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“I don’t want to bury him here.” The moment it’s out of my mouth I know it’s the right call.
“Okay.” Nate comes closer.
I haven’t taken my eyes off the flowers we brought. A huge bouquet of daisies. They were her favorite.
“I don’t want people to see his name and then look over at my mom and think ‘that poor woman.’ I want her to have dignity. They weren’t in love for years, you know,” I say, half talking to him and half talking to myself. “They were more like business partners. There was a chill in the air whenever he came home from work. We all noticed. The jumpy house staff. Walt, when he was there, would climb into himself and disappear. That’s how Mom did it too.”
“And you dealt with it by being angry.”
I nod. Mostly, that’s true. “It hurt to feel hurt.”
“Yeah. It does.”
I turn and look up at him. His hair blows in the breeze. His hands are deep in his suit pants pockets, and his tie kicks from a particularly forceful gust of wind. He knows what it’s like to hurt. His own mother disowned him—after being paid off by the Owens to take custody of him.
“Do you hate him? Your biological father?” I ask.
He pulls in a chest-expanding inhalation and looks around the cemetery. “I used to hate him. Now I feel sorry for him.”
“What about your mom?”
He pulls one hand from his pocket and pushes the sleeve up. Plucking one of the fat beads on the bracelet between finger and thumb, he says, “She gave me this. One of the only gifts I remember her giving to me. I keep it because it reminds me that, at least once, she cared.” My heart aches for him. He frowns. “I don’t hate her. I feel betrayed. On some level. On another, healthier level, I understand she can’t help it.”
“It’s exhausting, isn’t it? To keep making excuses for their behavior when it affects you so much?”
I turn back to my mom’s grave and a tidal wave of emotion slams into me. I’d like to think it came out of nowhere, but I know better. It’s been lodged in my ribcage for most of my life.
“She loved expensive shoes.” It’s such a dumb thing to say. “We had that in common.”
An audible sob wrenches from my throat and I’m in Nate’s arms a second later. I hang on tight in case the storm inside me, like the wind whipping through this graveyard, blows me away.
His lips pressed into my hair, he keeps me steady.
I let him, painting his shirt with a fresh batch of tears.
