by Jessie Evans
“I’m sorry for staying quiet,” she said finally, after several long moments with nothing but the soft burble of the river flowing over the stones on the other side of the swimming hole to break the silence. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“There is no wrong thing,” he said. “I don’t care what you say. I know what I did and I know how I’m going to pay for it.”
“Was Aaron as stubborn as you are?” she asked, surprising him.
“No,” he said softly. “He was a good kid. Never even went through that terrible two stage. I hardly ever saw him cry except on the days when I had to leave to get back on the road. He…”
Canyon swallowed, the lump in his throat making it painful. “He was a Daddy’s boy. It used to drive my ex-wife crazy. There she was every day, doing the work, taking care of Aaron twenty-four seven while I was out doing my own thing and forgetting to call to say goodnight half the time, and all Aaron could talk about was when Daddy was coming home.”
“Boys love their daddies,” Grace said in a wistful voice. “Especially good daddies.”
“I wasn’t good,” Canyon said flatly. “I loved him, but I didn’t show it as much as I should have. I didn’t even realize how much he meant to me until he was gone.”
“If I were in your place…” Grace trailed off with a shake of her head. “I don’t know if I would have been able to forgive myself, either. Especially with my partner confirming that I didn’t deserve to. I assume your relationship with your wife never recovered?”
He grimaced. “No. That was the end of me and Reilly. We divorced a couple of months after the funeral. We still email sometimes, but it’s not…”
He swiped a hand down his nearly dry face. “She’s remarried and has a baby girl. I think she would have cut me out of her life completely except that I’m the only one who remembers the way she does. Her dad died a couple years back and she doesn’t have a lot of other family. She doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about Aaron.”
“That makes sense,” Grace said, picking up a handful of the smallest stones and letting them spill slowly through her fingers. “My mom and dad died in a car accident when I was eleven. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I went to live with my grandmother after, and she had lots of stories to tell about my dad, but she hadn’t known my mom very well. I always wished I had someone to help me remember her.”
“What about your mother’s side of the family?”
“I never met them,” she said wiping her fingers on her bare thigh. “They didn’t approve of my dad for some reason. I never understood why, but my mom said they weren’t very nice people, so I didn’t feel like I was missing out only having one grandparent.”
“My family is like that.” Canyon squinted out at the water. “My dad’s a useless drunk and my mom blames everyone else for the shitty state of her life. Meanest victim you ever met.”
“I know the type,” she said. “I’m sorry your family is crappy.”
He shrugged. “It’s all right. They never beat me and I got out of their house when I was sixteen and never looked back. I don’t mess with either one of them except when I send my mother a check at Christmas.”
He smiled grimly as a hawk soared down the middle of the river, its eyes trained on the water, hunting for signs of life below the surface. “That’s the only time Mom tries to get in touch—if it’s January and for some reason my Christmas check hasn’t arrived.”
Grace chucked a larger stone into the water. “I think if you put our stories together they’re worse than The Bell Jar.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a book by Sylvia Plath about a woman who suffers from depression. It’s one of the saddest, scariest things I’ve ever read.” She sighed. “Kind of like that song by Peggy Lee, Is That All There Is.”
He pulled in a breath and softly sang. “Is that all there is to love? If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.”
“Yeah, that one,” she said. “You’ve got a pretty voice.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He glanced at her, finally feeling like he was ready to look her in the eyes. But her gaze was still fixed on the pool where she’d nearly drowned.
“That song is sad,” he added.
“And scary.” She bit her bottom lip, trapping it between her teeth and worrying it for a moment before she went on. “It would be so easy to believe it. To believe that jaded voice in your head that says every beautiful thing will eventually lose its magic.”
She frowned, her pale brow furrowing. “But that’s a lie. That voice lies and so does depression. And so does the voice telling you that you don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He was too tired to be frustrated with her armchair psychoanalysis, especially when it was clear she was responding from a thoughtful place, not spouting platitudes the way everyone else had. “But I don’t think it matters. There comes a point when you’ve lived with a lie so long it becomes the truth.”
She turned to him, an intensity in her expression that hadn’t been there before. “What if you knew the world needed you? What if you knew that forces bigger than yourself didn’t want you to do it?”
He frowned. “You mean like God?”
“Or love or the forces behind creation,” she said carefully. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“I don’t want to call it anything,” he said, his jaw tightening. “If there is a heaven, I don’t belong there, and I’m not interested in a God who lets His creation turn into such a damned mess.”
“The world is a mess,” Grace agreed. “That’s why it needs good people to stick around and keep fighting to make things better. I would have died twice without you around, Canyon. You matter. You matter a lot.”
“You’re fighting a losing battle, darlin’,” Canyon drawled, hiding his mounting frustration behind a soft laugh. “I’ve heard it all before and I don’t care to hear it again.”
“But—”
“I honestly wouldn’t care if God came down from heaven right now and told me to change my path,” he said, cutting her off. “It wouldn’t make a difference. And from what you’ve told me, all I did for you was put off something that’s coming for you soon, no matter what I do. All I did was push back the inevitable and what’s so important about that?”
“So you wish you’d let me take a pavement dive last night?” she asked, eyes tightening around the edges. “Or drown today? Is that it? Because I’m going to die soon anyway, so who cares?”
“No,” he said, driving clawed fingers through his hair. “Or maybe. I don’t know, Grace. But I know this is a waste of the time you’ve got left and I don’t want to spend my last days beating a dead horse.”
Her breath rushed out, but instead of arguing with him, she stood up, brushing the rocks from the backs of her legs. “Fine. Then I won’t say another word. I’ll go read my book and enjoy the sun on my face and leave you alone.”
“All right then,” he said, not understanding why her giving him what he wanted made a fresh wave of frustration rise inside of him.
“But just so you know, there are lots of people in the world who would give anything to be alive. To be healthy and strong and able to make a difference.”
“Then I guess that God you put so much store in should have made me terminal instead of you, shouldn’t he?” Canyon snapped before he thought better of it.
Grace’s eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t snap back at him. Instead, she was quiet for a moment before she said in a gentle voice, “You’re right, comparing your wound to one that’s gushing blood even faster doesn’t make yours hurt any less. I apologize.”
“No, I should apologize,” he said, her words making him feel even shittier for losing his temper. “That was plain meanness. I had no right and I should know better than to let my mouth run when I’m angry.”
“Forgiven,” she said, surprising him again.
He looked up at her, struck again by how a
ngelic she looked, with the sun behind her hair, making her swiftly drying curls glow like a halo. “Anyone ever tell you you’re pretty damned self-possessed for a twenty-two-year-old?”
She smiled that sad, secretive smile that slipped across her face sometimes, the one that made him think she knew something he didn’t and maybe never would.
“I’m an old soul I guess.” She reached down, brushing his hair from his forehead with an affection he knew he didn’t deserve. “You think you could teach me how to swim tomorrow? I’m too worn out today, but I’d like to learn.”
“I’d be happy to,” he said, his throat tight again. “Thank you, Grace.”
“You’re welcome, Canyon,” she whispered in a voice that made him want to ask her to stay.
He wanted to pull her back to the ground next to him and take her in his arms. He wanted to bury his face in her damp curls and beg her forgiveness for letting her down, and then he wanted to stretch her out on the warm pebbled beach and kiss her.
He sensed Grace would understand the language of kiss and knew he could answer all her questions so much better with a touch, a kiss, the movement of his body as he slid inside of hers. If he made love to her, she would see that even in the moments when he was so close to another person, he was still alone. He was as unreachable as any fairy tale princess locked away in a tower, his heart and soul walled up behind an unbreakable barrier of regret. He couldn’t be saved and maybe if she could see that for herself she wouldn’t feel bad about failing in her self-appointed mission to rescue him.
But instead of reaching out to her, he let her walk away and did his best not to stare as she stretched out her towel, looking so beautiful and healthy it was hard to imagine that she wouldn’t be here for much longer.
It made his heart ache to know she was dying. If he could give her his life and take her illness into his own body, he would do it.
But he couldn’t, because there was no cosmic justice. There were only people muddling through life as best as they could, making mistakes they could never take back and wondering if that was all there was.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lily Grace
Lily didn’t know what to do next and so she did nothing. It was a skill she’d learned from her grandmother, a master of knowing when to let things sit.
Gran had always said that at least a third of your problems will solve themselves if you give them time and space to breathe. The other two-thirds required more aggressive action, but there’s no sense in rushing in before you have a solid plan of attack.
Wilma Jean wasn’t just a sweet Southern woman who knew how to make friends and influence people. In her thirties she transformed her father’s failing drugstores into a profitable natural foods grocery chain and by her fiftieth birthday had built a real estate empire that made her one of the richest women in Texas, all while raising her son alone after her husband passed away.
Gran was good at life and Lily had always wanted to be like her, though on a much smaller scale. After she’d married John, she’d been happy helping the Lawsons keep their ranch profitable, raising veggies for the family in the backyard, and spending as much time as she could with her kids.
After losing her own parents so young, she’d wanted to make the most of every moment with her boys.
Her boys. She was going to see them tomorrow. Every time the thought skipped through her head, she had to stop to catch her breath.
“You okay?” Canyon asked, watching her over the top of his half-eaten cheeseburger.
“Yeah.” She forced a smile and picked up her own neglected burger. “Meat tastes different than I remember.”
His brows lifted. “You’re not a veggie are you? You should have told me.”
“No, I’m not a veggie. It’s just been awhile since I had a burger. It’s delicious. You’re a good cook.”
She took a bite and chewed, amazed all over again at how different it tasted. The burger was still good, but Grace’s taste buds didn’t respond to the salty rush of meat and cheese the way her own had. Grace’s body seemed to prefer lighter foods, like the fruit salad she’d made with the bananas, apples, and oranges she’d picked up at the park market.
But she would finish at least half the burger before she reached for the container of fruit salad. She and Canyon had declared a cease-fire and she didn’t want to do anything to disrupt the peace, at least not until she figured out how to approach the problem from a different angle.
She wasn’t going to give up on him. No matter what body she was in, that wasn’t Lily’s way. She wasn’t a quitter. She was a fighter, especially when it came to the people she cared about.
She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but sometime between Canyon saving her life the first time and the second time, he’d become one of her people. He was a good man, probably one of the best she’d ever met.
If only he could see himself through her eyes…
“Spit it out,” he said, reaching for the bag of potato chips and shaking some out onto his paper plate.
“I will not,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding him. “My food stays in my mouth. I wasn’t raised by wolves.”
His lips quirked. “I wasn’t talking about the burger. You’ve got something on your mind. Might as well spit it out.”
“Okay.” She took a bite and chewed slowly, stalling for time. She wasn’t ready to revisit the subject of his impending suicide, but maybe he could help her with the other things that were weighing on her mind. “I have a hypothetical question for you.”
He nodded. “Shoot.”
“Say that someone you loved had disappeared for a long time, but then suddenly they came back,” she said, the words enough to make her pulse speed. The closer the time came to see the boys, the more anxious she felt about whether making contact was the right thing to do. “So now they’re back, but they can’t stay.”
“Why not?” Canyon asked, popping a chip in his mouth.
“They just can’t,” she said, unable to think of an analogy that would come close to her situation. An extended business trip or a job overseas didn’t come close to the kind of going away she was talking about. “But before they leave again they tell you that they will always love you and be wishing wonderful things for your life.”
He frowned. “Okay, so what’s the question?”
Lily dropped her burger onto her plate, her stomach too cramped with nerves to eat another bite. “The question is, does that make you happy because you know this person you thought was lost is still okay and loving you? Or do you wish they hadn’t reopened old wounds only to go away again?”
Canyon chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I guess it would depend on the person and how I felt about them before they went away and after.”
“Before they went away, you loved them like family,” she said, her throat tight. “After, you were sad, but you didn’t blame them for it. You knew they had no choice. That someone…” She licked her lips and swallowed. “Someone took them away from you. They didn’t want to go.”
“Then I think I’d be glad to know they were okay,” he said. “Sure, it would hurt to have them go away again, but if they couldn’t help it, I’d understand.”
“Even if you were younger?” Lily pressed. “A child even?”
Canyon met her eyes for a long moment before he wiped his hands on his napkin and pushed his plate away. “Grace, if you have someone you want to say goodbye to, then you should. You’re the one who’s dying. You deserve to go out with as little weighing on your soul as possible.”
“It’s not like that,” she said with a sigh, wishing she could tell Canyon the truth and have him believe it. But he wouldn’t and she wasn’t sure telling him would help her case with him, anyway.
“Then what’s it like?” he asked. “Explain it to me. I’m assuming you’ve got a little one out there you haven’t seen in a while. And maybe you’re scared about how they’ll take you showing up again?”
She nodded slowly,
her gaze on the weathered wood of the picnic table.
“Well, I think kids are more resilient than we give them credit for,” he said. “They just want to be loved, especially by their parents, and I don’t think you can go wrong letting someone know you care.”
She glanced up at him, meeting his hazel eyes, which had turned a haunting shade of grayish green in the fading light. “I care about you.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, the air between them beginning to simmer again. “I care about you, too.”
But that doesn’t change anything.
He didn’t say the words, but he might as well have. She heard him loud and clear and it broke her heart a little bit more. If she didn’t find a way to reach him, she was going to fail. She was going to fail and this wonderful man would be lost.
She pressed her lips together, fighting the wave of emotion that threatened to pull her under. It wasn’t time to cry. Not yet. She still had five days. If she ended up on that bus Saturday morning, she’d let the tears flow then.
“I’m stuffed,” she said, as she stood. “I’m going to the restroom, want me to go for you?” She held out her cupped hands in front of her, pleased when Canyon laughed in response.
She loved his laugh. When he laughed, she could see the man he should have been, the man he could be if he would allow himself to believe in second chances. Everyone deserved a second chance, especially people who had tried so hard to learn from their mistakes.
“No thanks,” he said, still grinning. “I’m good.”
“All right,” she said, memorizing the sparkle in his eyes.
Canyon wasn’t good yet, but if she had her way, he would be.
CHAPTER NINE
Canyon
Canyon woke up with Grace curled against him, her sleeping bag pressed tight to his and her face tucked beneath his chin. They’d gone to bed on separate sides of the tent, but at some point during the night, they’d rolled to the center, the pull between them too strong to resist when their waking selves weren’t there to keep them apart.