It felt right, taking her out to this meeting, and he couldn’t even quite say why.
He could also tell she wasn’t that excited about learning to ride, but that was all right. She would do just fine when it came down to it. He knew that she would. She would do more than fine, because she was just… Brave. He had a feeling she didn’t think that she was. He had a feeling that she saw herself as being cautious. Maybe even nervous. But she had faced down the kinds of things that other people didn’t even like to talk about, and she was able to talk to him about his loss without flinching.
She was brave.
She was really brave.
The drive out to meet with Connor O’Malley was a long one, and Cara was singing along with the radio. She had a sweet voice. Not the kind that you would ever hear on stage, but he liked it. It made him feel soothed.
“Did your family go to church on Sunday?” It kind of came out of the blue, but he wanted to know.
She shook her head. “No. My dad didn’t like to sit still. Hewas very active. He used to take me out to breakfast on Sundays. And then we would take a drive sometimes, up into the hills. He would always say that it’s what felt like church to him.”
“He sounds like he was a really great guy.”
She cleared her throat. “He was. He was just the best. And nothing was ever the same after he was gone. I think he was the thing holding my mom together. The thing that was keeping her from getting worse. Loving him. Loving him as she did, I just think that after that it was impossible.” She took a deep breath. “Love is so heavy.”
“It can be,” he said. “No argument from me.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” she murmured. “After all this time, I will never understand why it wasn’t to my brother. He just didn’t feel burdened by the need to be there all the time for my mother. I know that he loved her. He’s not a monster. I feel like recent events suggest that he is, but really, it’s just… He doesn’t feel an obligation. Not this bone-deep, serious obligation to his family, to the people around him. And I do.”
“You’re even here with his wife.”
“It was for me too. I don’t want to get into a situation where it sounds like I was so self-sacrificing to come out here with Marlowe. I wasn’t. I needed a change just as much as she did.”
“If she had decided she wanted to stay, if she had decided she wanted to go back to Virginia, would you have stayed?”
She didn’t speak for a moment. “I think… Yes. I would have.” She shook her head. “I guess maybe that makes me a good person. I guess maybe I should be proud of that. But instead, it just makes me feel small. Because this has been the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and you’re right, I would have pivoted and stayed if she had needed me to do that. I don’t know how to do the thing for myself. This is what I wanted, and so it all feels like it worked out, but… I don’t think I would’ve stood ten toes down on what I wanted.
“To be honest with you, I understand that you need to do things for yourself, and I understand there’s a value in that, but as somebody who lost their whole family, I always really respect when somebody takes care of the people in their life. Because from my perspective, it’s a privilege. But I can also see how it was a burden for you.”
“In my experience, anything important can be both,” she said. “But I guess not for everybody. Aiden… He went away, he did what he wanted to do, what he would’ve done even if our mother hadn’t been sick, and I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave her, I couldn’t just decide that it would be fine, because you know… He wouldn’t have taken care of her. I couldn’t leave it to just anybody. I was the one who could be trusted. I was the one who paved the way for him to do… Whatever. But what’s the alternative? My mom wouldn’t have been taken care of in the way that I feel she deserved to be.” She stared out the window for a long moment. “I really don’t resent it. Not generally. But there are things that I… You know, I don’t even know if I would’ve gone to my prom. Probably nobody would’ve asked me. And it’s not like I had a big group of friends. I got so isolated at a certain point. But it’s things like that. Prom and going to football games at the high school, and all these things that I’m not even sure I would’ve wanted to do, but I didn’t get the choice. So sometimes it eats away at me. I wonder if I would’ve been happier if I could’ve done those things. I wonder if my life would feel more complete, and that’s silly, because those are small things.”
“It’s not silly. Sometimes I wonder the same thing. What would my life have been like if all that hadn’t happened? Maybe I would be the same person. Maybe I wouldn’t be social, regardless. Maybe I would never have gone to prom or played on a football team, or gone to college and gotten a morenormal job. But probably, I would’ve been working with my dad at the ranch. Working alongside him, and what would that change? Feeling like I was part of something, rather than a broken piece of something that shattered. Something that couldn’t even be put back together. I think it’s normal to wonder about the road that you didn’t have a choice to take. Because that’s the thing, Cara, we didn’t choose this. Maybe if you chose to be a twenty-four-year-old little old lady and stay at home knitting and baking, and I chose to be a hermit mountain man without any pain or trauma, it would feel a little less heavy.”
“Or maybe we just don’t know how to feel things that aren’t heavy. I’m beginning to wonder that.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe they would feel this way about anything. About everything, no matter who they were or what they had been through. Maybe this was who they were. How strange that he would find a mirror image of himself in this woman.
Oh, she seemed completely different. She was like sunshine, and he was a thunderstorm. But underneath all that, she had that same seriousness. That same intensity. She just covered it up.
Maybe that was what you had to do when you were a woman in the world. People were happy to write him off as being aloof. They saw his attitude as being something hyper-masculine, so they were all right with it. He imagined a woman couldn’t be half so prickly and keep jobs and get away with it. But whatever the reason, they were different on the surface, but they seemed to match deeper.
He wished that he could fix some of this for her. He didn’t have family dynamics to deal with; he supposed that was one way his trauma was clean. It was horrible, but it was a fact. Loss was final; you couldn’t negotiate with it. Death was so final. It was the end of something. You couldn’t litigate it,try to fix it, or change it. You didn’t have to go on and deal with personality differences or changes or anything of the kind. She had a very real issue with her very alive brother, and it was fair.
He wished he could fix all that for her. He wished that he could make it easier. Wished that he could make it lighter. Wished so much that he could do something to restore some of that time that had been lost to her. Was that something he needed to do for himself? That was a strange question, and one he didn’t know if he wanted an answer to.
But he was doing this. He was going to look at this horse; he was considering finding a way back to the life he might’ve had if he hadn’t lost his father. If he hadn’t lost everybody.
He was rebuilding something. Just maybe.
He was finding a way to build something, not out of the broken pieces left behind, because they were just too damaged. But he was creating something. Something with what he had.
Maybe that was the best that he could do. Maybe that was the best anyone could do.
Decide what you wish you could have, and figure out what you could make. Because death was final, and his childhood was lost. Because all those years were lost for Cara, but surely there was something they could do. Something they could make and be.
It made him want to help her build something. Made him want to do something that could help fix something for her.
