Chapter 1 #2
She missed the way things had been between them. Not at the end, when their unspoken hurt had been the elephant in every room, but the time before that. The times when they’d felt like their whole lives were ahead of them, every hurdle to be tackled together.
“I brought two butterfly clips too,” Izzy said, coming back into the room, sliding a few inches when her socked feet hit the wooden floor. “Can I have clips and braids?”
Cadence shook herself out of her thoughts. Time to put her game face on again.
“Yes, of course, honey,” she said. “Come on, let’s move to the couch so we can do this.”
This was their usual setup. Cadence would sit on the couch, and Izzy would kneel on a pillow on the floor to put herself at the perfect height for her mother to braid. When they plopped into position, Cadence noticed that soon Izzy wouldn’t need the pillow to give her those few extra inches.
She pushed that thought away before she could get weepy about how quickly her baby was growing.
She divided and combed her daughter’s hair with practiced motions.
Izzy stayed reasonably still through the whole thing, which, Cadence allowed, was one positive of her daughter getting a little older.
When Izzy had been a toddler, doing her hair had been like wrestling a greased pig.
It had been a two-man job, and even then, it had been a challenge.
And just like that, Cadence found her thoughts were back on Tyler.
They had been so certain, back in those days, that a second child would come as easily as the first. For a while, Cadence had even worried that they would wind up having their second baby a little too soon, since she wanted to make sure that Izzy had time to be an only child before adding a sibling.
And then, after Isabelle had turned two, they’d decided it was time. Except it didn’t work. And then it kept not working.
Each month had been a misery, Cadence counting down the days of her cycle, making sure she ate this food and drank that amount of water to promote fertility. It had increasingly felt like every interaction she had Tyler had had was about getting that next baby—a baby that never came.
Every month, the weight of that pain had become heavier and heavier. Each time they thought that maybe, just maybe, this time she’d get a positive test had turned into an unspeakable disappointment.
Cadence blinked. She was at the bottom of her daughter’s second braid.
She positioned the butterfly clips with care.
“There you go,” she told Izzy, tapping her on the shoulder so the little girl knew she could get up. “All done.”
“Can you take a picture so I can see the back?”
Cadence pulled out her phone, snapped a picture, and showed Izzy, who beamed in delight.
“It’s awesome, Mom. Thank you!”
And then she was racing off to the next activity before Cadence could even praise Isabelle for her good manners.
Cadence glanced down at the photo, her fingers itching to send it to Tyler. There was a time where their entire text message thread was just pictures of Izzy doing this and that. They hadn’t talked much via text, because they knew they would see one another every day. There hadn’t been a point.
Now their text thread was entirely about arranging pick-up and drop-off for Isabelle, as they split time with her. Cadence missed just chatting with Tyler so much that she almost, almost gave in and sent the picture.
She could picture his smile when he received it. She could hear his voice. That’s some great braiding your mom has done for you there, Iz. Love the butterfly clips. She could see the way he’d wink at her over their daughter’s head as if they were a team.
Except he wouldn’t do any of that anymore. There was too much history between them.
She shoved her phone back into her pocket.
With a bracing breath, Cadence pressed her hands on her knees and used the leverage to stand.
When had she started feeling this tired all the time?
At least she had given up on the ill-fated attempt to shake things up, to reinvent herself for a new phase of life.
It had… not gone well, as her hair could attest.
Now, she was going back to basics. She was going to find the real Cadence Meadows, the woman she was at her core, even when she was on her own.
Although, she thought to herself as she heard Izzy’s voice singing up in her room, Cadence had never truly been on her own. She had her daughter, and she had her friends. And they were the people, she knew, that would get her through this uncertain time.
Even if it did take a long while, as Cadence suspected it would, for her heart to stop feeling quite so bruised.
Tyler Meadows locked the door on the rented storage space where he kept all the equipment he needed for his work as an electrician, then paused.
Keys were in his hand. Check. Phone? He patted his pocket.
Check. Wallet was in his back pocket, and it was too warm for a jacket today, so he’d left his sweatshirt in his truck.
He was missing something. What was he missing?
After a few more moments of pocket patting and double and triple checking, he had to conclude that the feeling was just a feeling. He wasn’t forgetting anything.
This kept happening to him. At first, he had attributed it to the process of moving all his work equipment to the rented space.
Before the separation, he’d kept everything in his and Cadence’s garage, which had made for easy access.
He’d load up his truck with what he needed each morning, then unload at the end of the day.
He couldn’t complain too much about the storage area, as he knew lots of people had far worse commutes than he did, but it made sense that the added step was throwing him off kilter, right?
Except… it had been months. And he still got the feeling.
Then there was the construction outside his new apartment. That was the kind of thing that could throw anyone out of whack. Starting the day to the dulcet tones of jackhammers might make anyone feel a bit scattered, wouldn’t it?
But then the construction had ended. And he still got the feeling.
He was starting to worry that the thing he was missing was the one thing he couldn’t get back.
With a sigh, Tyler heaved himself up into his car. Just as he was about to start the ignition, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, only to be mocked by the background image that he really, really needed to change.
Him, Cadence, and Izzy, about four years old.
They’d gone out for professional photos on the beach.
It had been for their Christmas card, if he recalled correctly.
This shot had been one of the outtakes. Cadence was making a silly face that had sent Izzy into uncontrollable giggles.
And he was looking down at them, his girls, like they were his whole world.
Every time he looked at that photo, it felt like a punch in the gut. Every time he thought about changing it, it felt like the second swing, another punch from another fist.
So, he did what he always did and swiped off the main screen. He’d deal with it later.
When he opened his messages app, he saw the incoming text had been from Cadence.
And, right on cue, there it was, that horrible spark of hope that this time, Cadence would reach out the way she used to. That this time, she’d share a random thought, some detail about her day. That she’d make a joke. That she would talk to him.
But as usual, it was no more than mechanics.
CADENCE: Pickup tomorrow at 9? Can’t remember.
And, really, could he blame her? Because here was his opportunity to make a joke about that time, their first year dating, where she’d had a flight that left the airport at seven in the evening but had mistakenly shown up at seven in the morning.
His opportunity to connect, to tell her that he’d felt so scattered lately, like he couldn’t remember anything.
His chance to say, I’m sorry how it all turned out. I miss talking to you.
He did none of that.
TYLER: Yeah.
He tossed his phone on the passenger seat, hoping he would be interrupted by a response.
He wasn’t.
The feeling of waiting, of knowing that he was waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen…
it got heavier and heavier as he drove. It was a short trip, but by the time he pulled into his designated parking space at his apartment building, the idea of climbing up to the third floor of the little building felt close to impossible.
He wanted to go home. His real home. With Cadence, with Isabelle.
He took a deep breath and ground a knuckle into his forehead.
It didn’t matter what he wanted. This was the way things were now.
He had no choice but to get used to it.