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She nodded.
I hadn’t made many vows in my life, the kind that I’d use to define the man I wanted to be. A long time ago, I’d made one to her mother, and I knew that whatever I said now, it mattered a great deal to Sage, and to me. After a deep breath, I made sure that I could hold up everything I said next.
“You won’t ever lose me, Sage. I will always be your friend, I will always be there for you and your mom, however you need me.” I swallowed hard, the weight of the words pressing tight to my throat. “I don’t know if this guy will be anything important in your mom’s life… but if he is…” I paused because that slight stumble in my words had her stilling, watching me so much more carefully than any almost-eleven-year-old had a right to. “Then he’ll be fine with me still being you and your mom’s friend. I’m not going anywhere, okay? I promise,” I said fiercely.
Sage sniffled again, wiping under her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “It doesn’t bother you either, then?”
A thousand answers crowded the back of my mouth, and I wrenched them down, choosing these words with more care than I’d ever managed in my entire life.
“I want your mom to be happy,” I said. “I’ll always want that for her, and having the two of you in my life is more important than anything else.”
The way she stared up into my face had me feeling a kind of bone-tingling vulnerability that I’d never experienced before because this little kid just made me distill all my fears into this single conversation and face it head-on.
Sage wiped at the tears on her cheek and let out a shaky breath. “You’re really good at that,” she whispered. “Making me feel better.”
I’d never been accused of that before the Keaton women blasted their way into my life.
The headlights of her grandpa’s truck cut down the driveway, and Sage and I stood at the same time. With a shy smile, she hooked her backpack over her shoulder. After a moment of indecision played over her face, Sage flung herself forward, wrapping her arms around my waist in a tight hug. With a hollowed-out chest and the distinct feeling that she was anchored under my ribs much in the same way as her mother, I wrapped my arms around her to return it. That was when she buried her face into my chest and whispered, “You’ll be a really great dad someday, Ian.”
It was like she punched a hole straight through flesh and bone, and I stood in stunned silence as she waved and ran off.
Standing in the silence, staring out into the trees, I felt a desperate boiling under the surface, and I raked my fingers into my hair and clutched the back of my head. Everything was pressed too hard on the inside of my skin, and emotions were ready to explode if there wasn’t an outlet.
Why was this so fucking hard for me?
Why did the thought of stepping into this space with them terrify me to the point that my blood ran cold and my heartbeat echoed through to the tips of my fingers and down to my toes?
I didn’t stop to think, didn’t even try to question why I was doing what I was doing before I simply wrenched the door of the house open to snatch my keys off the table. I was in my truck before I could stop myself.
Chapter 29
Ian
I’d always found cemeteries to be pretty fucking creepy. Some shrink somewhere would probably tell me it was leftover trauma from watching them lower a casket holding my mom’s body into the ground when I was just a kid. But if I was being honest with myself—and apparently this was the day for it—it wasn’t any easier when I’d watched them do it to my dad.
Age didn’t make any part of loss easier. It just made you that much more aware of what you were really losing.
I hadn’t been there since the burial because every time I thought about it, my blood went thick and sluggish, and there was always something else to be done. Some excellent reasons I shouldn’t go, or why it wasn’t necessary. My sisters went. Sheila went at least once a week. I didn’t know about Cameron because I didn’t really want to ask.
Uncertainty about the big things in life had a way of making you realize who you trusted the most. Whose voice you wanted to hear when you couldn’t make sense of what was going on in your own head.
In the span of a week, everything about my life felt turned upside down, not to mention the fact that I couldn’t make heads or tails of why something as simple as trying to be happy was so fucking difficult for me. In that upside-down space, the voice I wanted to hear more than anyone else’s was my dad’s.
No one else was there, so I parked next to the tree on the paved road that wound through the small cemetery. Instead of talking myself out of it, I got out, tucked my hands into my pockets, and walked past the rows of headstones—some flush with the grass, some jutting up toward the sky, some blackened with age.
When I got to his, it stunned me to see how much of the grass had grown over the dirt in the last few months. It was a tangible sign of the passage of time, something I could feel between my hands. Against the glossy rectangular headstone were a few bouquets of dried-out flowers, and a drawing that had been pinned down by a heavy rock. I crouched down to look at it, and through the absolute gut-wrenching way it broke my heart, I smiled sadly. She’d drawn a picture of some flowers and two butterflies above them.
To Granpa Tim. I miss U. Luv Olive.
I ran my hands over the soft blades of grass, already yellowing from the cold weather.
“Hey, Dad,” I whispered. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come here. I wasn’t really sure what to say.” I laughed quietly. “I don’t even know if I believe you can hear me.”
What if he could? I wondered. I closed my eyes and pretended I was sitting on their front porch with him. What if this same sharp, cold air was in my lungs, the kind that smelled like the first snow, and he was sitting next to me with his favorite blanket over his lap while he patiently waited for me to unload what was weighing down my heart.
Just like that, tears threatened, thickening my throat and blurring my vision.
“Fuck, I wish you could hear me, Dad.” My voice sounded like I’d gargled with acid, and no matter how hard I swallowed, I couldn’t make that roughness go away. “I wish you could tell me why I’m like this. You always saw things that no one else saw.”
