Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Romy
We drive to Daisy Hill—the cemetery where all my ancestors who’ve passed are buried. The daisies don’t grow on the hill this time of year, which always makes me a little sad. As if I needed any help with that today.
We walk up the path. It’s already been cleared of few inches of snow. Mom must have sent my dad ahead, knowing this was our destination.
She holds my hand as we walk up and opens the small white gate of the fence that surrounds the cemetery. Even in the dead of winter, someone has placed fresh daisies on my aunt’s grave. I wonder if my Uncle Bruce comes here every day and what it must be like for him to live his life without her.
My mom walks over to her parents’ grave and sits on the bench. There’s a blanket over the seat. The second sign that she’s already had conversations with someone about setting this up.
“Okay, Mom, so what am I? Lottie’s a weed, and Bennett is a Jack Russell. What am I?”
She rolls her eyes. “You guys are relentless. I’m just trying to make your lives better.”
“All right, I’m just kidding.” I pat her leg.
She exhales. “I don’t know if I have a word to describe you. I’ve been thinking about it really hard because I want to give you a word—but I just can’t find one that encompasses everything you are. I can’t relate you to anybody or anything else.”
“Wow. This is a promising conversation.”
“I’ve thrown some around. A balloon, a compass…”
“Is this some joke about my sense of direction?” I ask.
“What? No. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know? Because a balloon just floats in the air, taking it wherever the breeze goes, and a compass would be a sarcastic joke.”
She laughs. “No. Jeez. I just meant—” She stops, knowing we’re going off on a tangent.
“All I can say is, Romy—you’re a hopeless romantic.
You’ve always been that way. You’d make me read all the fairytales twice every night.
For Halloween, you were a princess every year until you were ten years old.
All those fake weddings you’d put on when you were little.
I swear you could find anything to use as a veil.
” She laughs. “The first novel you ever read was a romance you stole from Aunt Bette.”
I shift in my seat, trying to get more comfortable in this pregnant body. “Nothing wrong with any of that.”
“You’re right. Nothing is. But you truly believe that everything is fate or kismet. And I don’t know… for a while, I worried about you because of that. I thought that you were only going to be disappointed when you got older.”
“Well, I am disappointed. Guess you’re psychic.”
She places her hand on my thigh and squeezes.
“No, I mean that… I thought you wouldn’t be able to settle.
And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.
You know, you were always looking for a specific connection that something meant something.
Or a sign. And I thought, maybe she’s just gonna meet someone as she’s dropping off the mail at a post office.
Like, it doesn’t have to be this big, grand thing.
And I wondered… if it was just an ordinary way of meeting someone, would you give it a chance and believe in them? But then… it kind of happened to you.”
“Yeah, Mom. I got picked out of a crowd because a country singer wanted to fuck me.”
She taps her hand on my thigh. “My god, Romy, stop talking like that.”
“It’s the truth, Mom. Zander didn’t pick me out of the crowd because he had a feeling I was the one.”
“How do you know that he didn’t point at you and ask security to get you because he felt something different?”
I laugh, a fake hysterical one. “Because he pushed me away. After the third time I went to see him. On the fourth time, he had DeSoto tell me I wasn’t on the list.” All that pain is present again, but so much worse now.
Because we’ve gotten close, and we’re having a baby, and I was na?ve to think he’d changed.
She sighs. “You know, the thing is… sometimes men just don’t know what they want.”
“I don’t want to hear that, Mom. I don’t want to hear that he’s out there somewhere yearning and pining away for me when I’m in as much pain as this.
He’s not. It became difficult, I didn’t want to play by his rules, so he pushed me away.
That’s the way he works.” I cross my arms and stare at the words on my grandparents’ graves.
Wife and husband. Maybe mine will just read mother, sister, daughter. I need to be okay with that.
“I don’t think that’s true. And I know that you’re probably going to tell me I’m wrong, but…
you know, Zander didn’t grow up with this.
” She puts her hands out and circles her head around, indicating our surroundings.
“He didn’t grow up with love. Definitely not unconditional love.
I mean, he grew up with people taking him in who didn’t always have the kindest hearts.
Sure, there are great foster families out there—people who want to help the kids and give them a chance at life—but they’re not all that way.
And it sounds like Zander wasn’t lucky enough to be placed in those families. ”
“I get it, Mom, I know it wasn’t easy for him. He had a rough childhood.”
She frowns. “It forms the person you are, Romy.”
“I know.” My voice comes out rough.
“You clearly don’t.” Her angry tone makes me turn to face her.
“What don’t I get?”
“You protect what you love. It’s a reflex.
Like breathing. He and Beau probably know what love is before anyone else does because they know how it doesn’t look.
They spent their childhoods with strangers constantly turning them away.
So, when Zander finally found something real, something he loved”—she nods at me, then my stomach—“he gripped it so tightly, with everything he’s got, and God help the world if it takes it away. ”
“He just let me leave,” I say, but she continues as if I didn’t say anything.
“Now, he has an instant family. A woman he loves and a baby he wants to give every opportunity that he didn’t get—”
I groan, and tears fall down my cheeks. “Stop saying he loves me. He can’t love me. Not when he deliberately hurt me.”
“Oh, stop it. You know what that man feels for you. And if you don’t, then you need to go back and look at some of those pictures of you two. There’re plenty of them on the internet. Go search them up. That man loves you.”
“Then why would he push me away, Mom?” I wipe the tears on my face.
“If I had to guess? Because there’s a part of him that doesn’t think he’s good enough. That you being in his world puts you at jeopardy, and he’d sacrifice himself before he ever let anything hurt you. And if you looked at the internet right now, I’m pretty sure you would understand—”
“What? What is it?”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. But people don’t always want the best for you. And I think, to a certain degree, you are a little na?ve. I blame myself for giving you such a great childhood.” She gives me a cheeky smile.
“Mom.” I roll my eyes and give her a small smile.
“But people… even people who claim to care about Zander… they don’t always want the best for him. And that’s a hard pill to swallow. But that’s the life he knows. He’s lived it for how many years? And you haven’t. So, he’s trying to save you from that pain because he loves you.”
“So, what do you expect me to do? He’s the one who broke it off with me. Isn’t this supposed to be some talk to get my head out of my ass?”
“I don’t think you did anything wrong, Romy. I think it wasn’t working between you two, and something had to change. But I think maybe he might need a little more reassurance than most that you’re going to stick around. That you’re not going anywhere.”
“Mom, what do you want me to do? I have been—I’ve been doing everything I can.”
“I know you have, sweetie. All I’m saying… just understand a little bit from where he’s coming from on this, when he comes to talk to you.”
“Oh my god. You think he’s going to come and talk to me?” A disbelieving chuckle leaves my lips.
“Yes. He’s going to come and talk to you.”
A cold breeze blows my hair in my face, and I tuck it behind my ear. “Why would he?”
“Because he loves you. Believe me—every man, at some point, gets their head out of their ass. And when he does, he’s going to come to this ranch, and he’s going to declare his love for you.
And he’ll tell you that he’s a changed man.
All I’m saying is—he’s not. But if he sees his faults and what he did, how it affected you…
just listen to him, come together, and work this out.
You guys are too good together for it to end. ”
“He doesn’t seem to think so.”
“I know. Sometimes they’re really hardheaded.” She puts her arm around me and slides closer on the bench. “You’re a good egg.”
“An egg. I get an egg?”
She laughs. “I’m just saying, your heart is so full and so open.
Zander is lucky to have found you and fallen in love with you.
” Then her hand falls on my stomach. “You’re going to give them a great life.
” Tears slide down my mom’s cheeks. “You guys are going to be so great together. And it just makes me—”
“Mom, why are you crying?”
“I just love it when somebody goes through something really bad, and they get something really great out of it. And Zander is going to get you. I think he’s really, really lucky.”
She kisses my cheek. We sit there, and we hug, and the desire to see Zander is greater than ever.
“Oh!” She pulls away. “A peach. You’re a peach!”
“What?”
“Yes. Sweet and easy to like.”
I stare at her blankly, then I tilt my head. “Better than an egg, I suppose.”
She settles next to me again, putting her hand on my stomach, and I lean my head on her shoulder. This is what she’s talking about. This is what Zander never had, and I’ve taken it for granted because I don’t know what I would do without my family.
As we sit there quietly, I try to fill myself with the same hope and confidence my mother has that Zander will come for me. For us. His son and me.