Page 52 of The Heart We Guard
Wind blows through me like ice picks.
I shake my head to concentrate as the alcohol in my blood stream evaporates.
You should know I’m pregnant. You don’t owe me anything. It was a risk we took. But I’ll keep the two of us safe.
The four sentences keep playing through my head on repeat. As I leave our small town, as I hit Denver’s city limits, as I pull up in front of Greer’s house.
Did it strike me as odd that I never caught up with her on the road to her house? Sure.
But for some reason, it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be here when I arrived.
Instead, her house stands empty, and when I sayempty, I mean it.
There are no drapes in the windows, and when I walk up to the living room and peer in, there’s not a jot of furniture. No gray sofa, no bland artwork on the walls, no soft chair beneath the window.
The sum total of nothing with aFOR SALEsign in the yard.
Greer Hansen has disappeared.
I sit down on the first step of her porch, even though there is no point in waiting for her here. That much is clear. She’s gone.
Gone for good?
I’ll keep the two of us safe.
What if I’d made her feel welcome? What if I’d invited her into the clubhouse? Would she have told me in her own words what she had written in the card?
A fucking baby.
At my age.
Not that forty-five is all that old. But I’ll be in my sixties when the kid turns twenty-one.
Not to mention I fucked up with the only other kid I have. Mine and Ember’s relationship has been in the shitter since I got mad at her and Atom for getting together. And in truth, I’ve done very little to actually fix it.
I drop my head into my hands.
I’m freezing cold, sitting on a fucking porch step, and realizing my life’s a fucking mess.
If there’s a low point, a real rock bottom, this is probably it.
Why should I chase Greer? Why should I try to convince her to let me look after her and the baby? Could I honestly give them a better life than the two of them can give each other? She’ll probably do a great job on her own without me fucking it all up for the two of them, bringing them trouble.
I stare at a crack in the stone where a yellow-headed weed clings to life.
It’s a metaphor for how I feel.
So, I stare even harder, hoping the revelation will come to me and cut through all this fucking self-loathing I got going on that keeps getting heavier and heavier to carry.
My breathing slows. My head still spins.
A kid at forty-five.
I lean against the railing and close my eyes.
A fucking kid. Who’d look just like Greer. Be as smart as she is. Get a lot farther in education than I ever did, at least.
Like we could ever be a family.
