Page 92 of Roads Behind Us
But mostly I knew Candy was still around because Bax didn’t make a decision without asking me first. He always wanted to know what I thought or how I might tackle a problem. He sought my opinion in all things, and I felt Candy’s love then.
And it was hard not to see Duo in Stu. Or at least I imagined Duo would’ve been like Stu. I still couldn’t believe everyone had agreed to keep the name. But Bax had said that Stu’s daddy had given him his name, so if it was the only thing Stu would have of his dad, we were going to honor it. But I’d looked it up, and Dixon had been wrong about the meaning of Stu’s name. The name Stuart didn’t mean that he had a guardian looking out for him; it meant that he was the guardian, the steward of a family. And it was fitting, because Stu had reconnected the Lees easily.
Dixon was in the wind. No one had heard from him. Abey thought he might be in California for a while, and then the Portland, Oregon area. She’d been searching, but so far to no avail.
Dixon’s absence in the Lee family’s lives and the way it made them all ache was plain to see, but they never said a word of it around Stu. He was only ten months old, so he wouldn’t have understood, but it was an unspoken rule.
Instead, we filled Stu’s days with laughter and snuggles, kisses and hours spent playing in the dirt, taking him for rides in the skid steer, and chasing all the farm animals he could ever want to pet.
Anyone looking in from the outside thought Bax was Stu’s bio dad. They looked so much alike, the color of their hair and eyes, and the way Stu laughed when Bax did something silly or when he’d toss Stu in the air, catch him, and blow wet raspberries on his pudgy, round belly, like Bax was the most important person in Stu’s life. In that baby’s eyes, Bax was everything.
He was in my eyes too.
And already, people mistook me for Stu’s mama. We still had no idea who his birth mother was really, besides that her name was Kellie Gale. Kel. Abey had found her expired driver’s license photo and a mugshot from when she was arrested two years ago for driving under the influence in Omaha, Nebraska. Somehow, Dixon had come up with the money for her bail. It was the only thread connecting Dixon and Kellie that Abey had been able to find, besides Stuey’s birth certificate, but the addresses and information were old now. Useless.
God, did Kellie have any idea what she was missing by not being in Stu’s life?
So much!
I wasn’t so selfish to think Kellie wasn’t an important part of Stu’s story. She was his mother, but I was his mama.
In the quiet nights, I felt it in my bones when he’d cry and I’d rock him back to sleep, or when I’d give him a bath before bed, and we’d splash and giggle together. I felt it when he was feeling shy or scared and he’d tuck his little face into my neck and hold onto me tight.
Funny how those small things added up to something so overwhelmingly huge: motherhood.
Stuey began to babble and baby talk around nine months old, and last week, when he called out “mamamam” to get my attention because I had looked away while I fed him pureed bananas, I knew it was true.
Just like we’d promised each other, Bax and I had figured things out. Every day brought a new challenge, but it also brought more smiles and kisses. More love, and it was all I’d ever wanted.
Bax referred to me as Stu’s mama all the time, and even Athena claimed me as her mom occasionally. The first time she’d slipped and called me “Mama,” she’d cried and I’d cried right along with her. Then she said she wanted to call me Step-Bea. Which was weird but kind of adorable. But still, when she was upset or angry about something happening at school, it would slip out.
When she broke up with her boyfriend, Logan, after three very serious months of “dating,” which had amounted to the date at the fall dance, a trip to the movies with Shaylene, and a ski day up in the mountains with Logan’s parents, Athena said, “Mama, I dunno what happened. We just have irreconcilable differences.” And every time, when she caught herself calling me Mama, I’d smile and shrug. She knew I wasn’t trying to replace Candy, and that fact bonded us even more than we already were.
Every day, Athena and Stu healed a little bit more of Bax’s heart.
And every night, I worked on it too.
There really was no comparison between Candy and me. Athena told me all the time how different we were. Sometimes it frustrated her, but most of the time, it wasn’t a thought in Athena’s mind. She loved me no matter how different or alike her mama and I were, and she told me all the time how happy she was to have me in her life.
I tried to tell her how she’d changed my life, too, but words never seemed to be enough.
Now, as I looked at her mama’s grave, I said, “Your dumb husband asked me to marry him.” I huffed a breath into the cold April air. “Can you believe that? He wanted me to move to Wisper, so I did. He wanted me to move in with them, so I did. I moved my job. My whole life! Now, he wants me to marry him? And he thinks, what? That I’ll just do what I always do and acquiesce to his wishes? Nuh-uh.”
I swore I could hear Candy’s laugh on the wind. She knew I was full of BS.
“You’re right. Why am I even questionin’ it? I do love him. With my whole heart. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love Bax. Athena and Stu too. So why shouldn’t I marry him?”
Plucking at the grass beneath my hand, I took a deep breath, getting ready to ask the question I’d really come to the cemetery to ask.
“But are you sure you’re okay with it? Are you sure it’s what you want?”
A warm breeze rushed around me, a quiet whoosh that held me within its strength. It lifted the ends of my hair and tangled them gently as it rustled the new green leaves of the nearby trees, making them glitter in the afternoon sun.
I had my answer, even if it was a little too woo-woo for my liking. With everything inside me, I believed Candy could hear me and had given her blessing.
And then a squirrel with tufty ears scurried down the trunk of a budding red maple twenty feet away. He ran right up to me and stood five feet away on his hind legs. He stared into my soul for what felt like forever. It had probably really only been five seconds, but it seemed like time stood still. And then the little critter lowered himself onto all fours and slowly scampered away, looking back every few steps.
Duo had given me his blessing too.
