Page 69 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
“I’m sorry Camryn.”
“Me too,” I told him. “It happened right before graduation, too. I had to watch all the other kids look up into the bleachers and wave to their proud parents before throwing their hats in the air. I looked up and all I saw was empty seats.”
Oakley’s expression was solemn. Was that a tear on his cheek? Or was it just more sweat?
“No brothers?” he asked. “No sisters?”
“Not even a grandparent,” I answered. “You?”
Very slowly, he shook his head. “No. My luck was a lot like yours.”
I scoffed. “Luck?”
“Bad luck, I guess,” Oakley confirmed. “I lost mom when a tire blew on her car and she skidded into a tree. Died instantly.” He let out a long sigh. “A lot of people told me that was a good thing, that she didn’t suffer. But try telling that to a kid who’ll never see his mom again.”
Oakley leaned more on his axe and stared straight ahead for a moment. I could see the pain in his eyes was still fresh. Undulled by time.
“Of course, Dad blamed himself for the wreck. He felt responsible for letting the tires go for so long, or at least that’s the excuse he gave me so he could crawl into a bottle. He checked out mentally for a while, and then eventually physically, too. He disappeared altogether when I was thirteen.”
“Damn.”
Oakley nodded. “Luckily, I had an aunt who took me in,” he continued solemnly. “Nice woman. Big heart. But she was a single mom raising five kids of her own, so I got lost in the chaos of that shuffle. I went from an amazing childhood with two great parents to a complete disaster, hand-me-down clothes, and getting picked on by older cousins who never wanted me there in the first place.”
I listened intently as he trailed off, into nothing. While telling the story, I also noticed he’d turned away. He was staring into the dancing flames of the firebox now.
“That’s why you enlisted,” I theorized quietly. “Isn’t it?”
Oakley grunted in affirmation. “Signed up the same day I was eligible.”
“So you made the best out of a bad thing.”
He managed a laugh. “More like I put lettuce, tomato, and ketchup on a shit sandwich.”
“A man’s gotta eat,” I chuckled back.
The smile he gave me was half genuine, half placating. And it was very far away.
“I went back there once,” Oakley said, in an odd voice that didn’t sound very much like him.
“Went where?”
“To the tree that took my mom,” he replied mechanically. “I saw the skid marks in the road, too. Years later you could still see them. They were faded, but there.”
I moved closer to him, and took his hand.
“The tree was healing,” he went on, “but all scratched up. A chunk of it was missing. It still bore the scars.”
“Oakley…”
He blinked, and his eyes returned to mine.
“The tree is kinda like me,” he smiled. “It’ll keep growing around the wound, but it’ll never be the same.”
He stared back with challenge in his eyes, as if waiting for me to disagree with him. I wouldn’t dream of it.
“You’re right,” I said, squeezing his hand. “About all of it. And you know what I’ve learned?”
He looked down at me, slightly confused.
