“When he was nine, he complained about them going to visit me during the summer instead of going to ‘do something fun’. That hurt my feelings too, but it mostly made me feel guilty. Guilty that I wasn’t around enough. Guilty that I wasn’t trying hard enough. I had wanted him. I thought about him all the time. But I didn’t want to leave the Navy. I didn’t want to move back here. I liked having something reliable in my life, and for the longest, that was my career. And that made me feel guiltier. I didn’t want to give up one or the other, even if I knew what was more important, what really matters, and that’s my son, and it’s always going to be him. I thought me knowing that was enough.”
Rhodes blew out a breath before glancing at me, part of his mouth going up a little into that twist I knew too well. “Part of me hopes that I’m making it up to him. That it’ll be enough that I’m here now, but I don’t know if it will. I don’t know if he’ll look back on it and think that I half-assed being his dad. That he wasn’t important to me. That’s why I’m trying, so at least I know that I did. That I did everything I could think of to be there for him, but how am I ever going to know, right? Maybe he’ll be an old man when he decides. Maybe not.
“My mom didn’t even try to be a good mom. I can’t think of a single positive memory of her. My oldest brother does, I think, maybe the one right after him too, but that’s it. I’m never going to look back and think of her fondly. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything with her, and that’s shitty. I feel bad for her, for what she had to have gone through, but I didn’t ask for it either, and I got it anyway. But Amos, I asked for. I wanted him. I wanted to do better than what I’d known.”
I reached behind him and took his palm in mine, and when that didn’t seem like enough, I cupped the back of it with my other hand too, cocooning it completely with my own.
He squeezed it, his gray eyes roaming over my face. “Maybe that’s the thing about being a parent: you can just hope what you’ve done is enough. If you care. You hope that the love you gave them, if you really tried, will stay with your child when they’re older. That they can look back on what you did and be content. You hope that they know happiness. But there’s no way of knowing, is there?”
This man… I didn’t know what I would have done without him.
Pressing my lips together, I nodded, tears filling my eyes. Slowly, I lowered my head, until his fist rested against my cheek, and I told him in a croak, “He loves you, Rhodes. He told me not too long ago that he wanted you to be happy. I could tell from the moment I met you both, that you loved him more than anything. I’m sure that’s why Billy and Sofie didn’t hound you about stuff or tell you that you needed to worry. If you hadn’t been doing enough… if you hadn’t been there for him enough… I’m sure they would have said something.” I tried to suck in a breath, but it came in choppy. “Good parents don’t have to be perfect. Just like you love your kid even when they’re not.”
The choke that gripped my throat was sudden and harsh, the slide of several more tears wetting my cheeks. I hiccupped; then I hiccupped again. And something—his hand, it had to be his hand—stroked the back of my head, his fingers combing through my loose hair; I hadn’t brushed it since I’d showered. His words were soft as he said, “I know. I know you miss her. Just like you could tell I love Am, I can tell you loved your mom.”
“I really did. I really do,” I agreed, sniffling, feeling my chest crack with love and grief. “It finally just feels… final, and it makes me sad, but it makes me mad too.”
He stroked through my hair then my cheeks, over and over, my tears eventually spilling through his fingers, over the backs of his hands as he touched my face. Opening a dam with so many of the words I’d shared with my therapist over the last few days. But it was different with him.
“I’m so fucking angry, Rhodes. At everything. At the world, at God, at myself, and sometimes even at her. Why did she have to go on that stupid fucking hike in the first place? Why couldn’t she have done the trail she’d planned on taking? Why hadn’t she just waited for me to go with her? You know? I hate being mad, and I hate being sad, but I can’t help it. I don’t get it. I feel so confused,” I told him in a rush, taking one of his hands and squeezing it tight.
“At the same time, I’m so glad she was found, but I miss her, and I feel so guilty again. Guilty about stuff that I’ve worked out, things that I know I shouldn’t feel bad about. That none of what happened was my fault, but… it hurts. Still. And it’s always going to hurt. I know that. It’s supposed to. Because you don’t love someone and lose them and keep on going the rest of your life complete.
“I wonder too… did she know? Did she know I loved her? Does she know how much I miss her? How much I still wish she was around? Does she know that I turned out okay for the most part? That I had people who loved me and took care of me, or did she worry about what was going to happen? I hope she knows everything ended up okay, because I can’t bear to think that she worried.” My voice cracked over and over again, most of my words rambling and probably unintelligible, my tears soaking into the skin of the hand that was still touching my cheeks.
Rhodes tilted my face up and met me with those incredible gray eyes. When I tried to dip my chin, he kept me there. Everything about him so focused, so intent, like he was leaving me no room to misinterpret him. “I don’t know about some of that, but if you were anything like the way you are now when you were younger, she had to know how you felt about her. I’m sure it had to have lit up her life to be loved by you,” he whispered carefully, his voice hoarse.
I swallowed hard for a moment before I sagged, before I leaned over and rested the side of my face against his shoulder. And Rhodes… wonderful, wonderful Rhodes, slipped his arms under me and pulled me onto his lap, effortless, so effortless, one arm banding itself low on my back while the other curled around my side. And I settled in, right there, on top of him.
“It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be mad too.”
I pressed my nose against his throat. His skin was soft. “My ex used to get so frustrated with me when I’d have bad days. When I was extra sad. He’d say I’d suffered enough and that my mom wouldn’t want me to be so sad anymore, and that would make it worse. Usually I’m okay, but sometimes, I’m just not, and it’s random things that set me off. I want to live, I want to be happy, but I miss her and I want her back.”
One of his big hands cupped my hip, and I could feel the steady beat of his heart against my nose. “I thought we’d decided your ex was a moron,” Rhodes murmured. “I hope someday that if I’m gone, someone loves me enough to miss me for the rest of their life.”
He killed me. He really, absolutely did. I snorted a little into his throat, sagging even more into the warm wall of his frame.
“My dog, Pancake, died a few years ago, and I still get choked up when I think of him. I tell myself I can’t get another dog because I’m not home enough, but between us, considering it in the first place makes me feel like I’m being disloyal to him.” I’d swear he brushed his lips across my forehead as he held me even closer. “You don’t ever have to hide it—your grief. Not from me.”
Something painful and wonderful pricked my heart. “You don’t either. I’m sorry about your Pancake. He was the one in the picture I gave you, right? I’m sure he was amazing. Maybe, if you ever want, you can show me some more pictures of him. I’d like to see them.”
Rhodes’s voice got tight. “He was, and I will,” he promised.
I pushed my face even closer to his throat, and it took me minutes before I could get more words together. “My mom would want me to be happy, I know that. She’d tell me that it wasn’t like I didn’t already know she didn’t want to leave me. She would tell me not to spend more of my time being upset and live my life instead. I know it. I know in my heart that whatever happened was an accident and there’s nothing I can do to change it. And I really am happy with where I am now. It’s just hard….”
“Hey,” he said. �
��Some days you pick up eagles like they’re chickens, and some days you run screaming away from innocent bats. I like you both ways, angel. All ways.”
A choke that was a mixture of pain and laughter exploded out of me, and I’d swear his arms got even tighter.
I couldn’t help but hug him tight right back. “I just… I really just wish… I hope she knows how much I love her. How much I wish she was here. But also, that if all these shitty things were supposed to happen… I’m glad they brought me here.” My fingers curled around his forearm. “I’m glad you’re here, Rhodes. I’m so glad you’re in my life. Thank you for being so good to me.”
His hand stroked my hair, and his pulse beat under my cheek, and I could barely hear him as he said, “Any time you need me, I’m here. Right here.”
I clung to him and lowered my voice, “Don’t tell Yuki, but you’re my best best friend now.”
His throat bobbed against me, and I didn’t imagine how hoarse his voice came out as he said, “You’re my best best friend too, sweetheart.” His next swallow was just as harsh, his voice even more rough, but his words were the softest, most genuine thing I’d ever heard. “I really missed hearing you talk, you know that?”
And it was then, with my face against his throat, his body warm beneath and around mine that I told him about some of my fondest memories of my mom. Of how beautiful she was. Of how funny she could be. Of how she hadn’t been scared of anything, or at least it had seemed that way to me.
I talked and I talked and I talked, and he listened and listened and listened.
And I cried a little more, but it was okay.
Because he had to be right. Grief was the final way we had to tell our loved ones that they’d impacted our lives. That we missed them so, so much. And there was nothing wrong with me mourning my mom for the rest of mine, even as I carried her love and her life in my heart. I had to live, but I could also remember along the way.
The people we lose take a part of us with them… but they leave a part of themselves with us too.
* * *
In the days that followed, with my grief still curling around my heart but with a knowledge and strength that I’d pulled from the bottom of my soul, I tried my best to keep my chin up. Even if it wasn’t easy. But every time I started to feel that drag pulling me down to a place I’d been at before, I tried to remind myself I was my mother’s daughter.
Maybe I was a little cursed, but it could be worse. In some ways, I was one of the lucky ones. And I tried not to let myself forget it.
The people I cared about and loved didn’t let me forget it either, and I was pretty sure that’s what helped me the most.
When the time came, I had my mom’s remains cremated and spent a lot of time thinking about what to do with them. I wanted to do something to really honor her spirit.
And that came in two forms.
The idea to turn her ashes into a living tree had been Amos’s idea. He’d come up to me one day and slid a printout of a biodegradable urn across the table and headed back into his room as quietly as he’d left it. And it had felt right. My mom would have loved being a tree, and when I’d told Rhodes about it, he’d agreed we could easily find somewhere to plant her. We made plans to pick somewhere during the summer and do it.
The second idea had come from Yuki the very next day. She found a company that would send a family member’s ashes into space. And I knew without a doubt that my fearless mom would have absolutely loved it. I figured my blood money couldn’t have been spent any better than on that. I could even go see the launch.
My heart and my soul ached, but there couldn’t have been two more perfect ways to say goodbye to my mom’s physical body.
So I hadn’t been expecting to get home from work one day to find a bunch of cars parked in front of the main house. At least seven of them, and other than Rhodes’s, I only recognized Clara and Johnny’s. She had left early and let me close, claiming she had to do something with her dad. I’d taken off almost two weeks of work after finding out about my mom and would have managed the shop by myself all day every day, I’d felt so guilty for leaving her with that kind of load. I hadn’t thought twice about it.
But seeing her car with Johnny’s, and then five other cars with various license plates, completely threw me off.
Rhodes wasn’t the kind of man who invited anybody over other than Johnny, and even that wasn’t often. His work truck and the Bronco were both there too, hours earlier than they should have been. He’d told me that morning as he’d gotten ready for work that he would be sticking around close by and would be home about six.
I parked my car closer to the garage apartment I’d barely spent any time in lately and grabbed my purse before crossing over to the main house, confused. The front door was unlocked, and I went in. The sound of several voices talking surprised me even more.
Because I recognized them. Every single one.
And even though I’d been crying a lot less recently, the tears instantly welled up in my eyes as I crossed the foyer and into the main living area.
That’s where they all were. In the kitchen and around the table. In the living room.
The TV was on, and there was a picture of my mom in her twenties scaling some rock formation that would have made me pee myself. The image changed to another one of both of us. It was a slideshow, I realized before even more tears boiled over, falling down my cheeks in absolute surprise.
I was overwhelmed.
Because in Rhodes’s living room, in his house, were my aunt and uncle. All of my cousins, their wives, and a couple of their kids. There was Yuki and her bodyguard and her sister Nori and their mom. There was Walter and his wife, and Clara and Mr. Nez and Jackie. And just beside Johnny was Amos.
Moving toward me from that same direction was Rhodes, and I don’t know if he pulled me into a hug or if I threw myself like I seemed to always be doing, but there we were a second later. With me tearing up in a bittersweet sense of joy, straight into him.
After a lot more tears and more hugs than I had ever remembered getting at once, I got to celebrate my mom’s life with the people I loved the most in the world.
I really was one of the lucky ones, and I wouldn’t let myself forget it. Not even on bad days. I promised myself that then.
And it was all because of my mom.
Chapter 32
“Good luck, Am! You can do it! You can do anything!” I yelled out of the car at the retreating figure we had just dropped off at the side of the auditorium of his school.
He waved but didn’t glance over his shoulder, and behind the driver’s seat, Rhodes chuckled almost distractedly. “He’s nervous.”
“I know he is, and I don’t blame him,” I said before rolling up the window the second he went through the double doors. “I’m nervous for him.” I almost felt like I was performing too. I might have been more nauseous than Am.
But I welcomed the butterflies I got for Amos because they weren’t bad.
The last month and a half hadn’t been easy, but I was surviving. More than surviving actually. I was doing pretty well for the most part. I’d been having good days, and I’d have days where this new sense of grief over my mom made it hard to breathe, but I had people to talk to about it, and that same hope I’d had in my heart for the future had resumed blooming, slowly but surely.
It had been Mr. Nez who had said something to me the day of her life celebration that had really stuck around in my thoughts. He’d said the greatest way I could honor her life was by living mine, by being as happy as I possibly could.
My heart hadn’t been ready to accept it in that moment, but my brain had. Slowly but surely the truth in them had seeped into the rest of me. It was a small, waterproof Band-Aid for a large wound, but it had helped.
“Me too,” Rhodes agreed before turning the wheel and heading back to the lot where we were supposed to park. Not for the first time, I noticed he glanced in the rearview mirror with a scowl on his features.
> I loved all of his facial expressions, even if that one specifically I didn’t understand.
We were an hour early for the start of the talent show, but neither one of us had seen a point in driving all the way back home only to turn around fifteen minutes later. His phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over to me as he kept on driving.
“It’s your dad. He says he’s on his way and will be here in fifteen,” I told him as I sent the older man a reply.
Rhodes was going to wring my neck for promising to save his dad a seat for the talent show, but Randall was trying and I’d give him credit. Rhodes still wasn’t totally on board with putting in effort in return. But I had a feeling he’d wear himself down eventually, for Am’s sake. For him to have another grandparent. You couldn’t erase years of a rocky relationship with just a few examples of effort.
Part of me hoped he didn’t find out that I’d been the one to tell Randall about the talent show when we’d run into each other at Home Depot in Durango, but it was worth the risk. It wasn’t like he would really actually get mad at me. Not for that, at least.
Rhodes grunted as he parked and then took his time looking at me, a tiny dent forming between his eyebrows. Those gray eyes roamed my face like they did pretty often, like he was trying to read me. He was real subtle about it, but if he could tell I was feeling down, he tried to cheer me up in his own ways. Some of those ways had included showing me how to chop wood when he’d had two full cords delivered. Another time had been taking me to snowshoe up to ice caves. But my favorite way was when he used that incredible body at night to get my endorphins going. It was comfort and bonding all rolled into one.
I loved him so much that not even my grief could mute how I felt about him.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 48