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“What Owen was about to say before…Do I look like him?”
She shakes her head and then glances up at the ceiling, or maybe towards Heaven. “You have no idea.” Her brow creases before she asks, “Do you want to see a picture?”
“Of course!”
Grace gestures for me to follow to her bedroom. “I had a few pictures framed, hoping someday I could show them to you.”
And the idea that she’s been waiting, preparing and planning for this moment has me welling up again. But it’s with gratitude and relief, not sadness.
She takes a box down from a shelf in her closet. “Here,” she says, unwrapping the first frame and handing it to me. It’s a picture of the two of them, a selfie where they’re sitting on the bumper of a truck, facing one another.
“He loved you, and you loved him.”
“With all my heart.”
There’s no denying it. His eyes, her smile. They are happiness personified, sharing a look that says you’ve found your way home and realize there’s no where else you’d rather be.
She hands me another, and I notice that Grace stares at the one I just handed back to her. I wonder what it was like for her. To lose him. To find out you’re having a baby and the man you loved will never be coming home to you. The life you thought you’d have…gone.
She points to the one I’m holding. “He was showing off in that one.” Damien is holding a fishing pole in one hand with a pitifully small fish at the end of the line while flexing his other bicep muscle. “Damien took me camping a few times, and those trips to the river were amazing. He could set up camp, catch a fish, clean it, cook it over an open fire and serve it up.” She shakes her head and then starts to laugh. “One time he even packed cilantro and limes for a marinade.”
“Wow.” I’m responding to the picture more than her words. Staring at this stranger’s face, I see the brown hair, the dark eyes, but I don’t see me. “Do you really think I look like him?”
She nods slowly. “When you smile and you’re happy, your eyes sparkle the way his did. I noticed it before when Liam said something that made you laugh.”
“This is the last one. It’s just of me,” she says this as if it makes the picture less valuable or important, while I’m dying to get a glimpse of the person she was back then. “He took it. I only saved it because I like how I came out in it. Back then, I always thought of myself as fat, but he made me feel gorgeous for the first time in my life.” She reads my skepticism for what it is. “I trained in classical ballet from the time I was seven. ‘You’re getting fat,’ was my teacher’s way of saying, ‘Good morning.’”
“That’s—”
“Disturbing. I know.”
“How long was this before he left?”
“Three weeks, maybe? I wanted you to see them so you’d understand…So you’d know you came from a place of so much love. I have no doubt he would have come back to me, and I know he would have been the absolute best father. He was robbed of the life he deserved.
“Back then, I’d think to myself that he was probably looking down, so disappointed in me, so angry at me for not fighting. I’d go back to the river and talk to him sometimes. When I moved back up north, I’d go to the river there, too. It was part therapy, part confessional. I think he’d forgive me, and after a lot of work, I finally came to a point where I was able to forgive myself. I hope someday you can forgive me, too.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if I got pregnant at nineteen, so I’d be a hypocrite to criticize you.”
“If I can give youonepiece of advice, I’d just tell you to never go it alone, no matter what problem you’re facing. You think you’ll be disappointing people, letting them down, but the people who love you will always be in your corner and be there to help you. I couldn’t see that at the time.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
SARAH
Grace looks at the clock on her stove as she sets a kettle down to make tea. “It’s already six o’clock. I feel like we’re on borrowed time.”
I know what she means. Grace doesn’t know the first thing about me, and I could ask her questions for the next who knows how long and still be left wanting.
I give her all the bullet points. She knows I ride. Knows all about Shadow. I told her about my friends, leaving out the part about my mother’s hand in wrangling those relationships for me.
“So how did you meet Liam?”
“His uncle manages the stable at my club. His uncle has known me since I was eight, when I started to ride. Liam took a job at the club this past spring, so I met him there.”
“And you said this is a new thing…”
She’s fishing and I don’t mind. I want to talk about Liam, do anything to sort through the crazy swirl of emotions I have when he comes to mind. “I was dating someone else. A guy my parents,” I pause to clarify, “really someone mymotherapproved of.” I answer the question she’s not asking, “We have money, his family has money…”
