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I step into the rain again and let the cool water soak into my flesh.
There’s no point in reliving the past.
Maybesare just as useless asalmosts.
“That was quick,” Paul says as I slip off my backpack and slide into the passenger’s seat. He ducks his head, looking beyond the rain and toward the house. “You got no one to say goodbye to? No one to see you off?”
Shaking my head, I slide a hand along the goosebumps on my arm and ignore the dull ache in my chest. “I’ve said all my goodbyes.”
“Okay, then.” He watches me a moment, his stare making me shrink in my seat. “Ready?”
I reach into my pocket and pull out my pendant before buckling in. “Ready.”
Before Paul’s even made it out of the driveway, my phone alerts me to a text.
Maggie:So… what are you doing?
Jamie:Just got in the car.
She responds with an entire row of crying emojis.
Frowning, I start a reply:
Jamie:I’ll miss you so much, Mags. You’ve been
Tears are already welling in my eyes, and I don’t even know how to end the sentence.You’ve been…what? My saving grace? My best friend the past week? Iknowwhat Iwantto tell her; I just… I don’t know how to.
Last night, as I watched the minutes tick by, I kept thinking about the one question I would ask God if I was ever at Heaven’s gates. I wish I could change my answer. I don’t care ifHeknows my mother or not. The truth is,Iwant to know my mother—who she was before her disease got the best of her. I want to know what she would’ve been like had that disease not stolen so much of her soul. I want to know if she’d be anything like Maggie… because that’s what I hope for.
“That ain’t dahlia petals around that pendant, is it?” Paul asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
My gaze snaps to his before dropping to the pendant held loosely in my grasp. “Yeah, it is. You like dahlias?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head, both hands on the steering wheel. “Couldn’t tell you much about the flower, but I can tell you about the metal and how I made that pendant for a love-sick young man a few years back.”
Eyes wide in shock, I sit taller. “You’re Peg—“ I cut myself off. “I mean, Jimmy!Paul, you made this for me?”
His shoulder lifts. “Well, I didn’t know it was for you at the time. Big H came into my workshop and asked me to make it, and then junior showed up a couple of weeks later to pick it up. Man, his face when he saw it—you’d think I’d just handed over a million dollars. He told me it was for a very special girl in his life.” He throws me a smile as he glances at me. “I thought it was for little Mia, you know? Those two were always together. But when I asked him, he said no. He said it was for his… his…” He squints, as if trying to remember. And I inhale sharply, as if I’d forgotten to breathe. “That’s right,” he says, nodding to himself, “hissunshine and solace.”
“Oh, my god.”
“Said he was going to give it to you when he got back… when he was going to tell you he loved you for the first time. How did that—”
“Go back!”
“What?”
“Go back!” I repeat, sitting forward to see what’s ahead. I can’t see much past the rain, and I have no idea where Holden’s driveway is. “I need to—”
Paul flicks on the blinker and turns off the main road. “I already got you covered, darlin’.”
Within a minute, he’s pulling up just short of Holden’s house, and I’m running, slipping through the mud to get to his door. I slam my fist against it, over and over. I don’t even care that there’s no shelter, that every second I stand here only drenches me more. “Holden!”
The door opens a crack. Just enough to see his barely awake face and the right half of his body. “Jamie? What are you doing—”
“I never gave up on us!” I shout, hoping he can hear me through his morning fog and heavy rain pelting down on the tin roof.
“What are you talking about?”
