Chapter 37
Momma
SADIE
The distance between Wild Rose Ranch and Momma’s trailer is about thirty miles as the crow flies.
Considerably longer than that in every other way.
We come down out of the hills and the road flattens out.
The ranches give way to more developed parts of town, and then the good part of Marble Falls gives way to the Route 9 corridor heading east. Older houses.
Smaller lots. A self-storage facility. A payday loan place next to a liquor store next to a laundromat with a neon sign buzzing with half the letters out.
Then the trailer park.
The sign at the entrance still crooked on its post. Still the same faded blue it was when I was a kid and we first moved here.
I watch Walker take it in through the windshield. His expression doesn't change.
“Second row,” I say. “Third on the left.”
He nods and turns in.
His truck couldn’t stand out more if we tried. I wish we’d taken his vintage Ford instead of the brand-new Sierra. Momma’s trailer is just much grimier in comparison.
I’ve been pouring all the money from Walker’s way-too-generous paychecks into fixing things up for her. A new AC, window blinds that aren’t cracked, repairing the screen door. But there’s only so much I can do.
Walker gets out of the truck and comes around to my side without being asked. He takes one look at my face and pulls me into his chest. Not a long drawn-out thing, just his arms around me for a moment, his mouth at my temple.
“Now you get to see my palace,” I mumble.
His fingertips skim across my hair.
“There,” he murmurs. “You forgot your crown.”
I meet his warm, crooked smile with one of my own.
He keeps his hand in mine as we walk up the sagging steps and I rap at the front door. “Momma, it’s me.”
The raspy smoker’s voice comes muffled from inside. “What are you knocking for, girl? Forget your key?”
She shuffles to the screen door and pauses. Takes in Walker. His hand in mine.
He nods. “Mrs. Sullivan.”
Her eyes slide to me. “What’s he doing here?”
“Momma, this is Walker,” I say, attempting politeness. “Walker, this is my mom, Linda. And to answer your question, we were… out and about. Came straight here together.”
“I see.” She opens the screen door. “Suit yourself.”
The smell of the place hits me immediately: cigarette smoke embedded in the carpet, the artificial lavender air freshener attempting and failing to cover it. There's a path worn into the carpet between the chair and the bathroom, pale against the darker pile, years of the same route.
The TV tray beside Momma's chair holds a half-eaten sleeve of crackers, three prescription bottles, a church bulletin from two Sundays ago, and soda cup doubling as an ashtray. The sink is piled with overflowing dishes and the counters are sticky.
The overwhelming guilt hits me.
At the same time I’ve been living my best life, having the most beautiful summer I could hardly have dreamed of, my mother has been living like this.
And it’s only been a week since I’ve been here to check on her. What happens when I move, and I can’t run at the drop of a hat to fix things?
I put the worry away to deal with later.
For now, I can fix this problem.
The machine isn't complicated. It’s probably just a loose connection at the back, the kind of thing that takes thirty seconds once you know what you're looking for. I've fixed it before.
I keep glancing at Walker taking it all in and I wait for something to shift in his face. Judgment or disdain or any of the the things I’d expect, but it doesn't come.
He just moves the heavy table aside without being asked and rolls up his sleeves to fix whatever needs fixing.
“Let me do that for you, darlin’,” he says.
“It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
I crouch behind the table and reseat the connector.
Momma just observes it all from her chair by the window, watching him the way she watches anything new that comes into her space, like someone who’s been surprised before and didn't enjoy it.
This time is no exception.
“You're taller than you look on TV,” she tells him.
“I get that a lot,” Walker says.
“Sadie said you were handsome.” She looks him up and down. “A haircut wouldn’t kill you. Or a shave, for that matter.”
Walker’s lips twitch. “Noted.”
“Momma, can you not insult the man doing us a favor, please?”
“I don’t see him doing anything useful.”
“He gave me a ride here,” I remind her.
Momma doesn’t say it aloud, but I know that look in her eyes. She’s silently saying, yeah? In exchange for what?
But all she says is, “I’m allowed to have opinions.”
“Your daughter has lots of opinions too,” Walker interjects, a warm, teasing glimmer in his eyes. “And she’s just as generous about sharing them with me.”
I raise an eyebrow. Smooth, I mouth at him, and he winks.
Then Momma shifts in the chair and I see it: the slight labor in her breathing, the way her hand goes to her chest.
“How long have you been short of breath?” I ask.
“I'm fine.”
“Momma.”
“I said I'm fine, Sadie.”
“When did it start?” I ask.
A pause. “This morning.”
“This morning.” I keep my voice even. “And you called me about the machine.”
“The machine needed fixing.”
“You should have led with the shortness of breath.”
Taking a pull off her vape, she shakes her head. “I knew you'd make a fuss.”
Walker pushes off the doorframe. “Mrs. Sullivan,” he says pleasantly, “Seems to me like the kind of thing a doctor should take a look at. I can give y’all a ride.”
My mother and I have a silent stand-off in which she telegraphs that I’m fussing, I tell her I don’t care what you call it, we’re going to the ER, and she reluctantly agrees. The whole silent conversation takes about ten seconds, and then we’re off.
Walker and I help her down the stairs. He opens the rear door for her and makes sure she gets inside okay.
Walker's truck is the nicest vehicle my mother has ever been inside in her life. She runs one hand along the leather seat and sniffs.
“You sure you’re a real cowboy?” she says. “You’d think all this would be caked with dirt. I suppose you pay someone to keep this thing clean enough to eat off of.”
Only Momma could make telling someone their truck was clean sound like an insult.
Walker rolls with it, totally unruffled. “I’m at the point in my life where I use money to save time.”
He opens the front passenger door for me before hopping back in the driver’s seat. His hand finds mine and he twines our fingers together.
I can feel by the burning sensation at the back of my neck that Momma’s watching the way he touches me like a hawk.
“Yep. Real fancy truck,” Momma continues, voice dripping with disapproval. “You always like to throw your money around?”
His lips twitch. “I stay within budget, ma'am,” he says gravely.
Considering he has an eight-figure net worth, this truck is well within budget.
“Momma,” I say, glancing back at her, “stop hassling the man for how he spends his own money.”
“I'm just saying. Plenty of celebrities go broke. What's his name, with the private island? And the other one, the one who owes ninety million to that Vegas casino.”
It hangs in the air unsaid between all of us: my father’s gambling addiction that wrecked our family. It took a lot for me to reveal that to Walker, but I’m glad I did now. Because he knows exactly what he’s doing when he says his next words.
“Last time I played cards was a charity poker tournament seven years ago,” Walker tells her carefully. “Gambling ain't one of my vices.”
“What is? Young women you hire to come live in your home and perform services?”
“Momma.” My voice comes out sharp.
“I'll be honest with you, Mrs. Sullivan.” Walker's tone is steady and pleasant, like she hasn't just said something that would make most men defensive.
“I curse like a sailor and I won't say no to good whiskey or a Cuban cigar.
I stay up too late and I'm set in my ways and I've got a temper, which your daughter seems to find very entertaining to provoke.”
“She's got a talent for that,” my mother grumbles.
“Excuse me!” I say. “I’m right here.”
“I'm no saint,” Walker continues. “But Sadie makes me want to summon all my better angels. She makes me want to be a better man.”
There’s a brief silence.
“Well,” she says finally, “You've got your work cut out for you.”
He laughs at that. His eyes meet mine, glinting with humor and tenderness. “Yes, ma’am.”
As we drive, some of my background anxiety fades. Walker is totally at ease here. Totally with me in this moment, like we’re a team.
If I thought the grungy trailer I grew up in would scare him away, it seems I was wrong. If I thought the ornery mother who comes with me as a package deal would scare him off, it seems I was wrong about that too.
Out the window the familiar sights of Marble Falls slide past. The diner, the hardware store, the turn-off for the ranch road. My town.
His town, too, the one he came back to when he could have gone anywhere.
Walker keeps his hand in mine.
I hold onto it the whole way to the hospital.
The ER waiting room is the same fluorescent misery of all ER waiting rooms everywhere. Uncomfortable chairs. A TV mounted high on the wall with the sound off. The smell of antiseptic.
Walker goes to the vending machine and comes back with a coffee for me and a soda for my mother, along with a packet of peanut butter crackers and M&Ms for each of us. He sits down beside me and stretches his long legs out in front of him and says nothing.
I lean my head on his shoulder.
He puts his arm around me.
My mother, across from us, watches over the rim of her soda can.
She doesn't say anything, but I feel her cynicism in action. She doesn’t see a real relationship, I know that. She doesn’t see two people who truly care about each other. She sees her daughter hired as a nanny by a rich famous man, now “playing wifey” just as she predicted.
A nurse comes to the door. “Linda Sullivan?”
I go to help my mother to her feet, and Walker helps her on the other side.
“We’re going to take her to radiology for a CT scan first,” the nurse tell me.
“Can I come?” I ask.
“Not to the CT. You can meet her in a room afterwards. It might be awhile.”
My mother waves a hand. “Go on. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“I’m not leaving!” I say to her back. “Text me! Keep me posted on what’s going on.”
She doesn’t look my way again as she disappears through the doors.
I didn’t expect her to, but I was still hoping.
There’s a certain kind of loneliness that only your mother can produce. The one that lives in the void between what you need from her and what she knows how to give. I've been feeling it my whole life. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.
I let out a breath, and Walker just drapes his arm around me and kisses my temple. “You getting hungry for some real food yet?”
“You don't have to stay,” I tell him. “You heard the nurse. It could be hours. Jonah’s coming home soon.”
“I texted Dad already. He’s gonna keep Jonah at Rosemont as long as we need. That kid’s gonna be living the high life, don’t you worry. Ice cream and cartoons and pony rides. We’ll have to drag him back home.” He rubs my back. “I’m not leaving you, baby.”
He says it so simply. Like of course he would be here with me. Like there’s no universe in which we don’t handle this kind of thing together.
He keeps saying we.
He keeps saying home.
I’m leaning on him in every possible way. Literally, with my body sagging into his. Emotionally. And of course, it’s still his name on my paychecks. I’m financially dependent on him too.
I’m breaking all my rules.
That scares the shit out of me.
So does the fact that it doesn’t feel wrong to do it.
It feels good to lean on him. It feels like the easiest thing in the world to let Walker Rhodes be my everything.
That scares me almost more than anything.
The only thing that scares me more is the thought of leaving him.