AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his massive legs. “So, I have a niece.”
It isn’t really a question, so I don’t answer. Everything’s silent and still in the cool bite of the morning air except my gut, rolling and churning with warning before the guilt oversaturates it.
How am I going to be able to pack up my daughter and leave right after I show her that she has a huge family right here in Raston? Like stepping through a tree line into a wide-open meadow I suddenly realize how much more complicated this is than I originally thought.
“Well,” Jet slaps his thighs and stood. “Get your work gloves, Sweetheart, because you have some shit to do.”
Millie stops and frowns at Jet. She hates swearing. I have no idea where she got it from, because I swear like a drunken sailor who hit the tavern after six months at sea.
“You said a grown-up word,” I say to Jet with a laugh. “She doesn’t like grown up words.”
That’s what I called them when Millie was little. I refused to call them bad words. They aren’t bad. No curse word is bad in and of itself. The intention behind the word is what makes it hurtful. And that’s all to blame on the speaker, not the word.
Jet seems a little shamed which is hilarious on a man of his stature. Jet is an anomaly and I always liked him for it. He always keeps people guessing with his odd mix of traits.
“Is Xan coming out to help?” I ask, casually. Or at least it’s supposed to sound casual.
“Do you want him to?” Jet responds with zero hesitation.
My cheeks flare and I jog up the steps, slamming the screen door behind me to get changed.
#
Themidday sun burns my bare shoulders and sweat sticks to my white-blonde hair to my forehead. I wipe at my face and lean against the edge of the greenhouse. Muscles hurt in places I didn’t know I have muscles and Jet moves around as if he’s doing some light tidying, like carrying an eight-foot beam on his shoulder.
“Do you ever tire?” I ask and he grins as he passes, tossing the beam in the trailer he parked in the back yard.
“Yeah, I just don’t like to stop moving.” He gestures to me, leaning as if I were slacking. Pinching my mouth together in annoyance I kick off the wall and get back to work. We’ve cleaned up all the glass—I mean I cleaned up all the glass—and took a shop vac to the stone path that surrounded the little run-down building. I pick little weeds and bits of grass that grew between the stones until Jet scolds me for nit picking.
We’re tearing the thing down so I don’t need to do it one blade of grass at a time, apparently. But the little path is cute, and I remember picking out the stones. Dad took the truck out to the Little Point Creek, which wasn’t little at all, and Mom and I would point out the stones we wanted, and Dad would haul them to the truck. That was shortly after mom was starting her research on climate change and the boreal forest. The greenhouse was a nursery for her trees where she tested out how they adapted to changes in the air quality.
I move to a small corner where a long planter bench sits rotting and overgrown with weeds. Beneath it are boxes of tools and supplies my dad was unwilling to deal with. I don’t think he stepped through this door once since she died. Even before that. This was mom’s space. If I was in here with her, I would sit on the stool in the corner and read or draw. I liked to be in here with her. It was the only time I ever saw her softer side, where her shoulders would relax and the tension she carried would drift up to the glass ceiling waiting until just before she left to reattach to her.
A strange sadness hits me and I drag out a few boxes from under the bench. A sadness that my mother was gone, physically, but also that it felt like she was never really here, that I barely knew her. She kept herself locked up and guarded and as an adult I see it so clearly and it breaks my fucking heart.
My child brain assumed she didn’t care about who I really was, just pushed me to be who she wanted me to be. But kneeling in the dirt surrounded by the things she loved I see her more clearly than I ever have. Because people are not simple. They’re not easy to understand. There is so much more to her that I never understood and even now her loneliness hangs heavy in this space, growing in the warmth of the sun, blanketing the dry cracked dirt that still sits in the planters.
Tears burn behind my eyes and a large but gentle hand on my shoulder grounds me in the present. Jet crouches down beside me with concern in his grey eyes.
“You okay?”
I clear my throat and wiped at my eyes even though there aren’t any tears. Tendrils of embarrassment slither under my skin and I nod. Jet doesn’t push me to talk. He simply takes the box of gardening tools from my hands and leaves me alone.
Jet’s always been good like this. Xan is the thinker, Jet is the feeler, and the youngest Ryker brother Zeke—well, I don’t know what he became.
The box left in front of me is filled with random things that don’t have much to do with gardening. It almost feels like a memento box. Small objects, unrelated to each other and at the bottom a folder that I scoop out. The folder falls open and bits of paper flutter down around me. Notes. Two different kinds of handwriting. Almost like a reflex, I check over my shoulder to be sure I’m alone before I read the note. I’m twenty-six years old and my mother’s dead but still I’m nervous about getting caught snooping through her things.
Tonight? It has to be tonight. I miss you so much.
I read the hasty heavy-handed note four time before picking up another, the writing much more delicate.
I saw you with her today. I hate her. I hate that she gets to touch you, to be with you in public, while I hide in the trees waiting for you.
At this point I’m rooted to the ground in my own shock and curiosity, sifting through the notes so fast I pick up only key words.
I wish she was you...I can’t pretend anymore...I’m sorry I got you were arrested...meet me tonight...where have you been...I need you...I love you...I’m done with her...it’s only you, it’s only ever been you.
I crush the notes in my hand and rest them in my lap. Labored and quick breaths pour through my teeth. The shock of what I read makes way for the realization of what it means.
