CHAPTER 35
Finn
I exit the barn and feel the late afternoon sun on my face.
It’s a gorgeous day. I could go for a run. Nothing like fifty miles in the scorching Nevada sun to burn away at least the top layer of a man’s self-loathing. But I’m wearing my boots, and even I can’t run that far in smooth-soled shit kickers.
I can’t very well return to the house for my running shoes. The last thing I want right now is to run into Emma. I think we both could use a bit of time and distance.
I hear a car horn and look up to see Phyllis driving Dad’s pickup. She parks in front of Dad’s house, and I already see Jasmine waving to me from the back seat. I check my Rolex. How did it get to be four o’clock?
Normally, no matter what, I’m waiting for Jasmine’s return from school. I am way, way off my game today.
I jog over to the truck, and as soon as Jasmine jumps down, I grab her, tickle her, and swing her around. But she’s too impatient with me to enjoy our normal ritual. Too impatient and too grown up, I guess.
“Dad.” She slaps at my hands. “I’m not three years old. Let me down. I have very important things to tell you.”
She proceeds to regale me with the latest and greatest news from school. I hear about a new substitute teacher, a kid who barfed in the hallway, and a very elaborate tale about the bedazzled jeans Tiffany wore to school, and how Jasmine absolutely needs bedazzled jeans, like, yesterday.
“I have no idea what the word bedazzled means.”
Jasmine rolls her eyes. “Oh, Dad.”
Then there’s a story about Mitch, the boy who pulled her hair in class.
This shit is as old as Tom Sawyer and Becky, so obviously, Mitch has a crush on my little girl.
I’m about to ask for the names of Mitch’s parents when Phyllis shakes her head at me.
Fine. But the little punk ass is lucky he’s eight and not eighteen.
Jasmine is still going on about Mitch. “I told him to stop it or I’d tell the teacher. I made him cry.”
“No, Pinky. You didn’t make him do anything. If Mitch cried, that’s on him.”
She frowns at me. “Anyway, I shared my cookies with him at lunch to make him feel better.”
It seems Mitch has some game. I’m impressed. He got to sit next to my daughter at lunch and share in her cookie stash.
But that boy needs to keep away from my daughter’s cookies.
“Where’s Emma?” Jasmine asks, looking around.
“I saw her on your porch,” Phyllis says. “Go on over and say hi.”
“Maybe we’ll finish my room today!” Jasmine says excitedly. “Then I’m going to invite Tiffany over. Dad, can I have bedazzled jeans by then?”
“Uh…” I say because I still have no idea what bedazzled means.
“I’ll bedazzle your jeans tonight, honey,” Phyllis tells her. “I’ll come over with you and grab a pair.”
Jasmine points up. “Look! A butterfly. Every time I see blue butterflies, I think of Mommy.”
“You do?” I stop in my tracks. I’ve never heard her say that before. And it’s odd since, as Special K just reminded me, Jasmine doesn’t have any of her own memories of her mother. I love my kid so much that sometimes it physically hurts.
“From that picture of you and her. There’s a butterfly in it.”
“Which picture?”
“The one in your office. On the frame on your desk. There’s a little blue butterfly in her hair! Don’t you remember?”
Oh. Amy’s butterfly hair clip. I’d totally forgotten about that. “I do remember. Not only that, but I still have it somewhere. Would you like to wear it?”
Jasmine’s eyes light up. “I could? Really?”
It dawns on me that she has nothing from Amy. We were so young and broke when we married that she didn’t have much in the way of jewelry.
“Of course you can.”
“Thank you, Daddy!” She squeezes me around the waist before I can even register her embrace, and then she’s running toward the house. “C’mon, Auntie Phyllis. Emma’s waiting. I haven’t seen her all day!” She tugs on Phyllis’s hand.
“All right. I’m coming. Don’t break my arm.”
I watch them run off to Emma, the woman who hates my guts. I know that someday soon, I’ll need to have a longer talk with Jasmine about her mother, and that will be hard for me. But I find it interesting that, as excited as Jasmine is about the hairclip, Emma takes precedence.
The here and now versus what’s in the past.
Even though I’m in my work boots, I decide I’ll take that jog—just a much shorter version.
I run north along the ranch lane for about a mile, stopping to grab a couple fistfuls of Lupine, Balsamroot, and Indian Paintbrush; then I cut across the east meadow.
I charge up the gentle incline to a small flat area sheltered by a windbreak of old trees.
I pry open the squeaky gate of the weathered wrought iron fencing and step inside.
I haven’t been here in a good long while. Once I’m inside, I slow my pace. I do all I can to quiet my thoughts and remember where I am.
My family is here, those I’ve known and loved and those I’ve only heard stories about. The original settlers are here, and Dad’s grandparents, Angus MacLaine and his wife Bridget Lynch MacLaine. She’s the closest our family has ever come to celebrity status.
She was a frontier doctor back in a time when women weren’t doctors, let alone the kind who rode on horseback through blizzards to treat victims of the Spanish flu. My great-grandmother was even part of the history curriculum in the Sweetbriar Public School System.
I leave a Lupine by her headstone, in honor of all the strong MacLaine women.
Also here is Phyllis’s husband, my Uncle Murray.
And my mother, Stella Roberts MacLaine. I pause in front of her grave for several long moments, and then gift her with half of the wildflowers held in my hands.
I move on to the reason I’m here.
Amy died in San Diego when I was still in the Navy. She wasn’t close to her family, so I brought her here to be buried, so that she could be close to mine. I know it’s a ridiculous thing to think, but I didn’t want her to be alone.
Her tombstone rises above the ground under a Whitethorn Acacia tree that provides a combination of shade and dappled sunlight.
I drop to my knees and release the flowers onto the ground before the stone and trace my fingertips along the etched letters—Loving Wife and Devoted Mother. I close my eyes and send up a prayer that she’s at peace, and that she knows she will always be loved.
“I’m sorry, Amy.” I sit back on my heels. “You died on my watch. I wasn’t the man you deserved, but I try every day to be better, for you and for Jasmine.”
Guilt, so heavy and familiar, crushes me.