Page 105 of Merging Wright

Tracy never wanted to leave Wrightwood.

Jane doesn’t want to stay. She doesn’t want to see this project to the end. She doesn’t want to be married to me. She doesn’t want me. “She left, Ma. Even if she was my heartbeat, I’m not hers.”

I turn for the front door and exit the big house. There’s a place I need to visit, and my presence is long overdue.

+ + +

“Hey.” I stand on the narrow grass strip, staring down at the cold stone. I don’t expect a response. Even if she was alive, she might not talk to me. It’s been nearly twenty-five years since I’ve been back here. The day of her funeral, I left and never glanced in the rearview mirror.

At the time, I’d been on a mission to right another wrong in my life—a father I didn’t know. I was set on a path of destruction. I wanted to ruin the perfect life I surmised he’d had when I’d lost so much.

Then I learned he was dead as well.

I stare at Tracy’s headstone, a small slab, because it’s all we could afford. Who budgets for a funeral when you’re twenty-two years old? She’s buried in the same cemetery as her grandparents. There’s no plot beside her.

Wife. Sister. Daughter. Never a mother. We decided against listing her condition. I didn’t want to add to her parents’ grief, so the coroner respected my wishes not to mention her pregnancy. I couldn’t face the shame that she’d been with my brother. The baby could have been his.

I don’t really know what to say to the person I didn’t grow old with. She didn’t pass twenty-one years of age. She didn’t become the mother she wanted to be or live out the rest of her days in this small town.

My thoughts are an ancient photo album, flipping through fuzzy memories and out-of-focus images. I’m not certain I remember anything clearly.

We were in love. I recall saying it but not the sensation of it. We were so young. Life was ahead of us, or so I thought. We had plans. I had plans.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper into the wind.

The weather is changing. A storm is coming. My thoughts flick back to the town and all Jane’s work painting the storefronts and pressure washing the sidewalks. The rain needs to hold off until everything dries.

Shaking my head, I pull myself back to where I stand, finding my heart thumps for a woman who is alive. As for the girl who has passed away, my heart beats for her as well, but the pulse is a melancholy rhythm of regret cradled within memories. Memories are all I have of her now.

“Hi.”

I flinch at the awareness I’m not alone and turn in the direction of the female voice greeting me.

“I didn’t want to disturb you, but I wanted to drop these off.”

I stare at Ainsley, Tracy’s younger sister, as she holds a bundle of sunflowers. She hoists the bouquet upward. “Last of the season, I suspect.”

“I haven’t been here since . . .” Since the funeral. A husband should bring flowers to his late wife’s grave. “I guess I wasn’t a very good husband.”

I don’t know what flowers Jane likes. A man should know what kind of flowers his wife likes.

“Oh, no one faults you. Life moves on.” Ainsley steps forward, and I move aside so she can place the bundle beside the headstone. We both stare down at Tracy’s name.

Tracy Jean Wright.

The first Mrs. Wright.

“People were surprised when you just disappeared, though,” Ainsley states, and I glance at her. Her head remains bowed toward her sister’s marker. “No one expected you to stay in this small town, Mach. You were too big for it, but people had hoped you’d linger a little bit. We needed you to help us grieve.”

She isn’t casting stones but making a statement.

“I just needed to get out sooner rather than later. Everything was so messed up.”

“I get that. That you had to go, and Tracy accepted that about you. She knew you were meant for bigger things. She worried she wasn’t enough.”

My gaze remains on Ainsley, and she finally looks over at me, offering me a timid smile. “She loved you so much. She just wanted to be your everything.”

Anger rolls through my veins. “Apparently, I wasn’t enough. She wanted to stay with Myles.”