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“I’m not saying I’ll never look, but I hear what you’re saying, and you’re right. Now is not the time.”
“Here’s what I know for sure. You had a life with him, a life that you loved and cherished. Those are the memories you need to hold on to now. The rest of it had nothing to do with you.”
“Didn’t it, though?”
“No, it didn’t. It would matter very much if he was still alive. What does it matter now? He’s gone, and you’re left to finish raising his children alone. Why should you have terrible thoughts in your head about their father while you’re doing that? I mean, what we know is awful enough. The dirty details aren’t going to make it better.”
“Thank you for being the voice of reason.”
“I understand the need to know everything that happened. I’ve been that way as the case against the driver who killed Nat and the girls works its way through court. I’m obsessed. I want every single detail, and some of them made an already unbearable situation a thousand times worse, such as finding out that his friends knew he was loaded and did nothing to stop him from driving. I didn’t need to know that.”
She rests her head on my shoulder. “No, you didn’t.”
“That’s what I mean… Just when we think something hurts as much as it possibly can, something comes along that makes that pain seem like nothing. You have to protect yourself from that, Iris. You’ve worked so hard to get where you are now, and you’ve been such an inspiration to so many people just starting this journey. I don’t want to see you set yourself backward by accessing information that won’t change anything. Mike will still be dead, and you’ll still be here to carry on without him, but with information that’ll make your journey more excruciating than it needs to be.”
“I hate him a little bit today.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“There was this one time when we were on a family vacation at the beach when he got called to work for something in Denver. I wonder if that’s when the baby was born.”
“Again, what does it matter? It’s in the past. Please don’t drive yourself crazy asking questions like that. Having those answers will hurt you more than help you.”
“What am I going to do if she sues me?”
“You’ll get a lawyer, like Joy, to fight her tooth and nail. I wouldn’t want to go up against Joy in a courtroom.”
That draws a laugh from her. “Me neither. Girlfriend is fierce.”
“She’ll make it go away.”
“Maybe I need to start accepting some of the sponsorship offers so I’ll have extra money to fight a lawsuit.”
“Wait to see what happens. She may be advised that there’s no point suing you because Mike’s estate has already been closed. It has, right?”
“A while ago.”
“The time to sue has passed. She might be able to go after some of the insurance money he had through work, but with him being blamed for the crash, that gets trickier, too.”
“I’d planned to put the rest of the insurance money away for the kids’ college funds, but I probably won’t get it now that they’re blaming him for the accident.”
“You’ll have what you need for the kids.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. I don’t have kids to put through college anymore. I can help you with that.”
“Gage… Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“You’re not paying for my kids to go to college.”
“I can if I want to.”
“No, you can’t.”
“We can have that fight in twelve years.”
