Chapter 9LARK #4
By the time I get home, I’m already tugging my hair into a high ponytail, the muscles in my shoulders tight, like they know I need to run before I do.
I rifle through my drawers, pulling out a pair of leggings and a sports bra that hasn’t seen the light of day in way too long.
As I lace up my running shoes, I press my palms into my thighs and take a slow, steadying breath.
When was the last time I did this?
Really did this—let my body move, let myself just exist in motion instead of holding the weight of everything, all at once?
I step outside, and the air is thick with the scent of sun-warmed pavement, of cut grass and distant honeysuckle.
The sky is baby blue, the last of the sun slipping lower, stretching golden light across the rooftops of town.
I take off at a steady pace, feet hitting the pavement, arms pumping, muscles pulling tight and then releasing.
The tension in my chest eases, my breath finds its rhythm. The thing about running is that it’s predictable—one foot in front of the other, over and over, until you don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s the only thing that’s ever felt close to an escape.
I pass McKee’s Hardware , the sign still sun-faded, still hanging at a slight tilt. The door is propped open, and the faint jingle of the bell stirs something in me, pulling up a memory I hadn’t reached for in years.
I was fifteen, standing outside this very store, the summer heat melting my strawberry ice cream faster than I could eat it, sticky rivulets sliding down my wrist. Boone stood beside me, sunburnt and grinning, a quarter flicking effortlessly between his fingers like he was deciding our fate with a coin toss.
Heads, we take the long way home. Tails, we race to the creek.
It had landed on tails.
I remember sprinting through town, the laughter sharp in my chest, Boone just behind me, close enough that I could hear his breath, feel the heat of his body when he nearly caught me.
He had grabbed my wrist at the last second, sending us both tumbling into the tall grass, my ice cream long forgotten, his dimples flashing when he landed on top of me.
Guess I win , he’d murmured, his breath warm against my cheek.
And then he’d leaned in, close enough that the scent of spearmint gum and sunscreen-covered skin filled my senses. Close enough that I could feel the curve of his smile just before his lips met mine .
Boone had always been a good kisser, even back then—slow and certain, like he knew exactly how to make me melt.
Like he’d spent years memorizing every way to undo me.
His hand would find my jaw, tilting my face just the way he wanted, deepening the kiss until my head was spinning, until I forgot anything existed outside of him.
I wonder if he still kisses like that.
I blink, shaking the memory away, my feet pounding harder against the pavement.
Then I pass Joe’s Auto Repair , where Boone’s truck used to be practically a permanent resident, always in need of something because he drove it like he had a personal vendetta against the engine.
I think about hot, sticky days with my feet propped up on the dash, the warm air whipping through the open windows as Luke Bryan or Brooks & Dunn crackled through the old speakers.
A cold, half-finished Diet Coke sat between us, passed back and forth like it belonged to neither of us and both of us at the same time.
I would sing—loud, off-key, with zero shame—and Boone would laugh, shaking his head.
I’d whip toward him, indignant. “What’s so funny?”
He’d smirk, eyes still on the road. “You can’t sing for shit.”
I’d smack him hard in the shoulder, which only made him laugh harder. Then his hand would find mine, lacing our fingers together, his thumb grazing my knuckles. “Doesn’t mean I don’t love it, though.”
I push harder, my thighs burning, my breath coming faster now.
Why does he still have this effect on me?
Boone is back. Boone is good with Hudson. Boone makes me laugh in ways I forgot I could.
But Boone also left. He left Summit Springs. He left me.
And I’ve spent the last twelve years making sure Hudson never felt like someone’s afterthought, making sure he never had to wonder if he was enough. Making sure I never let anyone into our lives who might leave again.
What would it mean if I let Boone in now? Not just in a co-parenting way but in a…romantic way ?
Would Hudson even want that?
Maybe he’d like it. Maybe it’d feel like the piece we’ve been missing.
But then what?
What if Boone changes his mind again? What if I let him back in and it’s not just my heart that takes the hit this time?
What if I’m still not enough to keep him here?
The thought seeps in, unbidden, unwelcome, but relentless all the same. It’s the fear that’s always been there, tucked into the quietest corners of me, the one I never say out loud.
Maybe that started the day my mom left.
She used to exist only in pieces. In grainy photographs tucked inside a shoebox in my dad’s closet, in whispers of perfume that still clung to the silk lining of a coat he never got rid of.
In the few memories I had managed to keep—her hands playing with my hair, the sound of her laugh, the way she would tap her fingernail against her glass when she was thinking, a soft, rhythmic sound like rain against a windowpane.
She was beautiful. I remember that much.
Long blonde hair, feathered bangs, blue eyes so big and bright they looked like they could swallow you whole.
I used to stare at those pictures for hours, tracing the curves of her face, looking for pieces of myself in her features, trying to understand the woman who had carried me into the world and then walked right out of it.
She left when I was three. That’s what my dad always said. Left and never looked back.
I used to ask about her all the time when I was little, waiting for a different answer, one that might make sense. But my dad never wavered. He’d just sigh, rub his hands over his tired face, and tell me the same thing.
She wasn’t ready to be a mom. Some people just aren’t meant to stay, baby.
Like that was supposed to explain it.
Maybe it did, in a way. Maybe some women just aren’t built for it, the weight of a child too heavy to carry.
But now that I’m a mother myself, I couldn’t imagine it.
I couldn’t imagine looking at Hudson and deciding that he was too much.
That I was too little. That he’d be better off without me.
I would walk through fire for him, move heaven and earth, break myself apart and rebuild a thousand times over just to make sure he had everything he needed.
That’s what being a mother is supposed to mean. That’s what love is supposed to be.
So what did it say about me that I was never enough for her?
One day, curiosity got the better of me.
I don’t know what I was expecting when I decided to look her up.
Maybe a marriage license, an old address in some town I’d never heard of, a record of parking tickets—something that made her feel real, like she still existed somewhere beyond the edges of my memory.
I remember typing everything I knew about her in the search bar.
Tara Lynn Westwood.
Birth date: August 7, 1972.
Birthplace: Summit Springs, Montana.
I hit return.
And there it was—her obituary.
I’d stared at the words until they blurred together, my brain struggling to catch up with what I was seeing. And then I clicked on the link, and there she was.
Only she wasn’t.
The woman in the obituary photo was not the one I remembered from the old photographs my father kept in a shoebox beneath his bed.
Not the woman with the bright, sea-glass eyes and a mouth that always seemed on the verge of a secret.
Not the one who looked alive in the way few people ever truly do—like the world hadn’t yet found a way to touch her.
The woman in the obituary was different.
Her hair was brittle, limp, the color faded. Her face was sharper than I remembered, gaunt, as if she had been carved down to the bone. But it was her eyes that unsettled me the most.
There was nothing behind them.
No warmth. No light. No trace of the woman who had once held me in her arms, who had brushed my hair back from my face and kissed my forehead before bed .
And I hated how time could do that. Strip the color. Leave only the outlines.
She had lived for twenty more years after she left me. Twenty years of birthdays, Christmases, school plays, scraped knees, late-night fevers, first days of school—all without me. And she never came back.
I’d wondered if she ever thought about me. If she ever picked up the phone and dialed our house number, only to hang up before it rang. If she ever walked past a little girl with blonde hair and wondered if she looked anything like me.
Or if she had simply made her choice and never looked back.
And now, I would never know.
I stop, pressing my hands to my hips, my breath coming too fast. My ponytail is damp with sweat, strands of hair clinging to my neck. The ache in my legs is a welcome distraction, something real, something tangible.
The sky is streaked in gold and violet, the last bit of daylight clinging to the edges of town. The Bluebell’s sign flickers in the distance, a pulsing reminder of everything waiting for me. The decisions I don’t know how to make. The things I can’t outrun.
I glance at my watch. I should turn back.
I drag my hands over my face, exhaling hard. I should feel better. Running always clears my head. But tonight, the weight of everything still clings to me.
Boone. The Bluebell. Wendell Tate.
I roll my shoulders back, trying to shake it off. I can’t solve everything in one night. I can’t untangle the past, or rewrite the mistakes, or make sense of the future in a single run.
But I can put one foot in front of the other.
So I do.
I keep moving.
I keep going.
Not with certainty. Not with grace. Only with the rhythm of someone who has nothing else to hold onto but forward.