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His elbows rested on his knees, his hands clasped together as he stared forward. “I don’t believe in signs.”
“What do you believe in?”
His brows furrowed, and a vein in his throat throbbed as he stayed quiet.
Nothing.
He believed in nothing.
That had to be hard. If I didn’t have my little beliefs, my small trusts in the universe, I was almost certain I would’ve died a long time ago right alongside my loved ones.
“It must be tough…not having anything to believe in.”
“I’ve made it through this far.”
“That doesn’t mean it was easy.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. It’s good that you believe in signs. I wish I could myself sometimes.”
I smiled. “It’s never too late to start believing in something.”
“It probably is for me. Old dog, new tricks and all.” He scratched at the scruff on his chin and cleared his throat. “So, the tattoo on your wrist is for her?” he asked. “Your daughter?”
I looked down to the daisy tattoo with the backward D inside it and nodded. My mind went back to my last night with Penn when Marybeth asked about my tattoo—the way he scolded me for being unable to control my emotions, the way he shamed me for falling apart.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Why is the D backward?”
“It’s…I…” My chest tightened, and I felt myself starting to lose the battle with my mind.
Jax must’ve realized it. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said.
But that wasn’t it. I wanted to talk about it. I needed to talk about my little girl. It was how I’d been able to keep her alive in my mind, but Penn was so against any conversations that related to her. He said it made it too hard for him to move on. Maybe that was our biggest problem: he wanted to move on while I wanted to hold on. We were pulling one another in two completely different directions. Of course it wasn’t going to last. It was only a matter of time before our seam ripped.
“No, I want to, it’s just that I get emotional talking about it. My husband hated that about me—how emotional I became when I talked about our daughter. He hated whenever I brought her up.”
“No offense, Kennedy, but your husband sounds like an asshole.”
I laughed. “He had his moments. I’m sure I wasn’t the best wife in the world. I didn’t make things easy for him.”
“Yeah, well, I still get to hate him. But go ahead,” he said, nudging my leg. “Talk about her.”
I inhaled deeply and released it. “She was with me for six beautiful years. When she began writing her name, she’d write her Ds backward, every single time. I’d correct her over and over again. One day when I was telling her yet again that she was writing it wrong, she told me, with her hands on her hips, ‘It’s fine, Mommy. Don’t take life so seriously. Ds can be backward, too.’” I laughed, wiping the tears that had fallen from my eyes. “I got the tattoo to remind myself of that idea, that I shouldn’t take life too seriously. I’m still working on absorbing that message.”
“What else?” he asked me.
I arched an eyebrow. “You want to know more about her?”
“Yes, if you want to share.”
My broken heartbeats began to take shape again. I shifted around a bit and sat up in my chair. “Well, okay. She loved—and I mean loved—bubbles. Whenever we were upset, we’d blow a million bubbles into the air and keep doing it until we were laughing. It became a fact to us that you couldn’t be sad if there were a million bubbles surrounding you.”
He smiled.
Jax smiled.
Gosh, I hadn’t known I needed his smile until he gave it to me.
“What else?” he asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“What else do you want to share about her?”
I arched an eyebrow. “You want to know more about her?”
“Yes. If you want to share.”
I gave him more. I gave him all the details about my sweet little angel, and the way she changed my life for the better. From her favorite television shows to her favorite color. From the way she loved butterflies and chocolate cake. Then, he let me talk about my parents. How Mama’s singing voice sounded like an angel. How Daddy would tell the worst jokes in the world, and they would still be funny. How Mama snorted, how Daddy laughed like a hyena. How Daisy loved to dance in the rain.
Once the words started pouring out of my mouth, the tears that were falling turned into laughter. Laughing. I was laughing from the memories. When the laughter died down, we both sat there quiet as the sky grew darker and darker.
He cleared his throat. “I have to go visit my father at the nursing home.”
“Oh, okay. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do? If you need someone to talk to about—”
