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ANNIE
The morning after we’d had dinner with Stella and Jasper, I woke before Atticus and slipped from his bed as quietly as I could. Scout, who had slept on the end of the bed, raised her head.
For a second, I watched Atticus in slumber. His tousled hair and stubble did nothing to diminish his beauty. I pulled on the jeans and sweater I’d had on the night before and silently motioned for Scout to come with me. Once we were out in the hallway, and I’d closed the door softly, the two of us padded toward my room.
“Just wait a minute, and I’ll get you some breakfast and then we’ll go out. Or should it be the other way around?”
Scout sat on her haunches and tilted her head.
“All right, we’ll go out first.”
Scout led the way to the creek, with me following behind, warm in Atticus’s jacket. The sun had only just risen, and the air was frigid. In no time at all my cheeks and nose had numbed. If my California friends could only see me now.
Speaking of home, I’d communicated to Celeste only through texts, leaving her calls unanswered. I assured her I wasfine but that I needed some time away from all the drama. She wrote back she understood and would take care of whatever she could for me. Her parting text had been:I DEMAND answers to what’s happening with the Billionaire Cowboy.
I’d wanted to write back not to call him by that stupid nickname. However, I didn’t want to engage further. It would be too hard to explain how right it felt to be with him. She wouldn’t understand.
Scout and I reached the creek, and she took her usual drink while I stood watching the pink sky as the sun rose. When she was done, we walked back up toward home. Atticus wasn’t yet awake, so I fed Scout and then suggested we take a little ride. “Want to go see my mom?”
Scout whimpered. Not a resounding yes, but too bad. I wanted company.
Minutes later, with Scout riding shotgun in Atticus’s truck, we were on our way toward the cemetery. We parked in the lot and walked between the gravestones until we found the family plot where my mother was buried next to her mother.
I looked at the headstone.
Jennifer Mae Wilson Armstrong
Wife and Mother
1974-2003
Wife and mother? My dad had chosen an interesting two words to describe her, given the way it had all gone down.
What had it cost him to choose something kind over cruel?
I knelt next to the cement stone and wiped snow and ice from the top. Closing my eyes, images of the day we buried her flashed before my eyes like photographs in one of the scrapbooks she’d made up until about six months before her death. Had that been when the diagnosis had come to her? Is that when she’d started seeing Rex Sharp in secret?
I knelt in the snow next to her grave, even though I knew my knees would get wet.
Atticus and the rest of his family had not attended the graveside service. Instead, it was only Dad and me standing near the coffin with the pastor saying a few words. There had been no memorial. No one who had loved her could bear to do it. I mean, what were my dad and Stella supposed to do? How did you say goodbye to someone who had hurt you in that way?
I brushed my gloved fingers over her name. “Hey, Mom. It’s me. I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I wanted to come see you.” I swiped at the tears that warmed my cold cheeks.
Scout, who had been sniffing around the cemetery, came to sit next to me, resting her head on my knee. I absently stroked her head with my gloved hand.
“I guess I want to say I’m sorry I haven’t been here to see you since that day. It’s just that your betrayal cut so deep. I couldn’t forgive you. But now, I guess things are different. You had an illness that made you do things you might never have done otherwise. I don’t know. The truth is, I never knew you. You were my mom, and the most important person in my life, but you were a mystery to me. It would only have been later that I could have gotten to know you from the eyes of a grown person, rather than a kid. What did you like to do? Did you have any dreams? It’s weird to think you were younger than I am now when you died. That’s hard to get my head around. Something pulled me here without my full understanding of why. Now I know. It was to learn the truth about what really happened. I told Dad. He was as surprised as me. He deserved better. You did too, I suppose. And Stella and her boys, too.”
I was quiet for a moment, wiping tears with a tissue I’d left in my pocket.
“Mom, I think I’m in love with Atticus. Or maybe I never stopped loving him. Do you know we’d promised to marry each other when we grew up?”
Scout shifted slightly so she was lying all the way against my lap.
“What did you see in Rex Sharp? Was it just the illness, or did you truly love him? Was he the way you wanted to spend your last days instead of with me? Atticus says some things can’t be answered. That we’re obligated only to lean into all the questions of the universe with the hope that someday we’ll understand. Even though I don’t know what really happened, I had to come and tell you that I forgive you.”
A great weight seemed to lift off my shoulders. Scout raised her head and whined. “I know, girl. It’s a lot. But I’m okay. I’m going to be okay.”
I straightened, brushing snow from my knees and shins. A movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention. It was Stella, carrying a bouquet of flowers. She stopped about five feet from me, obviously as startled as I.
