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“Boy or girl?” she asked, wiping down the countertops and cleaning off the stove.
“Girl. Fifteen and full of sass.” I laughed out. I liked talking about Parker. It was easy when it came to her.
“Oh, I bet she’s as lovely as you,” Beverly said, but made sure to add, “Ya know? My scoots is so good with kiddos. They’ve always loved him.” She stopped cleaning the counter to look at me. “I’m not sure why. He can be standoffish but maybe kids don’t see him like us adults do.”
I smiled thinking of how he’d given Parker that big smile and stayed for dinner and let her and Prisha go on and on, never complaining. It shouldn’t have surprised me at all that Weston was good with kids in general and not just mine after that day. “I suspect you’re right, Ms. Beverly,” I said, turning to the refrigerator to load some of the leftovers inside, but the picture on the top part of it made me stop dead in my tracks.
I stared at the photo. It was of a woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. She had light brown skin and almost black hair, and she was sitting on a beach, a young Weston at her side.
They were leaned together cheek to cheek and looked so in love I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Weston’s smile was enigmatic.
“That’s my Annie.” I heard from right behind me where Beverly was looking over my shoulder at the photo, too.
I didn’t have to wonder who she was. The wedding ring on her finger in the picture was a for sure giveaway.
Weston’s words from the night in his bed flashed through my mind. He was right. You didn’t keep pictures of your ex all over your house. But you did keep pictures of a love that you lost.
“It was cancer. Almost ten years ago. She gave it a good fight for a long time.” Her words were stilted and full of emotion, and I knew that she stopped so she could collect herself. “She was taken from him too soon. Taken from us all.”
I knew that story all too well. I reached up, touching Annie’s face. She was beautiful and looked so happy. It was sad. It broke my heart for them all.
Weston’s words about how there was never enough time to say goodbye settled heavily in my chest, my heart aching at the weight of it.
“I’m going to walk Emily out, okay, Mom?” I heard and turned my head to find Weston standing in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the doorjamb like he’d been there the whole time. I let my hand fall away from Annie’s face, feeling embarrassed I’d touched her. I hoped he wasn’t upset about what his mother told me. I hoped he didn’t think I was being nosey or spying.
Beverly squeezed me goodbye and Alan gave me a wave from the kitchen table. I followed Weston across the yard, silence between us, for the first time not comforting but deafening instead.
He opened the door to my truck and I grabbed the keys out of my jeans pocket and climbed inside, slamming the door.
He stood there right outside the door, so I rolled my window down and gave him a smile. “Thanks for dinner.”
“Thanks for the pot pie,” he countered, looking too serious.
“It was the least I could do. You did fix my truck and mow my lawn.”
He studied my face like he did that first night in the bar. Like I was a puzzle he wanted to figure out. And then like he couldn’t help himself, he brought his hand up to my face and cradled the side of it, rubbing his rough thumb over the apple of my cheek. “Night, Slugger.”
“Night, Weston,” I said, giving my truck a crank.
He backed away from the truck, and I rolled the window up and pulled out onto the road. I stupidly looked back in the rearview mirror to see Weston standing there, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched.
I let out a breath I’d been holding and touched the spot on my cheek that he had, feeling sad.
Because somehow that whole thing felt strangely like goodbye.
“Reeves, pass the garlic bread, man,” Johnson said from the other end of the counter. I lifted the giant plate of bread that probably had forty pieces on it and passed it to Ledgers on my right, who then sent it down the big counter at the firehouse.
I didn’t know whose sweet, wonderful wife had brought in dinner tonight, but I was more than thankful. Because there wasn’t one of us here who could make spaghetti and meatballs like this.
We all wolfed down our food for a few, the big kitchen and dining area weirdly quiet. The only time this place wasn’t bustling with activity was when we were all stuffing our faces.
The last good meal I’d had before this one was the leftover chicken pot pie in my fridge after my parents and Emily had ambushed me a week ago.
Damn, that pot pie had been good.
But the company that night had been even better.
I almost smiled thinking about Emily and my parents, the complete antics that had been going on.
