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Like when I was fifteen, and she was waking my grumpy ass up and telling me to turn my damn snooze button off and go to school.
“Mama.” I groaned into my pillow then. “Leave me alone.”
“Never,” she said.
“Life is lemon cake, Magnolia Cade.” She said it then. She said it again one last time to me. “And you’re my sweetest part.”
She kissed my cheek.
And she’ll never leave me alone.
CHAPTER FORTY
I didn’t recognize Cade.
Not while she stood in my storm, and I trashed my house at the fury raging inside me over Derek. At all the pain he and Gentry and TJ wreaked upon our lives.
For the first time, I got it. I understood her anger and why she came so close to killing TJ.
If it weren’t for Cade stopping me, I would’ve killed Derek. Just to kill his laughter in my mind. To hurt him back for hurting my sister. For all the women he hurt. To punish him for being a shitty father to the best kid in the world.
But I stopped and finally saw Cade in a new light. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even beautiful. But it was honest. And real. And very human and just like me.
Then I didn’t recognize Cade at the hospital with Mama G. Like she smiled and laughed for her mama. And she talked to me, but she was drifting away. Not even I could reach her. I could feel it on her soft cheek when I last kissed her goodbye.
Cade wasn’t there. She was lost in grief.
Silas and I hung out a lot over the month. We just talked. He helped me with the repairs and window bullshit that had to be fixed on my house.
I don’t regret trashing it. I needed to. I needed to break everything until the anger didn’t own me anymore.
It’s like anger was the one emotion for so long I didn’t let myself feel. It was the most powerful one, and drinking kept it away. Then, when I stopped doing that, it came back.
I blamed Cade for it. I thought all my anger was her fault for what she did to TJ. Or almost did, but Mama G, like the badass she is even in death, was the ultimate one.
I guess I put all my anger on Cade because, deep down, I knew she could take it. She’s strong as hell. She loves me, and I used the excuse of what she did to TJ because I didn’t want to face who was also to blame.
Until I did.
That Derek Baucom piece-of-shit has been obsessed with me. After all the evidence the Sherrif’s office found, it’s worse than I ever imagined. It’s like I’m the reason he hates himself. Like if he could keep hurting me, one day he might feel better.
He was deranged, and the second he raised his gun at Cade’s back to take her from me, too, that was it. I didn’t even feel the bullet through my arm. Fate wasn’t an asshole that night. It did me right. That damn bullet went clean through and didn’t even hit my bone. My bicep isn’t thrilled about it, but it’ll heal.
So will I.
Because TJ is dead, and I’m thankful for that. And Derek Baucom’s in jail and won’t ever see sunlight but for one hour a day for the rest of his life.
My family is safe. And my house can be fixed. But now I gotta fix the one thing that means the most to me.
My Candy Cade.
I still don’t recognize her now.
She’s dressed in black. The irony is she looks so beautiful even at a burial; it’s bittersweet. Her eyes won’t leave Mama G’s coffin, and she won’t let go of her dad’s hand. He’s sitting beside her, eyes glued on the same magnolia casket spray. And I grin, for just a second, up to the hot August sky.
Magnolias.
Mama G loved them. Jeff, Cade’s dad, thought it’d be a great idea to name their beautiful daughter in honor of that. And that beautiful, stunning, incredible daughter gets so damn pissed it’s cute whenever you call her that name or give her those flowers.
