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The conversation lulled, and awkwardness settled in. This was my cue to go. See what Hudson wanted. Do anything else.
“You and Evie.” Elaina said before I could.
Uh-oh. “What about her?”
“I can see her normal graveyard spot from the front desk. We kind of keep an eye on each other, so I know when she shows up there. Who she leaves with…”
As in me, the other night. “Okay?” I could guess any number of things she was getting at, but it would be easier if Elaina just said it.
She twisted a small piece of bubble wrap, making a series of tiny pops. “It’s not of my business—”
Right. Everything here is everyone’s business.
“But Gage isn’t going to take it well if he finds out the two of you are… hooking up,” Elaina said. “Do with that information what you will.”
Been there, done that. And now I was thinking about last night again. How good it was. How incredible everything with the three of us when I stopped pushing back. “He knows.”
“Ah.” Elaina ducked her head.
And now random bits of all my past overlapped. Memories of Tony swirling around those of my time here. With Evie. With Sawyer. All the things that had happened in such a short amount of time, in this town I shouldn’t even be in.
“How did you lose him?” Elaina asked, and I knew we’d moved on from Gage and Evie and back to Tony. “I know we’re not supposed to bring it up, but…”
But she understood better than most how it felt.
“Cancer. Fast. Invasive.” That still hurt to say. So much. Like a knife to the heart.
“So you got to say goodbye.”
More memories. More muddled thoughts. “I did. You?”
“He was Army. Bomb disposal. One of his attempts went bad. I never…” She dragged in another shaky breath. “Before it happened, when he shipped out, I told him like always that I’d see him when he came home, and he never did.” A whimper slipped from her throat. “Sorry. I never talk about this. No one here gets it.”
Some of them probably did, and even more would be willing to listen, but I knew what she meant. “Me neither.”
“He hated goodbyes,” Elaina said. “They were too final. He’d always say I’ll see you later.”
We were here now. Knee-deep in the past, and I didn’t see either of us leaving before we were done with whatever we each needed to face. “Before Tony passed, he made me promise…” I shouldn’t be talking about this. I didn’t want to dive into it.
“Promise what?”
“To keep living. To not stop because he was gone.” The conversation with Gage twisted with Tony’s words. Gage’s taunting from when we were drunk. You’re doing something you hate… “Tony made me promise that if I found someone new, that I’d love them.” Saying it out loud, reliving it in this way, was an unpleasant combination of ripping off a bandage and putting a cold compress on a fresh sunburn.
Elaina choked on her laugh. “We didn’t quite have that. Every time he deployed, I had to promise to wait for him and only him. I always told him I would, and I always did.”
Which meant she was still waiting.
“But you both thought he was coming home.” I was talking to myself as much as her. “I knew Tony wasn’t. I might as well have promised him I’d wait anyway, the way I live.”
“But you don’t have to.”
“Neither do you,” I said.
She gave a quick shake of her head. “Maybe.”
“Mom.” Kurt pushed into the lobby and his call filled the room.
Like flipping a switch, Elaina replaced grief with a smile. Any hint of tears or the past was gone. “Hey, kiddo, how was school?”
