Page 78 of Piece By Piece

“Liza.”

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She nodded once and then left.

Dixie found Liza twenty minutes later, sitting on the floor of the children’s section, between the beanbag chairs, not crying completely, but crying a little.

“Oh, honey.”

Dixie slowly lowered herself down beside Liza.

She didn’t ask what happened.

She didn’t offer advice.

She just sat there and let Liza lean against her shoulder.

After a while, Liza told her.

The secret, the withdrawal, the acquisition, the locked door, the four-word texts, the word STAY when he was really planning to leave.

Dixie listened to all of it.

“That boy is afraid.”

“I know he’s afraid.”

“Well, afraid and cruel aren’t the same thing. One of those you can forgive, the other you shouldn’t have to.”

Liza wiped her eyes.

“And which one is this?”

Dixie was quiet for a moment, running her hand over the fabric of the new beanbag chair.

“When Johnny got sick,” she said, “he tried to push me away. Told me to go stay with my sister in Columbia. Said he didn’t want me to see him like that. And I said, ‘Johnny, you do not get to decide what I can handle. That’s my decision, not yours.’” She looked at Liza. “The worst thing that a scared person can do is make your decisions for you. Grant didn’t give you the chance to choose, and that’s the part that needs fixing.”

Liza nodded.

“So what do I do?”

“Well, nothing, sugar, not today. Today you get to sit here and feel your feelings, maybe even eat some cookies. Tomorrow you figure out what you want, and then you go tell him because you’re not a woman who lets other people write her story for her.”

Liza leaned her head against Dixie’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

“Dixie?”

“Hmm?”

“Did Johnny ever fix it? The pushing you away?”

Dixie was quiet for a moment, somewhere back in the long goodbye of losing him.

“He did. Took him about a week. He showed up at my sister’s house with a bag of peaches and a handwritten letter that was mostly apologies and partly a recipe for peach cobbler, which was his way of saying he loved me without using words.”

She smiled.