Page 65 of Shake the Habit

“Prunus persica‘Arthur’s Precious Gem.’ It’s resistant to leaf curl and borers, and the fruit is sweet with a long shelf-life.”

“Oh. That sounds good,” I said. “Who’s Arthur?”

“She always liked stories about the knights of the Round Table. Those are the legends of King Arthur in medieval Britain,” he explained. “She developed her own peach.She achieved her lifelong goal.”

I shifted slightly to put my head next to his, to see his face. “Why didn’t she tell anyone? Why didn’t she try sell it or raise a big crop?”

“Not too long after she got the patent, she started to decline. Maybe that was why.”

“Or maybe, she wasn’t satisfied with it,” I suggested. “She doesn’t sound like a person who would have been.”

“No, she wasn’t like that at all. She was very dissatisfied and she always expected disappointment.” His chest rose high up and slowly fell as he sighed.

“I don’t want you to feel that way.”

“Because of what happened today with Sir?” He brushed another piece of hair away from my face. “I’m not worried about that and you don’t have to be, either. He’s not going anywhere.”

“I meant about the safety deposit box,” I corrected. “I know that you were warning me not to get my hopes up, but I got the feeling that you had some hope, too. You were interested in what I found in her desk and when we went through her room, you kept an eye on everything. But you’d hesitated to sort through the mess by yourself, and I think I understand that.”

“What do you understand?” Now his hand cupped my cheek.

“I think you did want to find something but it’s hard to feel let down again and again. What were you looking for?”

I watched him start to frown and his hand came up to cover it, before he returned it to my cheek. “I…” He stopped and looked at me for a few seconds longer before he continued. “I’ve always wondered about my father,” he said. “I thought that somewhere in her mess, my mother might have stashed information about him. I was also afraid to know.”

“Why?”

Caleb didn’t speak and the silence stretched. “I believed that she got pregnant because she was assaulted,” he finally answered. “I think that I’m the product of that.”

“You mean, sexually assaulted,” I said, and he nodded slowly. It was horrible.

“That could have been why she was so angry all the time,” he continued. “She isolated herself from the world.”

“Aunt Paula told me that she was like that as a teenager, too. She was never interested in boys or dating,” I remembered.

“So where did I come from, then? I can’t believe that a person like her would have purposely had a child. It could be the reason that she didn’t like me.”

“There’s no reason why someone wouldn’t like you. You’re wonderful.”

His expression, which had been so serious, brightened a little. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

“Everyone thinks so. Everyone in my family loves you. Sir does, too, and he’s a very good judge of character.”

“He liked that guy Neal, the dog trainer,” Caleb pointed out, and I moved past that.

“Everybody deals with trauma differently. I ran around trying to forget, tempting fate until I’m sure it was sick of me bothering it so much. Maybe something did happen to your mother and she hung on to all the anger and hurt. But she shouldn’t have kept you both isolated. She shouldn’t have treated you badly no matter what had happened in her past, because you deserve so much love.” He deserved more than anyone could ever give him. No one should have hurt him, not ever.

His thumb stroked my cheekbone. “You don’t have to cry about it. If that happened to her, she’s not bothered anymore. And it was years ago for me, too.”

But things didn’t stay in the past like you wanted them to. They returned over and over, sometimes just nibbling at the edges of your thoughts and sometimes ripping into them with jagged shark teeth.

Sir took this moment to shove me with his paw, making more room for himself. It served to push me closer to Caleb, and that was ok.

“He’s not just mine.”

“What?” Caleb asked. “I’m not following.”

“I mean, we keep saying that Sir ismydog, but he loves us both and we both love him. I think he’s ours, like we’re his. I’ll update the information on the chip.”

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