Page 16 of Sincerely, Mr. Braden

He smiles compassionately. “It’s okay. You don’t have to share if you’d rather not.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to share. He is so smart, but he really is that reckless, and his need to do things without thinking them through infiltrates every aspect of his life. He once handed his paycheck to a guy we met while taking a walk by a lake. This stranger was fishing for his dinner, and my dad signed over his check. I’ll never forget the way that man tried to give it back, and you know what my father did? He said, Don’t be stupid. Take the damn thing, and then he ushered us off to our car. We didn’t have a lot of money, so I asked him what we’d do about paying the bills and buying groceries without his paycheck, and he said he’d figure it out later. Guess who figured it out?”

“You?”

I gaze out at the water, the sounds of the sea mixing with the music pulsing behind us, and say, “Yeah.” When I turn back to Seth, my breath catches at the way he’s looking at me. It feels intensely protective as I say, “I was fourteen.”

His jaw tightens. “No fourteen-year-old should have to worry about getting food on the table. But it sounds like your father’s heart was in the right place.”

“It definitely was. He’s generous to a fault. He’ll take care of strangers, but he won’t take care of himself. He thinks he can survive on pure grit.”

“I know a lot of men like that.”

“Sure, but my father has MS, and he never slows down, which can lead to wearing himself out and flare-ups. MS is tricky, and it’s different for everyone. There’s pain, fatigue, numbness, and my father never complains, which makes it hard to know how he’s really doing. That’s actually the reason I became a VA, so I could be there for him.”

“Is that why you said you’re closer than he likes sometimes?”

“Yes. He’d never admit it, but he needs looking after. He’ll stop taking his meds, not because he forgets, but because he’s as defiant as the day is long, and getting him to go to the doctor is always a battle of wills. Right before I came here, he cut himself on a gutter that I had arranged for someone to repair, and I found him wrapping the gash with a rag and duct tape. He ended up needing stitches.”

“Jesus. He sounds hardcore.”

“That’s nothing. A few hours after we got home from the hospital, he went to a mosh pit.”

Seth shakes his head. “I don’t know much about MS, but it sounds like he’s got more energy than me. Do Taylor and Becca help take care of him?”

I’m about to respond when I remember that I use a Delaware address for my business, which means Seth believes Taylor lives in Delaware. “Taylor lives in Delaware, and I’m in Port Hudson. Becca helps when she can, but she’s so busy, and she has a lot of my father in her. She thinks we should let him live however he wants to, and suffer the consequences of his actions. She’s the one who took him to the mosh pit.”

“They sound like a dangerous combination.”

“They can be, but at the same time, Becca is the one who pushed me to come on this trip. She’s keeping an eye on him this weekend, making sure he takes his meds, looking after his stitches, so she does help, and she promised she wouldn’t let him do anything crazy.”

“What about your mom?” he asks carefully. “Is she in the picture?”

“No.” I briefly consider not telling him the truth, but tonight I’m Ellie, not Taylor, the girl with walls around her heart. “You know those camping trips I mentioned?”

He nods, his brows knitting. “Yeah.” His grip tightens around my hand, as if he’s preparing to hear the worst and is offering silent support for whatever telling him might do to me.

“The last time we went camping, my mother stayed home. She said she wasn’t feeling well, and when we got back, she was gone for good.” He squeezes my hand, and my throat constricts, but it’s not as hard to tell him as I thought it would be. “She left a note saying she’d reconnected with an old boyfriend and wasn’t ready to give up on her dreams of traveling. That was it. No apology, no promises of our relationship continuing. Just…see ya.”

“Jesus.” Seth shakes his head like he can’t fathom it, and how could he? His mother would never have done that to him. “You must have been devastated. How old were you?”

“I was thirteen, and I was completely crushed. I was so excited to see her and tell her about our trip. She loved talking about traveling, and I wanted to tell her about this place I’d heard about the last night of our trip. It was a secret. My dad and Becca don’t even know about it.”

“Who told you about it?”

“This older couple. I never got their names. While Becca and my dad were sleeping, I slipped out of the tent to use the bathroom, which was all the way at the end of the road. I couldn’t find a flashlight, so I headed out in the dark.”

“Bet your father wouldn’t have liked that.”

“He’s the one who taught me to be tough. Anyway, I wasn’t alone for long. The older couple in the campsite next to ours was heading the same way with one of those old lanterns, so we walked together. But to be honest, when they first fell into step with me and said I shouldn’t walk alone, I was kind of annoyed. I didn’t need a babysitter, and they walked really slowly, but I didn’t want to be rude. They said it was their anniversary, and that they’d met when they were each camping with friends fifty-two years earlier.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah, it was. They told me about a place they’d stumbled upon when they were on their honeymoon. They called it a glass orchard and said it was on a hidden hillside, with about a dozen fruit trees with dozens of glass baubles of all shapes and sizes and colors hanging from the branches, and each one had a message written on it. Some were too faded for them to read, but others bore fragments of people’s lives, words of love, hope, and grief. It sounded magical. I have no idea if it was true or not, but every year they camped someplace new to celebrate their anniversary, and they said they hoped they’d find more places like that.”

“Did they say where it was?”

“I didn’t even think to ask. I remember being really taken with them. They finished each other’s sentences and held hands the whole way.” I smile with the memory of that calm before my life was upended. “I still remember that lantern swinging between us, making that telltale whooshing sound that kerosene lanterns make.”