Chapter 40
Lullaby
SADIE
Iwake in Walker’s bed to the morning light hitting my eyes.
Once upon a time, the first thing I saw out the window was the chainlink fencing around the edge of our trailer park and the railroad tracks beyond.
Now it’s all purple mountain majesties and big sky country and a handsome cowboy in bed beside me.
Tomorrow, it will be a different window, a different bed. All alone, once again. No more mountains but a concrete jungle instead.
Walker is still asleep when I get up. I stand in the doorway of his bedroom and look at him for a long moment. The suntanned skin against white cotton sheets, the one strong arm thrown over the empty space where I was, like still he’s holding on to the imprint of me even when I’m gone.
Today I'm going to do every ordinary thing one last time.
Make breakfast together. Feed the horses. Sit on the porch with my coffee. Work with Jonah on one more chapter of his book. Dance in the kitchen after dinner.
Tomorrow, I'll get on a plane.
Jonah wants pancakes, so we make pancakes. He stands on his step stool at the counter and stirs the batter so excitedly he gets it on the ceiling somehow. It’s happened before and will happen again, though not with me here to see it.
Walker makes coffee and we eat breakfast on the porch because the morning is perfect, clear with the tiniest bite to the breeze, the first hint that summer is fading to autumn.
Jonah sits between us and chatters about school starting Monday, his new teacher, whether or not his best friend will be in his class.
I reply as enthusiastically as I can, trying not to think about the fact that I won't be here for any of it.
Afterwards, we get the horses saddled and take Walker and Jonah’s favorite trail ride, the one that winds along the creek for hours, eventually dismounting to let the horses drink water and graze.
We devote the afternoon to a long, lazy picnic beneath the shade of a cottonwood tree, eating huckleberries off the vine and dipping our feet in the cold water of the creek when the sun gets too hot.
It’s a lazy, slow summer day. A perfect day. I can’t imagine a better one anywhere else, with anyone else.
For dinner, Walker handles the steak and potatoes and I make a salad with the last of the summer tomatoes, and afterwards Jonah announces he’s going outside to collect ladybugs.
Walker pours two glasses of wine and we take them to the porch swing. His arm comes around my shoulder and I tuck in against his side.
We sit in the last of the evening light, watching Jonah on his bug hunt.
“You should get a dog,” I say wistfully. “I always dreamed of having a dog.”
A smile curves his lips. “Then let’s get a dog.”
There’s a silence.
Eyes still on Jonah, he murmurs, “In my dreams, we make him a little brother or sister to play with too. Maybe even more than one, when I’m feeling especially greedy.”
Suddenly, my heart feels like it’s airborne.
“Walker,” I say softly.
“It's okay.” His fingers stroke down my bare shoulder. “You don't have to say anything. I just…” He takes a breath. “Can I tell you something without you thinking I'm trying to pressure you?”
“Tell me,” I say. No hesitation.
Ask me to stay, I think. Ask me to stay so I have a reason not to get on that plane.
He looks out at the land. The little barn he built while Jonah and I drank lemonade and watched him work. At the hay bales stacked up where he rescued me from a gopher snake and called me his princess.
Then he looks back at me.
“I want to ask you to stay here, Sadie.”
I stare at him. Terrified and hopeful all at once.
So ask the question. Give me the choice. Give me the chance to say yes.
“And the only reason I haven’t,” he continues, “is because I keep thinking… what if you do?”
I blink. “I don’t understand.”
“What if you stay? And the summer ends and real life starts grinding on, the way it does. And one day you look up and realize you made a massive life decision when you were so young, in your very first relationship, and it wasn’t the right decision.
” His voice drops. “I don’t want to be the thing you regret. ”
I think about the vow I made. The dream I’ve held for so long in my heart. And I look at the man sitting next to me and the boy playing in the tall grass and the mountains I’ve known all my life.
This feels like a dream too.
“I would never regret you,” I tell him fiercely. “I would never regret choosing this life.”
“But you'll always wonder about the path you didn't take. About the life you worked for but didn’t pick.” He picks up my hand, holds it in both of his, his thumb tracing across my knuckles.
“You deserve to have long weekends with no agenda.
To get see the world and get lost and discover new treasures.
To be young in all the ways you never got to be.
So just wander down that other path awhile.
And if you decide to come back to me, I'll be here waiting for you.”
I let out a breath.
He didn’t ask.
I understand why he didn't. I've understood for a long time. Sometimes people build walls around themselves.
He was right to call me young and inexperienced. To say I didn’t know any better. I really was naive to think that a single summer would be enough to dismantle every defense Walker has ever built around himself.
So I just wrap my arms around him. This complicated man with an artist’s soul and huge heart who’s so strong in every way except letting someone love him, because then they can hurt him.
He pulls me in, both arms, tight, and we stay like that for awhile. I press my face into Walker's neck and breathe him in. Warm and spicy and all man. All my man.
My heart is aching. He’s telling me all the things I’ve wanted for myself for a long time now. Except now, after I’ve spent this summer at Wild Rose, I don’t think I want those things anymore.
What does a long, empty weekend compare to one filled with laughter and the people I love?
What does some overpriced brunch compare to slow mornings making pancakes at home with my boys?
Department stores and art galleries are nice, I’m sure, but they’re not trail rides along the creek and loud family dinners at Rosemont.
And nightlife? I don’t need to dance at the glitziest clubs in the city, fending off the advances of predatory men who don’t care about me, when I could spend the night in the arms of my brooding, beautiful cowboy.
But he’s made up his mind. And I’m not going to beg him to change it.
Then Jonah comes sprinting across the yard with his jar held over his head.
“Seven!” he announces. “I got seven.”
Walker's arms loosen. His gaze on me is tender and private, everything we just said still sitting between us, and then he turns to his son.
“Let me see those seven,” he says.
And then my phone pings with a reminder to check in for my flight, and I go through all the necessary steps with none of the joy I ought to feel at the culmination of a lifelong dream, the beginning of a great adventure.
It just feels like an ending.
This is my last night tucking Jonah in. The last night doing the bedtime routine, all three of us.
Walker is in the bathroom running the toothbrush under the water, and Jonah’s pulling pajamas out of the drawer to select between dinosaurs and spaceships, and everything’s exactly the same as every other night this summer.
Except it isn't. Because it’s the last one.
I go in and crouch down beside him and start helping him sort through the options.
“How about trucks tonight?” I ask, handing a pair to him.
He takes them.
Then he says, in the careful, serious voice I rarely hear these days, “Sadie.”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“Do you think…” He swallows. His small throat works. “Would you ever want to be my mom?”
Looking at his little face, staring up at me with such honest, sincere yearning, I can scarcely speak through the tightness in my throat. “Of course I would,” I whisper.
“Then why are you leaving?” He gazes up at me. “Why can't you stay forever?”
Kids have a way of getting right to the heart of the matter.
There are answers that come to mind. Because of a promise I made to myself. Because it’s complicated. Because your father hasn’t asked me to stay. Because because because.
They all feel utterly toothless in the face of a child’s pure love and longing for a mother.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I breathe.
My eyes are burning. I pull him in before he can see, wrapping both arms around him, pressing my face into his hair. He squeezes back immediately, both arms around my neck, his small hands gripping the back of my shirt. I sit with it until I have it under control.
Then I pull back.
I put both hands on his cheeks and look at him straight so I can make sure he sees that I mean every word.
“Let me tell you something,” I say. “Anyone who gets to call you their kid is the luckiest person in the world.”
His eyes go wide. The logic works itself out on his face in real time. “Does that mean Dad is the luckiest person in the world?”
A deep, husky voice comes from behind us. “Sure am, son.”
I turn around.
Walker is in the doorway. Shoulder against the frame, arms loose at his sides, toothbrush forgotten in his hand. His eyes are bright and he's looking at the two of us with an expression that is completely raw.
He heard all of it.
Every word.
It’s written all over his face, what he’s seeing here. What we could be. What we already almost are.
The three of us in this small room, doing this ordinary thing.
The most ordinary thing, just a bedtime routine.
Except that Jonah’s never really had this, his daddy and someone who loves him like a mother on either side of him, tucking him into bed.
Letting him know there’s always a soft place to land and people to love him.
We take our usual places on Jonah’s bed, him in the middle and Walker and I on either side. All three of us taking turns reading a book, just like usual.
Jonah’s eyes are drifting shut but he’s fighting sleep with everything he’s got. He keeps wanting one more book. Not wanting this to end.
I know the feeling.
In the soft light of his nightlight, sitting all close like this, it feels like we really are a family. It feels like something that’s breaking my heart to leave behind.
When Jonah’s eyes flutter close, my eyes meet Walker’s in silent agreement. He starts to rise, and so do I, but then Jonah puts a hand out, staying him.
“Daddy,” Jonah says. Eyes still closed.
“Yeah, bud?”
“Sing ‘You are my Sunshine’.”
Walker sits back down. And then he starts to sing. It’s just his voice in the dark room. No guitar, no performance. The only audience here, besides Jonah and me, is the stuffed toys arranged around the room.
In this moment, he’s just a father singing his son to sleep.
And it’s beautiful. His voice in that register, low and warm and stripped bare, might in fact be one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
I lay on my side and watch the two of them. My throat is tight. The tears come before I can stop them, and I don't even try.
By the second verse Jonah's breathing has gone slow and even, the fighting-sleep tension gone out of him. Walker lets the song trail off.
He's already in dreamland.
I straighten up. Walker waits for me, then takes my hand. He closes the door gently.
“When he was born,” he murmurs, a soft look on his face, “he had some trouble breathing. He had to stay in the ICU for a few days. That was the first song I ever sang to him. I held his little body against my chest and I’d feel the change.
His breathing would get better as soon as I started singing.
Go slow and deep and strong. Those little fists would curl around my finger.
Now I think that song imprinted itself on his brain. ”
His gaze focuses on me again. He sees the tears and his eyes widen.
“Baby? What’s wrong?”
“You’re just…” I hiccup. “You’re a really good dad. Every kid should be so lucky, to have a father like you.”
He gathers me into his arms. “Fuck, Sadie, now you're gonna make me cry.” His voice is husky but I hear the smile underneath it.
“I’m just hormonal,” I sniffle, trying not to outright sob. Which is true, but not even close to the whole story.
“Okay,” he says, clearly not believing me, just rubbing my back in those slow circles.
“My period is coming soon.”
A kiss to the top of my head. “Uh huh.”
“I’m not normally a crier. It’s just…. The kind of thing that tugs on your heartstrings.”
“I know all about that.” He nuzzles my hair.
I'm glad he does know all about that, because I don’t know anything anymore. I always prided myself on keeping my head on straight. Now it’s spinning.
Memories of this summer flash through my mind. Swimming in cool water in the sizzling summer heat. Whiskey kisses. His pen and his hands on my skin beneath the fireworks.
It's the weight of his hat on my head and the way he looked at me from that stage like I was the only person in the room. It's pancake batter on the ceiling and trail rides and chasing each other through the sweetgrass, laughing until our lungs hurt.
I've fallen in love with this little boy who loves me back with his whole heart.
I've fallen in love with his cowboy father so completely that New York now feels like someone else's dream.
As we walk away from Jonah’s room, Walker takes my hand. He doesn’t let go. Not as he leads me down the hallway to the bedroom. Not until he closes the door and pushes me up against it does he let go of my hand, and it’s only to cup my face as he pulls me to him for a kiss.
We spend our last night together making love slow and intense, no words between us.
I try to memorize every part of the experience.
The drag of his calloused hands across my body.
His mouth on my throat, my breasts, my pussy, lingering like he can keep the morning from coming if he takes his time.
The feel of those muscles honed by hard labor as he moves between my thighs, pressing me into the mattress with every slow roll of his hips.
Those malachite-green eyes on my face, drinking me in as I come apart beneath him.
He wakes me up in the middle of the night to do it again, and one last time in the morning before the sun rises.
Afterwards we lie in bed and watch the sun come up over the mountains, his body warm and solid against my back, his arm heavy around my waist.
I think about saying it.
I love you.
But he's already said everything I need to hear on that porch swing.
Or rather, he didn’t say the one thing I did need to hear.
So I stay quiet. Watch the mountains turn from purple to gold and let myself have this one last perfect moment before it's over.
And then the sun is all the way up and it's time to go to the airport and say goodbye.