“Mommy,” Daisy says as she runs to me, arms outstretched. “You feel better?” she asks when I gather her in my arms, kissing her nose.
“Yes, I feel all better,” I tell her, holding my arm out for Lizzie to join us. I pull her to my side and kiss her head as we talk about their day at school. We come into the house, and everyone starts their task, as I call it. Lizzie sits at the table and takes her homework out, something she’s started doing lately. Usually, she would do it in her room. Daisy sits next to her, and Lizzie helps Daisy with her homework too.
I start dinner, putting the chicken in the oven while I make rice. “Did you guys want corn or peas on the side?” I ask them as I look inside the freezer, swaying to the music in my head.
I glance over my shoulder at the girls and see Lizzie smiling at me, shrugging her shoulders. “Either is good.” She turns back to her homework. Daisy doesn’t have a preference either.
Lizzie sets the table while Daisy puts the forks on the table and the glasses. When we sit down to eat, I look at them. “This weekend, how about we go to the park, and I can take some new pictures of you two to hang in the living room?” I wait to see if one of them will say something or notice. “I think two pictures of you guys hanging on the big wall will look so nice.”
Lizzie looks up at me. “Yeah.” She then looks at Daisy. “We could wear matching outfits and then we can even do one together to hang in the middle.”
“That sounds like a plan,” I say, smiling, and we finish eating while Daisy talks about what she wants to wear. I tuck Daisy into bed, then head to Lizzie’s room last.
“Goodnight, love.” I bend to kiss her head.
“I’m glad you’re not sad anymore,” she says. “I didn’t like yesterday. I didn’t like you crying.”
“I know, baby, and I’m sorry.” I sit on the bed. “It was just a bad day.”
She nods at me, then sits up next to me. “I’m sorry you were sad,” she says, hugging my neck. I kiss her and tuck her in. As soon as I get into bed, my phone rings.
“If you tell me to open the door, I’ll really think I dreamed it.” I laugh, and I hear his laughter in return.
“Nope, I’m tucked into bed,” he says, and I wonder what his house looks like. I wonder if it’s your typical bachelor pad. Does he have pictures on the wall? Is there a picture of Frankie by his bed?
“Tired?” I ask him as he yawns. “What did you do today?”
“I helped my father hang shelves in his shed.” He laughs. “It’s a good thing he’s a lawyer because I swear the shelf was leaning with one side a good one inch lower.” I laugh at how he describes the shelf and how when he put something on it, it literally slid down to the other side.
I laugh the whole time, my cheeks hurting from the story of his father almost smashing the piece. “I’m taking the kids to the park tomorrow,” I tell him. “We are going to take pictures to hang in the living room.”
“Really?” he says, and I hear the blanket rustling in the background while he probably flips over. “Well, that’s a step in the right direction.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They didn’t even ask where we will put the other picture.”
“What are you going to do with it?” he asks me.
“I might just store it in the attic or ask maybe my in-laws if they want it.” I take a deep breath. “Do you still have pictures of Frankie?”
“Yup,” he says. “Right next to my bed is a picture of the two of us a week before she found out she was sick.”
“I’m sure it’s perfect.” I smile for him. “Is that the only one you have?”
“Yes,” he finally says. “I used to have them all over the house, but one by one, they came down. I don’t need a picture for her to be part of this house.”
“I never thought of that,” I tell him, and it’s true. “So besides saving your father from a nervous breakdown, what did you do?”
“I went to the cemetery,” he says, and a tear slips out of my eye.
“Do you go there often?” I ask him, realizing I haven’t been since Eric passed away.
“Every week,” he says with a heavy breath. “Sometimes twice a week.”
“Do you feel closer to her when you go?” I ask him.
“Sometimes. Sometimes, I swear I hear her bitch and tell me to leave and fuck off.” He laughs, but I don’t.
“I doubt that,” I say softly. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“What is one thing you would change?” he asks me for the first time.
“Not calling you sooner,” I say. I’m not sure he answers or that I let him because I hang up the phone and tuck it away. My phone beeps, but I don’t reach for it even though my hands itch to. Last night while I sat on his lap, I itched to reach out and feel his cheek, wondering if his whiskers would pinch my hands, wondering if he would smile when I did it. I wondered if he would stop me; I wondered if he would picture Frankie.
I close my eyes, not sure I want to wonder anymore. That night, I dreamed of sitting on the beach, but this time, I was by myself when someone I’d never met walked by. She was stunning, her long, dark curly hair being pushed back by the wind. She raised a hand to wave at me as she placed her hands to her mouth and yelled, “Go to him.” I remember getting up and walking to her, but she disappeared as soon as I got close to her. I ran down the beach after her or what I thought was her, but then I came face-to-face with Hailey, sitting on the beach with tears running down her face.
Walking to her, I sat next to her, not sure if I should say anything, when she said, “I just want to be happy.” I looked back at the water, then turned to look back at her, but she wasn’t there anymore. My eyes flip open as the sun hits my face. I roll over in bed, looking outside. Daisy comes into my room and climbs into bed with me.
“I had a nightmare,” she says as I raise my hand for her to come to me, and I cuddle her to my chest.
“It’s okay. Mommy is here.” I kiss her as her soft snores fill the room. I smile as her hair tickles my chin and fall back asleep with her. Lizzie climbs into bed with us sometime later, and we end up watching Tangled in my bed till their stomachs grumble.
I go back downstairs, and we make plans to go to the park. The girls are dressed in pink skirts and white shirts. We walk to the park with my camera bag over my shoulder and the girls skipping in front of me. My phone beeps in the back of my pocket. I still haven’t checked it from last night.
I pull it out and find a text from Elliot.
Wanted to see if the girls were free to go to my parents’ house.
I roll my eyes and call him instead.
“Hey,” I say when he answers. “What’s up?”
“My mom was wondering if the girls could come over for dinner.”
“Just the girls?” I ask, and my heart hurts again, but this time, not that much.
He stutters, not sure what to say, so I let him off the hook. “It’s fine. Listen, we are on our way to the park to take pictures, so I’ll ask them and get back with you.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just assumed you wouldn’t want to come.”
“It’s fine,” I say, “I get it.”
I don’t let him continue; instead, I hang up and ask the girls. Daisy is happy while Lizzie looks at the grass, asking, “Are you coming with us?”
“No, honey,” I tell her. “I’m going to stay at home and relax.” I lie to her as she looks at the ground.
“Okay, but not for long,” she says, and I text Elliot back.
The girls said they would go.
He answers back.
Thanks.
And I wait for him to invite me, tell me that it would be good to have a family dinner, but nothing comes through. I see the message from Blake with his answer.
I would have come for you sooner.
I smile, putting my phone in my back pocket. Two totally different families, one who supports and loves unconditionally and the other who loves only when it suits them.
&nb
sp; I take about two hundred pictures of the girls just enjoying themselves. Lizzie takes a couple of shots of me doing a cartwheel and laughing when I land on my ass. I get the girls home, and they go to change. When the doorbell rings, I open the door and see Elliot there.
“Hey,” I tell him, moving out of his way so he can come in. “The girls are upstairs changing. Actually, can you come and help me?” I ask him, and he just nods. I walk up the stairs to the bedroom and point at the two bins in the corner. “Those are Eric’s. I didn’t know if you or Ethan would want any of them.”
“Wow,” he says, whistling, “you’re really trying to erase him.”
I stop dead in my tracks and turn around. “Excuse me?” I say, folding my arms over my chest.
“I thought Mom was exaggerating when she kept saying you’re trying to erase him from the house. With the new paint, the picture of him down in the living room. His clothes packed. I guess she wasn’t wrong.”
I don’t bother to answer him. I walk to the bedroom door, closing it and locking it. I walk to my dresser, and reaching under my clothes, I take out the brown envelope while Elliot looks at me. I open the envelope and notice a white one I didn’t see before, but I push it aside and take out the letter he wrote to me. “Here.” I shove it at Elliot, his eyes going big and his arms not moving. “Oh, don’t you even fucking dare. This is a letter I found while cleaning out his clothes. A last letter from him.” Elliot’s face goes ash white. “Oh, wait, it only gets better. He made sure to include a picture of him on his wedding day to the woman who ‘completes him.’”
He doesn’t move, and I don’t care. “Wait, I believe his words were ‘I made him, but she completed him.’” I hold the picture up. “Would you like to see the happy couple?”
“That’s enough,” he says between clenched teeth.
“No!” I shout, “what’s enough is you guys thinking I’m trying to erase him. It’s called living. I’m fucking living.” I raise my hands. “I have no choice because I have two girls who need me to live.” I cross my arms now. “This is the last time we have this conversation. This is the last time you guys get to throw anything in my face. I didn’t do anything wrong; Eric did.” I take a deep breath. “I won’t have you guys making me feel like I did something wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” he says as he looks at the picture in my hand. “Can I have the picture?”
“No,” I tell him, putting it back in the envelope. “And if you want to read the letter, you can, but it doesn’t leave my room.”
“Mom.” I hear Daisy knocking on the door. “The door is locked.” I walk to it and open it.
“Sorry, it must have been stuck,” I tell her. “Look who came, Uncle Elliot.”
“Uncle E!” She runs to him. “We are putting new pictures up,” she tells him after he throws her up and kisses her. Lizzie comes in, looking at the both of us.
“I don’t want to go for long,” she tells Elliot, who looks at her and then at me. “I have a book report due, and I want to finish it today so I don’t have to do it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he says, buying her excuse. “Let me load these bins in the car and then we can go.”
I watch him carry the bins downstairs, and then I kiss the kids goodbye, waving at them from the door. I take my phone out when I can’t see the taillights of his car anymore and send Blake a text.
Want to FaceTime me and have coffee?
Blake
Blake
She never answered my text, her words still lingering in my mind. The softness of it, day by day, a piece of us left behind. There are so many different things going on, and I am not going to sit and think about it. I’m not ready to.
The whole day, I cleaned the house and picked up shit. Packed away stuff. I was fixing the bed when she texted. I pressed FaceTime right away.
Her face fills the screen. “That was fast.”
“I was making the bed,” I tell her, laughing. “Just finished.”
“Just in time,” she says, smiling. “Did you eat dinner?” she asks, sitting at the kitchen counter.
“No,” I tell her. “Did you? Where are the girls?”
“I did not,” she says. “The girls were invited to my in-laws’ house for dinner.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?” I ask her, watching her face. Her brown eyes light today.
“I wasn’t really invited,” she tells me, and I roll my eyes.
“I’ve never seen you annoyed before,” she says, laughing. “It’s okay, really.”
“It so isn’t okay. What the fuck is it showing the girls?” I ask her, and I see her eyebrows pinch together. “It’s disrespectful not to invite you.”
“Honestly, it’s good to just be by myself,” she tells me. “We spent the day at the park taking pictures.” Her eyes light up. “I think I got some good ones.”
“Really?” I ask her, and she gets the camera to show me the ones she took. “Is that you doing a cartwheel?” I ask, laughing.
“Yeah. I tried anyway,” she tells me. “I gave Elliot Eric’s clothes.” She puts the camera down while she picks up her coffee cup and takes a drink. “It was a little tense there but …” She puts it down and comes closer to the phone, her face filling up the screen. “I showed him the letter. He wanted to take the picture of Hailey and Eric,” she says, and the hair on my neck goes on alert. “I didn’t let him take it or the letter.”
“You did good,” I tell her, not sure why it was the right move, or why it was a good idea not to have him hold it.
We chat for two hours when I hear the door open and the girls yell. “I’ll call you back in a bit,” she tells me, disconnecting, and I toss the phone to the side. I scroll through my phone, looking for Elliot’s number. I’m so close to calling him and fucking telling him what an asshole he is, but I don’t. Something stops me.
For the next two weeks, we continue our chats. More FaceTime conversations when the girls aren’t around. On Friday, her face isn’t the same. She looks worried.
“What’s the matter?” I ask her right away.
She looks at me. “The girls are going camping with Elliot tomorrow for the night.”
“Okay?” I ask her. “Do you not want them to go?”
“It’s not that; I know he would never hurt them,” she says. “It’s just I haven’t been without them overnight since before Eric.”
“Do the girls want to go?” I ask her, wondering, and she nods.
“Even Lizzie is looking forward to it,” she says, and I try to tell her that everything will be okay. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she tells me, and we quickly get off the phone.
I look at the phone and then up again, taking a pull from the beer I had on the table. I won’t be talking to her tomorrow, and I haven’t told her yet. I’m not sure I can.
The next morning, I wake up, dread filling me right away. I get out of bed, and for the first time, I don’t look at Frankie’s picture. I put on my jeans and get into the truck. The phone rings right away. Looking down, I see it’s Samantha, but I don’t answer. I send it straight to voicemail. Not today, I can’t today.
I pull up at the cemetery with the bouquet of red roses on the seat next to me. I grab them and carry them with me as I walk to Frankie’s grave.
“Morning,” I say to the black granite stone that holds her name.
“I brought you flowers,” I tell her as I place them down on the middle of the stone.
I sit down, bending my knees, and rest my arms on my knees as my hands hang. “Do you remember when I asked you to marry me?” I ask her and close my eyes, taking me back to the moment.
“I don’t understand.” I looked at her as she stood there in the middle of the hospital room, one frail hand holding the IV pole that she wheeled around with her when she walked. A blue satin scarf wound around her head where her beautiful, thick curly hair had been. In its place, she had patches of hair growing back.
“I will not marry you,” she said with her head held hi
gh, the blue cotton robe hanging off her. She hadn’t been well this whole week. No matter what we did, she couldn’t fight the cold she was coming down with. Her immune system was too depleted from her treatment.
“Do you not love me?” I asked her, with tears running down my face. I was on one knee in front of her with a ring, asking her to be my wife, to be mine.
“Don’t do that,” she said, not moving from her spot in the middle of the room while holding the red roses that I brought her in her spare hand. “Don’t make this harder on me than it has to be,” she said with tears running down her beautiful face. She had lost so much weight, her cheekbones stuck out now. She held her head high on her slender neck, so slender I was afraid to put my arm around her when we sat down.
“I’m on my knee asking you to be my wife, asking you to be mine.” I begged her to give me this one thing.
“No,” she said adamantly and then had to walk to the bed to sit down, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.
“Why?” I looked at her, taking in her face, knowing I would never forget this moment. There were balloons and a cake ready in the hallway along with all our family members and a priest. I wanted to marry her right away.
“Because you will only get married once in your life. It’s just the way you are; you are loyal to a fault. If you marry me, you will never move on,” she said with tears running down her face. “If you marry me, you will never marry anyone else; you will never have babies. You will die with me, and I won’t do that to you.”
“You think just because I put a ring on you and marry you that I won’t move on? You think a ring is going to stop me from moving on?” I got up, mad that she wasn’t giving me this. “You think regardless of if you marry me or not, that I’ll move on?” I shook my head, the hurt coming from my stomach. “I don’t want anyone but you,” I told her.
“I love you with everything I have,” she told me. “I love you enough not to hold you to the promise that you make me. I love you so much that I won’t let you die with me. You have to promise me,” she said, her breathing getting weaker. “You have to promise me that you’ll live and fall in love.”
Love Series (Complete Series) Page 49