Chapter 41 See You Later
See You Later
WALKER
Thousands of times, I’ve stood at a microphone and played my heart out like I was having the time of my life, even through the worst times of my life.
I know how to hold it together in public.
I’ve performed through a lot of terrible things.
But pretending like I’m okay when the love of my life is leaving me behind, maybe forever, might just be the worst thing I’ve had to make it through.
Acting like I’m not falling apart right now is the greatest performance I’ve ever given.
The airport in Marble Falls is small. One terminal, a handful of gates, the kind of airport where you could walk to the planes from the parking lot.
I pull up to the curb and cut the engine and we all sit there for a second, nobody moving, like we've agreed without saying so to take just one more minute before this becomes real.
Then Sadie unbuckles her seatbelt.
I get her bag from the truck bed. I set it on the curb and when I turn around Jonah’s already gotten to her.
He has both arms around her waist and his face pressed into her stomach. Sadie's hand rests on the back of his head. She holds him there, her eyes closing briefly.
I stand with my hands in my pockets and look at the mountains over the terminal roof and give them a moment.
I've learned this morning that there are things that will torpedo every wall I've ever built, and watching my son saying goodbye to the woman he wants desperately to be his mother is one of them.
Then Sadie crouches down to Jonah's level. She takes his face in both hands, cupping his cheeks.
His chin is wobbling but he's holding it together with everything he has.
“I’m going to call you every single week,” she says. “And you’re going to tell me everything. About your new pony and school and every single crawdad you catch in that creek. Okay?”
His chin wobbles harder. “Okay,” he says.
“And I'm coming back for Thanksgiving.” She looks at him straight. “Christmas too.”
He nods.
“This isn't goodbye,” she says. “This is just see you later.”
Jonah nods again, jaw clenched, holding on. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and comes out with a folded piece of paper, slightly crumpled. It’s clearly been in that pocket for a few days at least.
“I made you something,” he says. “So you don't forget us.”
Sadie takes it. Unfolds it carefully.
I lean over to look.
It's a drawing. The ranch, recognizable by our house and the mountains behind it, rendered in Jonah's careful five-year-old hand. Three figures standing in front of it. A tall one, a medium one, and a small one holding what I think is supposed to be a toy dinosaur.
Underneath, in the handwriting Sadie taught him, every letter deliberate:
OUR FAMILY
Sadie’s face crumples.
And I almost lose it too.
Our family.
Because that's what we are. That's what we became somewhere between June and now, and I’m standing here about to let it come apart.
Still breaking everything I touch, even when I’m trying like hell to do the right thing.
I look at the mountains again. I breathe.
Sadie pulls Jonah in and holds him hard, her face in his hair, and this time she doesn't try to keep it together for his sake. Jonah's arms come around her neck and he holds on just as hard.
When Sadie straightens up her eyes are wet.
We head inside the terminal. She only has her carry-on and one piece of luggage to check, and that breaks my heart. I want to give her the world, and yet all she has is a couple of measly suitcase.
There are so few things she’ll be taking with her to New York.
Everything else will be a memory.
After we get her bag checked, we all walk to the escalator, where we pause.
I fish a bill from my wallet and bend down to Jonah’s level. We're standing right in front of the airport newsstand, which is lucky.
“JoJo,” I say. “You see all that candy?”
He turns. His eyes go wide.
“Go on in and pick something out,” I tell him. “Comics too. Whatever you want.”
I press the hundred into his hand and he looks at it like I've handed him the keys to a kingdom. He's inside in three seconds flat.
Sadie and I are standing ten feet away, close enough to keep an eye on him, but with enough separation to have a private moment.
Then I step forward and take her face in my hands.
I kiss her.
One hand cupping her jaw, the other sliding into her hair, kissing her the way I should have been kissing her every single day since June. The way I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life if I let her go.
If Jonah glimpses us, I’ll explain later. I just can't let her leave without this. One last time with her in my arms. One last kiss.
When I pull back she's looking at me with those blue eyes and I can see everything in them. Her vow. New York. Wild Rose. The whole impossible equation written out plain as day, and neither of us knowing how to solve it.
“What do you think, darlin’?” I ask. “Better to have loved and lost?”
I watch her go all the way back to that moment, the two of us sitting in bed when she asked me that same question.
She laughs, a little watery. “God. I was such a fool. But you… you knew, didn’t you? You knew how much this moment would hurt. You knew it would be like this.”
“No, baby. I didn't know anything could feel like this.” I brush her hair back from her face, just to have a reason to touch her one more time. “And I'd still do it all over again in a heartbeat. I’d give everything I have to live this summer all over again. Including this moment.”
She smiles even as the tears come. My knuckles trail gingerly across her wet skin, wiping the tears away. She turns her face into my hand for just a second.
“I'll be right here,” I murmur. The same thing I said on the porch. The same promise. The only one I can make her right now.
She comes to me. Arms around my waist, cheek against my chest, her whole body leaning into mine. I pull her in tight, my lips pressing to the top of her head. I close my eyes.
I love you, I think.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
But I don’t say it. I hold it close and keep it safe and tell myself it's enough just to feel it. That saying it out loud will only make leaving harder for her. I tell myself I'm protecting her.
Sadie grabs the handle of her bag. When Jonah comes over, he throws his arms around her one more time.
“I love you,” she says, hugging him.
But her eyes are on me.
I nearly reach for her again, to pull her into my arms.
But if I do, I won’t be able to let her go. Won’t even bother begging her to stay. I’ll just scoop her up into my arms and take her right back to my truck and drive us home and not let her go, ever.
My hands curl into fists. I have to let her go.
She steps on the escalator. She rises. And then, irrepressible sunshine that she is, she turns back, waving and smiling big, and Jonah is waving too, with both hands going wide like an air traffic controller.
She laughs, and so does he.
Putting her fingers to her lips, she blows us a kiss.
The escalator takes her all the way up, all the way out of view.
Once more, it’s just me and Jonah.
I put my hand on my son's shoulder.
“Come on, bud,” I say. “Let's go home.”
We walk back toward the parking lot. Jonah's hand finds mine and holds it, his small face very serious. We make it about fifty yards before Jonah says, “Daddy?”
He never calls me “Daddy” anymore. He announced one day that he was too grown up for it and it was “Dad” now, so I know something big is coming.
He asks, “Why did Sadie say no? When you asked her to stay?”
I don’t have an answer for him.
My mind flashes through every conversation about it Sadie and I have had since June. Every moment I got close to asking her. The pool, the lake, the porch swing last night, a thousand other times.
The moment I finally told her why I wasn't asking her.
I just…
I never actually asked her to stay.
I did the same bossy cowboy thing she told me I was doing that first day I met her, before I knew what she was going to do to my life but already had a feeling it would be seismic.
Not once did I just ask her the simple question and let her answer it herself.
Because I was too fucking afraid. Afraid she’d say no. Afraid she’d say yes and learn to regret it.
I've written a hundred songs about love and loss. I thought I knew what both felt like.
I had no idea.
None of it, not a single word I ever put to music, until the songs we wrote together, comes close to what it feels like to be with her. None of it comes close to the heartbreak of watching her walk away from me.
But standing here in a parking lot with my son looking up at me, I know one thing only. I would rather lay my whole heart on the line and have her say no than spend the rest of my life wondering.
I look down at Jonah. “I didn’t ask,” I say simply.
He's looking back up at me with the classic Rhodes green eyes and my stubborn jaw and the disappointed look of a kid who just realized his dad doesn’t know everything.
“Dad,” he says. “You have to ask.”
I'm already turning around.
“Hold my hand,” I tell him. “And keep up.”
We run.