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“So what did you dream about as a kid?” Declan asked. He could imagine her. Sweet. As smart as a whip. Full of hopes and dreams. Someone who lived by the rules and never colored outside the lines.
Annie looked up at the sky. “All I ever dreamed about was having a family of my own. My mom died when I was two. Gram always said that she died of a broken heart.”
“Is that what you believe?” Declan asked. In all his life, he had never heard of a single person dying of heartbreak.
She nodded. “Yes. I do. My dad captured my mother’s heart, but he didn’t stick around very long. Even though she was pregnant with his child, he never bothered to marry my mom. Even though he abandoned us, she still loved him until the day she died. He charmed his way right into her heart. So...because my Gram was a single mother, then my mom, I always wanted to be married with a family.” Her voice cracked. She bowed her head. “That probably sounds silly to you.”
His throat clogged up. “No, it doesn’t sound silly at all.” A sharp sensation pierced his chest, and he found himself wishing that he could give her all her hopes and dreams wrapped up in a big bright bow. If only it were that simple. If only he could.
“I found a lot of my dreams at the library. Books carried me away to other worlds. When I was reading Jane Eyre, I became her. And I lived vicariously through her adventures. Reading about foreign lands made me dream of traveling all over the world. It made me want to live courageously. Knowing that books can transform lives made me want to become a librarian.” She turned toward him, her face lit up by the soft glow of the moon.
“What about you? Were your dreams always filled with flying?” Annie asked. “Or did you aspire to take the medical world by storm or become a firefighter?”
“From the time I knew what airplanes did, I wanted to be a pilot. When I was a kid, I used to dream about touching the sky. Once I flew my first plane, I was hooked. Soaring up in the air made me feel connected to something much larger than myself.” He flashed back to some of his first flying outings with his father. In his eyes, Colin O’Rourke had been the coolest, fiercest pilot in the whole wide world. He never would have been able to imagine his father’s dramatic fall from grace or how the man he adored would change so drastically.
“I’ve never been able to put into words why I love being up there so much. All I know is that when I’m up there, thousands of feet off the ground, I feel freer than I’ve ever felt with my legs firmly planted on the ground. And each and every time, I’ve known God was with me.” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it very well in words. It’s just a feeling, I guess.”
“It sounds a lot like faith to me. He’s always with us,” Annie reminded him. “Even when we think He might not be.”
“I’ve had a lot of moments in my life when I’ve doubted God’s presence. Sometimes things happen that are so mind-numbingly awful, it makes you think you’re crazy to believe at all.”
Annie nodded. “I know. After Gram’s accident, I kept asking God why He left me all alone. I had to remind myself that He had blessed me with her in the first place. Grief is the price we pay for loving and being loved. And given the choice, I’d choose love every single time.”
Her words served as a sucker punch. All of his feelings were riding right on the surface tonight. And now, his thoughts were gravitating toward the huge losses in his own life. The death of his mother had left a terrible wound. Even now, some twenty years later, there was still a festering sore surrounding her death.
He locked gazes with Annie. “I was eight when my mother died. It was hard to wrap my head around losing her so suddenly. One minute she was tucking us into bed, and the next we were being woken up in the middle of the night to a nightmare come to life. All I really remember is this overwhelming feeling of grief and sadness that hung over us like a dark cloud.” He took a deep breath to fortify himself. This wasn’t a topic he ever discussed, not even with Finn, who had been just as deeply affected by the loss of their mother.
“We didn’t talk about it in our house. I heard whispers here in town. Hushed voices. But back at home, it was almost as if she had fallen into this big black hole and was whisked away from us.”
Annie reached out and squeezed his hand. “Eight is such a tender age, Declan. Way too young to grapple with such a devastating loss.”
He swung his gaze toward Annie. Her eyes were full of so much compassion. He prayed she wouldn’t be horrified by what he was about to say next. It was pressing on his heart to unburden him
self.
“Her death should never have happened. It was senseless and stupid and it tore me apart. My parents had both been drinking that night. Finn and I were asleep in our beds. They were goofing around in the backyard with a rifle, trying to shoot tin cans. My dad made some stupid comment about shooting a raccoon that ran across the yard, and she pulled the gun away from him. It went off and shot her in the stomach. She died right there in the yard.”
Declan would never forget being woken up by Finn or the desperate cries of his father as the tragedy was unfolding. He’d never told a single soul about how he had wandered into the backyard and witnessed his father cradling his dying mother in his arms. No, that particular memory had been locked away inside the vault, never to see the light of day. He had never even shared it with Boone. As it was, it had already been seared into his memory for all eternity. His lovely, kind mother taking her last breaths with his father’s name on her lips.
“Oh, Declan. I’m so sorry. That’s horrific. And to lose her so suddenly like that is unimaginable,” she said. Annie sniffed back tears.
“I wish I could remember more about her. Her name was Cindy. She was funny. And she used to make us peanut-butter cookies after school. And she used to fly down Cupid’s Hill like lightning without an ounce of fear. She was my mom, and I loved her very much.” He let out a ragged sigh. “I hate being part of something so ugly.”
“I hope you know that what happened that night doesn’t define you. It sounds like it was a terrible, tragic accident.”
He stared off into the distance. “One that ripped our childhood apart. From that day on, I never felt completely safe again.”
“That’s understandable,” she said in a soft voice. “Life as you knew it came to a crashing halt.”
“My father—” Declan began. He looked shaken. Annie reached out and squeezed his hand through his gloves.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” she said in a soft voice.
“It’s okay,” he said, a sheen of moisture in his eyes. “After my mom died, he wasn’t a father to us. He went inward to a place where we couldn’t reach him. My parents were childhood sweethearts. Her dying like that buried him under a mountain...of loss, I guess you could say.”
“And guilt, too, I imagine,” she murmured. “It wasn’t his fault, but he may have assumed ownership of it.”
“He started drinking a lot and road-tripping, sometimes for weeks at a time. He began hanging out with a rough crowd in Anchorage. He got mixed up in a store burglary that went horribly wrong. One of his cohorts shot a store keeper. My dad was sentenced to ten years for being an accomplice. His sentence was cut down to eight for good behavior.”
