife. I’ve weathered all this many times, and I will do it as many times as I need.”
I stared at the gemstone sparkling in the sun. My throat caught. Could I do this?
I didn’t answer him right away. I was so unsure. It wasn’t that I doubted how he felt about me. And I recognized this connection to him that I was sure related to all the times I’d loved him before.
But survival Ava was unpredictable. It wasn’t something I could control.
And even more importantly, I realized something critical after taking all the photographs over the last few months. Marriage often led to children.
Tucker only had his Gram. Surely, he’d want to create a family of his own.
There was no way I could do that. I wished old Ava had written something down about this. Had she thought this through when she agreed to marry Tucker before?
Or was the old version of me willing to have a family? I wasn’t now. When I watched those tiny, vulnerable humans turning to their mothers when they bumped their knee or got scared by a stranger, I knew I could never be responsible for something so fragile, so tender.
What kind of mother could I be if I forgot my own child? If I had a seizure in the living room, and they came to me, and I screamed for them to get out? Or worse, I was in a grocery store and took off, leaving them in a shopping cart because I didn’t know they were mine?
The horrifying scenarios lined up. Leaving them in a park or in some dangerous place like a hot car, strapped to their seat.
Even if we were at home, I could forget them in a bath or alone in a high chair, running from the house as I panicked about who I was.
I shivered. No. Never.
To be married to me would mean to never have kids.
And Tucker would be such a great dad. I couldn’t take that away from him. He would say it didn’t matter. That he loved me more than those hypothetical children.
Even so, we needed to have that conversation before I could agree to marriage. Maybe I could ask my dad or Big Harry if I had ever brought it up to them.
But I couldn’t tell him yes or no. I wasn’t ready to do that right now.
I closed the box and stuck it in my pocket.
“Can I answer that later?” I asked him. “I’m still not quite comfortable in this skin yet.”
He drew me close. “Of course. Absolutely. I only wanted to make sure you knew where I stood.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. I loved him. I absolutely did.
But truthfully, I was only five months old. I couldn’t make a decision like this.
Not yet.