Round Twenty-Nine
BILLY
Just take my heart and toss it into a deep freezer. Later, once it’s solid as a rock, smash it against a brick wall until there’s nothing left but the fragmented pieces of a man who was once whole.
A very, very long time ago.
Maggie hugs my son and sings under her breath, her melodic voice rising and falling with a song about the world ending.
She chooses him. With a smile.
She slides her fingers through his hair, her nails massaging his scalp with constant, rhythmic strokes despite the fact he fell asleep awhile ago. She hums so the song weaves throughout my living room, and I just…
I sit on my recliner and watch them.
For ten minutes. Twenty. An hour.
“He’s so in love with you, Magnolia.” I slouch in my chair, one foot on the coffee table, and my head tipped to the side.
I can’t take my eyes off them. I couldn’t, even if the world was ending.
“Storms usually keep him awake all damn night. It’s so bad, I have to pay babysitters triple time just to make it worth their while.
But there you go.” I gesture, even knowing she can’t see me.
“He’s asleep in your arms, and it’s not even his bedtime yet. ”
Slowly, carefully, she twists on the couch and lies on her back, bringing him closer so his arm and leg drape across her body and his cheek rests on her chest. Tilting her head back, she looks at me upside down and gifts me with the smile I’ve spent two decades dreaming about.
“I’m in love with him, too.” She keeps her voice low, her words a song, almost, instead of her regular cadence.
“Breaks my heart to realize those promises I made are actually out of my control.”
My brows furrow, shadowing my eyes in the room already dark besides the light coming from the muted television. “What promises?”
“That I would be with him every time he’s scared.”
My stomach flips and aches. “Why can’t you control that one? Are you thinking about leaving?”
“No. But his father and I have a tumultuous relationship at the best of times. You just have to say no, I can’t come around anymore, and that’s the end of that.
” She drags the corner of her lips between her teeth, frowning until a line digs between her brows.
“It’s a scary thought, considering you and I never get along for very long. ”
“I just want my son to be happy.” A loud crack of thunder booms directly above my house, rocking it on its foundations and startling Jeremy in his sleep. Nevertheless, Maggie’s fingers continue to move. To soothe. To love.
Would she do the same for me if I asked?
Bravely—or stupidly—I slide off my chair and onto the floor. I push the coffee table away to make room, then I stop beside the couch, one knee pointed to the sky so I can rest my elbow on top, the other arm on Maggie’s hip. Because I can’t fucking stop myself. “Did I do something wrong?”
Her golden eyes melt. They glow. When we’re just a foot apart like we are now, her eyes sparkle with a thousand different shades, and all of them warm while she stares back at me. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“So why have you been ignoring me this week?” I finger the soft fabric of her top, rubbing the material between my fingertips and shifting it just enough to expose a tiny sliver of her belly. “I thought we had a nice time on Saturday.”
“We did—”
“But then you went ghost. I’ve missed the hell out of you, Magnolia.
I used to miss you when school would let out for the day and I was forced to wait all the way until the next morning to see you.
Then I missed you like nothing I’ve ever felt before, because your dad died and your mom took you away. ”
She reaches out with her free hand and strokes my hair, just an inch above my ear, though I swear to Christ, I feel it in my toes. My belly. My chest.
“Then you came back,” I rasp. “But the man you came back to wasn’t the same as the boy you’d left.
I’ve changed,” I admit bitterly. “I’ve hardened.
I’ve grieved and, for a long time, I’ve barely survived.
You stumbled back into my life, and though the boy in me begged me to be nice, to wrap you up and keep you the way I wanted to when I was eight, the grown man in me, the cop, the dad, just couldn’t face a reality where you were part of my life again. ”
“Why not?” Her voice crackles with a deep ache.
“I would’ve wept if you’d welcomed me back with a hug.
I would’ve felt whole again, and not nearly as scared as I was.
I would’ve cried all the good tears, because I spent the entire twelve-hour drive arguing with myself.
Should I find you again? Should I say hello? Would you even remember me?”
“Remember you?” I scoff. “I’ve never forgotten. Not even when I tried.”
“So why all the antagonism? Why the hatred?”
“Because I’ve already lost so much.” I curl into her hand, my eyelids dropping most of the way closed as her touch sends licks of fire and contentment sparking through my blood.
“Barely surviving means walking a razor wire and praying not to stumble. It means getting through, day by day, and hoping for the best. But welcoming you into my life feels like exposing my jugular and handing you a blade. If you’d left again, that razor wire is gone. My balancing act is over.”
“I would never lea—”
“Like you didn’t this week?”
She clamps her lips shut, bested by the proof so plainly settled between us.
“I’ve loved you since I was a child,” I grit out. “Which is so fucking ridiculous, because what the hell do eight year olds know about love, anyway?”
“Billy—”
“Since I was a child.” I press my hand over hers.
I hold her to me before she bounds off my couch and runs away.
“Everyone knew. Aria started coming around the house a few years after you left, but even she knew. She was the first girl I explained my grief to. I swear to God, I felt like an idiot. Because we were just kids. Kids don’t fall in love.
But she… Aria.” I shake my head. “She provided me with a safe space to speak about my feelings. She never judged me for missing something that never really existed. She didn’t tell me to get the hell over it, or laugh in my face, the way others had.
She was my friend before she was my wife, and as my friend, she allowed me to love you both.
At the same time.” I draw a shuddering breath.
“We made a family. We made a life. It was enough, and we were happy. But there wasn’t a moment in twenty-five years that I stopped loving you, and it just…
” I cough out a pathetic laugh. “She didn’t even hold it against me.
Not when we’d walk along Main Street and your grandmother would step out of Mrs. Midler’s bookstore.
Patrice spoke to me like I was a kid again, fixing my collar and telling me about whatever you’d written in the last letter you’d sent.
She’d describe the new apartment you’d moved into, and how you were considering adopting a pet, but you felt bad because you worked so much and were hardly ever home, so you never committed.
Instead, you spent a couple weekends a month at the pound, hugging the kittens and talking to the prospective families. ”
A single, treacherous tear dribbles from Maggie’s eye and into her hair.
“Aria didn’t even hold it against me when we moved in next door to the woman who made it her business to tell me every time you sent a letter.
She’d bring me inside her home and bake me something yummy, then she’d sit me down and talk about the granddaughter she missed so much it made her physically sick to her stomach.
You sent pictures sometimes—I got to see those.
You sent recipes once or twice… Patrice baked whatever it was, and then she asked me to settle in and eat with her. ”
Her breath comes out on a shuddering exhale. “She missed me that much?”
“So, so much,” I rasp. “Anyone who knows you, hurts when you’re gone. It’s impossible not to.”
“But she never wrote back,” she whimpers. “She didn’t reply to a single letter.”
“Because she’d already lost you.” I turn my face and drop a kiss against the thundering pulse in her wrist. “Your letters were always so upbeat. So happy. So full and sweet and content. She was convinced you didn’t want her anymore.
But she still had me, and like a couple of shipwreck survivors, we had this shared grief she needed to talk about.
Aria never got mad when Patrice turned up at our door day after day.
She never kicked that old woman out, even when every single discussion revolved around the granddaughter she missed so much.
She never held my inability to let you go against me, not even all those years later, and when she was carrying my baby, she was selfless enough to assure me that if our baby was a girl, and if I wanted to name her, it would be okay if I honored the first true love of my life. ”
“Oh, God.” She releases a choked breath. “She was so gracious. So perfect.”