CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I’d been quiet all day. My eyes ached from exhaustion.
Despondent and unnerved, my dreams were beginning to rattle me. They followed me outside my dreams and into every waking moment. I couldn’t shed the images, even when I tried.
We found ourselves sat on a bench before a still lake. Tristan didn’t speak. He hadn’t for a while. He gave me space, and when I had taken his hand to lead him to this very spot, he followed dutifully. He watched me now, like he knew something was coming but didn’t want to force it.
I stared at the dirt between my dollar-store sandals, tracing invisible lines with my toe. My fingers curled around the hem of my dress, tugging gently, rhythmically. I needed to shed this weight.
“He used to call me ‘Mama Sweet,’ because I’d come home from school with a tiny candy I’d bought at the store for him,” I said, voice barely above a whisper.
“They were usually sour worms or those watermelon gummies covered in sugar. You could buy three for the price of one, so I loaded up on those bags, the Toothfairy be damned. He loved them.”
Tristan’s head tilted slightly, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Rowe,” I added, but mostly I just wanted to say his name.
Rowe, Rowe, Rowe. “He was eight. He’s always eight.
I can’t picture him older than that. I called him Mop Head because of his dark, fluffy curls and he had these enormous brown eyes.
When he looked at you, those eyes made you feel like you were the only person in the world who mattered.
Since he was a newborn, that gaze ensnared me. ”
I smiled, but it was brittle. “He loved peanut butter sandwiches but with no crust. He couldn’t stand jam, and he hated grape because it reminded him of medicine June and I would force into his mouth when he got sick.
And he had this laugh—God, Tristan, it was loud.
Too loud for his tiny body. It would echo through the house, and I’d think, this is what joy sounds like. ”
Tristan’s eyes softened. He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, listening with a kind of reverence that made me want to cry.
“Even when he finally got his own bed, he used to sneak into mine at night. Said the monsters were louder on Tuesdays. I never knew why Tuesdays. It wasn’t like he knew the days of the week, and I just rolled with it.
Yeah, it was the Tuesdays even when he slipped into my bed on the Fridays.
But I let him crawl in, and he’d press his little feet against my thighs and whisper stories about dragons and space pirates and how he was going to build me a castle one day.
A real one. With a moat and everything.”
I laughed, but it cracked halfway through. “He was my world. My whole world.”
The silence stretched. Tristan didn’t move.
I swallowed hard. “I still talk to him sometimes. In my head. I tell him about my day. About the books I read. About the songs I hear that I think he’d like.
I imagine him rolling his eyes when I get too sentimental.
I imagine him growing up. Taller. Smarter.
Still mine. And I tell him, ‘Baby, everything got stripped away from us when I decided I needed to get you that race car bed.’ That fucking race car bed! ”
Tears rushed to my eyes as I looked up, and Tristan’s gaze met mine. There was something raw in his expression. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t.
“He’s been gone for years, but it still feels like yesterday.”
Tristan blinked slowly, shocked. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
“I lost him,” I said. “I lost him, and I wasn’t strong enough to stop it. I wasn’t fast enough. Brave enough. I wasn’t… enough.”
I felt the tremor in my hands before I saw it. I clenched my fists, trying to steady myself.
“I was supposed to protect him. That’s what mothers do, right? They shield. They fight. They save. But I didn’t. I froze. I panicked. I did…nothing. I…watched him go…”
Tristan reached for me, and I flinched. I didn’t deserve comfort. I needed to punish myself.
“I’m weak,” I whispered. “I’ve always been weak, Tristan. And he paid the price.”
The pine behind us creaked in the wind. A bird called somewhere beyond the trees.
Tristan didn’t offer soothing words. He stayed there and let me say it.
For the first time since Rowe died, I let someone see what I had carried alone.
The weight had grown heavier with every passing year, and all I could think about in that moment was my baby in a little coffin — a life once bright and fierce reduced to bone and ash.