For the Best

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For the Best Page 22

by LJ Scar


  “I’m gonna go talk to your dad.”

  I merely nodded unable to relax my throat enough to speak. Morose music amplified from hidden speakers as I watched her and Ansel offer their condolences to my only parent who seemed upset.

  People began to take their seats. A minister from a church my family had never attended began the eulogy.

  Hanna

  It had been one of those surreal moments, me floundering as I stared into Tanner’s dark brown eyes, his fiancé sinking into his side to comfort him.

  I blinked through a blur of tears but couldn’t stop the flow. The whole interlude only took two minutes- three, tops. I knew that it would replay like a video over again in my dreams. Like the pictures of our childhood projected on a wall behind Trev’s casket.

  Finding a seat, faces I wished weren’t familiar searched me out. His old friend Didge turned around from the row in front of me. I hunched forward pushing the heels of my palms into my eye sockets to stop the tears.

  Didge arched his head back, and spoke near my ear. “Don’t look so sad. It will never work.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Tanner and Skylar. It won’t last and if it does he’ll regret it. Ten years from now he’ll be trying to make love to his wife while conjuring images of you.”

  I flung myself back practically into Ansel’s lap.

  “Did I hear him correctly?” Ansel asked in mortification.

  I nodded, stunned and a little ill.

  The minister had stopped speaking. It was my cue. Squeezing Ansel’s hand, I forced myself up and made my way to the podium. I spoke about Trevor, but my words were for Tanner. He needed to hear them.

  Tanner

  I stared at Didge. I had been watching when he was whispering to Hanna. I saw her flinch before she hurriedly rose to come to the pulpit. I really wanted to strangle the bastard for defiling her with whatever lewd comments he’d spoken.

  Hanna appeared at the podium. As she began to speak it took me a minute to listen. I’d been conspiring how to get out of my life. Suddenly, my thoughts were stopped in their tracks. She was telling an averted story of her mother’s death. She said that Trevor kept asking her if her mom was in Heaven. I remembered that. I didn’t know how to stop him from making her grief worse. Apparently he had left a message on her voice mail. She said she had been so amazed at his understanding that she chose to make a permanent recording. She pressed the device’s speaker up to the microphone.

  “Hanna, it’s me Trevor.” His deep voice was muffled, childlike. His R’s sounded like W’s and the error pained me in a lost feeling of endearment. “I look for your mom in Heaven. But I don’t know what Heaven is. Tanner told me to look up, it was all around me. So your mom must be in the sky. She is in the clouds, the stars, the moon, the sun. Someday I’ll be looking down at you. Remember to look for me and your mom up here.”

  Goose bumps climbed my flesh. My mother gasped beside me. Hanna whispered but the mic caught her words, “I’ll look for you Trev. Say hi to Mom.”

  Chapter 59

  Tanner

  Through my tears, I looked at Skylar then at Mom. Not an ounce of emotion – cold women incapable of thawing. My dad was sobbing and edging away from the woman he had spent the last twenty-eight years beside. I think it was over for them. He lifted distressed eyes to me and I nodded. We understood each other’s desire to get away from the partner we mistakenly chose.

  Skylar must have sensed my desire to flee. She looped her arm through mine. Then I realized she was pulling me forward to do the custom of shoveling one mound of dirt into the lowered casket. I whispered goodbye to my brother one last time.

  Hanna

  We didn’t go to the burial, opting to return in a couple of days.

  “What you said, the message you played… it felt like Trevor was with us,” Della somberly stated.

  “He would have been deliriously happy when he saw the arrangement you chose.” Clay smiled half-heartedly. “Nothing sad about yellow Gerber daisies with a SpongeBob doll peeking out.”

  “Thanks.” I hugged each of them.

  Ansel and I broke from the group. Della and Clay were going back to get Keb at a sitter’s.

  “You okay?” Ansel asked placing his arm around me as he walked.

  “He was like my brother.”

  “I know.” He hugged me to his side. “Did you get to talk to Tanner?”

  “Not really.” We sat down on the steps, shoulder to shoulder.

  Chapter 60

  Tanner

  A nor’easter was blowing. The winds were brutal, the cold as bone chilling as Chicago. The surf turned sudsy and whipped from water to shore like bubble bath. Large white, sea gulls huddled in masses never taking flight. I walked to the edge of the old boardwalk as night overtook the skies. The trash receptacles were full and the discards whipped along the boardwalk to the parking lot behind me. A little boy ran up and down the weathered walkway, bouncing from the replaced planks to the old boards like he was playing hopscotch. The vegetation that was green and pungent in the spring was bitten by frost, waiting for warmth to return.

  I thought about my future, one without Hanna, one without Trev. The people I loved the most I had taken for granted, now they were gone. I made a decision. I would end my relationship with Skylar. Go back to school, get a job I was meant for, and figure out what was for the best.

  Hanna

  I reached for Ansel’s hand. Caught on a wave of emotions I contemplated how to tell him the news. The initial panic and fear had manifested into happiness. I rested my head on his shoulder. “I love you.” I sighed.

  “I’m easy to love,” he teased. “I love you too.” He kissed my head the warmth of his breath calming my concerns.

  I stood, moving a few steps below him I put my arms around his neck. “You are easy to love!” I teasingly confirmed. On a deep breath, I gave him the news, “I’m pregnant.”

  He froze for a millisecond before his face lit up, a smile that couldn’t possibly be faked. He cupped my cheeks, kissed me with enthusiasm, and followed a smooching trail down me until he lifted my shirt and blew a raspberry on my stomach. “You just made me the happiest man in the world.”

  Laughing I managed to say, “I was scared you were going to be mad.”

  “Are you kidding?” He pulled me onto his lap and held me tight.

  “What should we do?”

  “We should expand and modify your apartment to accommodate the three of us. We should call my dad. We should make love in celebration.” He took my hand. “We should get married.”

  I kissed him gently and said, “I was hoping for the best. I think I got him.”

  About the Author

  LJ Scar is my pseudonym and alter-ego. She lives hillside in a tiny cottage that has a view of the mountains and the ocean on a sprawling spread of land where all the people, dogs, and things she loves are within reach. She makes a living off the results of her imagination. She is a morning person who has great hair even after a rough night of sleep. She loves to exercise and doesn't love junk food.

  Nah...but someday. In the meantime, I live outside Louisville, Kentucky with my husband, a deceptively smart old border collie/husky mix, and a loving but troublemaking English Pointer/lab mix -both are rescues. I try to think up vivid locations based off places I've lived or vacationed and dream up romances and complications from observing strangers.

  I LOVE TO READ! I write what I’d like to read, love stories that don’t always have the ending you expect about people who seem real, get hurt and get back up!

  If you have read any of my books, I would very much appreciate if you would leave a rating or review on the website where you purchased it. Some of the online book retailers won’t just allow for a star rating. I wish they did but I don’t make the rules so put in what you thought – don’t be shy!

  Read my Smashwords Interview at https://www.smashwords.com/interview/LJScar

  Connect with LJ Scarr />
  I really appreciate you reading my book! Here are my social media coordinates:

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  Other books by this author

  Please visit your favorite ebook retailer to discover other books by LJ Scar:

  What Happened In Between

  Solitude Interrupted

  Eternal She Remains (Until Our Forever Ends)

 

 

 


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