Page 15 of Before We Fell

Her small fingers pressed into my shoulders and she sniffed. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeated, kissing her temple. She snuggled against me, arms wrapped around my shoulders as I carried her to the bathroom. She clung to me like a monkey as I started the water, sitting on the edge of the tub.

I filled the tub with just a few inches of warm water. Our midnight baths were quicker than the showers she took before bedtime, and before she climbed in, I gave her another kiss. “Wash up. I’ll go get you dry clothes.”

As she listened, I left the bathroom, leaving the door open and hurried to her room. Moving quickly, I stripped the sheets off her small bed and re-did them with one of the several spares I kept in her closet. I grabbed pajamas from her dresser and kicked her dirty sheets into the hallway.

Then, surprised I hadn’t thought of this before, I hurried to my closet where I’d kept a box of her mother’s things, a box my mom had brought over shortly after we moved to Carlton as a way for Riley to have mementos of her mom. I hadn’t known if she was ready for them. Some days she didn’t even want to look at the framed family photos I had in her room, brought with us from her old house, so I didn’t want to shove more in her face.

At this point, what could it hurt?

I dug through the box, finding an old, brown, faux-leather photo album and hurried back to the bathroom. I walked in, and dropped her clothes on the counter, grabbing the ones she’d discarded into a messy pile on the floor. “Need any help in here?”

I trusted her to shower by herself at night. Amanda had raised her to be pretty independent so I knew she could do it, but during the middle of the night when she was usually half-asleep, I was always more careful.

She said nothing, but through the shower curtain, her head shook that she was okay.

“Come see me in my bed when you’re done, Squirt. Got it?”

A silent, shadowed nod.

I sighed, shoulders drooped. What I wouldn’t give for a whole sentence shouted at me like she’d done to her teacher earlier.

Time.

She needed time.

While she finished up, I tossed her clothes and sheets into the washer and started it. Then I headed back to my room and tugged on a T-shirt before climbing into my bed.

She padded in silently a few minutes later, comb in her hand, tugging at her hair. “I can do that for you,” I said, already trying to reach for her comb to help. She never let me help her, but she couldn’t do it herself quite yet. Her hair was too long, too thick, and I was growing concerned with the tangles.

Her face would twist in pain and more than once she’d thrown an epic tantrum over her hair.

The last time I tried, she’d finally given me an entire sentence. “Only Mommy can do it right!” she screamed hysterically at me.

I’d backed off. My mother had done the same. But soon, we’d have to address it.

She hugged her comb to her chest and climbed into bed next to me.

Then I opened the photo album and she gasped.

It was Amanda’s. She’d grown up on horses. My mom taught her to ride on our ranch and she’d gone on to win dozens of awards and trophies at competitions.

“Your mommy loved horses,” I said, opening it up to a page in the book where Amanda was about Riley’s age, maybe ten or eleven. I knew she knew that. Amanda used to tell her stories all the time about the horses. And the photos helped me think of her favorites.

Some of my clearest memories of Amanda were of her on a horse.

And God I was an idiot, I should have thought of this sooner.

“Want to hear a story about your mommy, Riley?” I held my breath as I waited.

She froze, and then relaxed, almost melting into me. Her head went to my shoulder and I wrapped an arm around her, tugging her close. I pulled up my comforter to cover her as much as I could, and then I grinned.

And then I told her the story. The day where Amanda was learning to jump horses in our outdoor ring but that day she didn’t choose Rosy, the horse she always rode on. She chose Mikey. My horse. The most stubborn horse we had which was why I loved him. And he hated jumping.

Amanda was ten. Dead set on believing she could get that horse to do something he wouldn’t for me. So I let her have him. And I’d never forget that cocky little victorious grin she plastered onto her face as she pranced around the ring, Mikey humoring her and jumping for a few laps.

Until I whistled. She’d been right at a jump and the horse halted. Froze and lowered his head…and sent her flying over his head, right into a pile of mud.

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