Page 17 of Dove
“I can go get another, if you want,” I offered.
She shook her head, taking another bite of her sandwich. She chewed, then swallowed. “I’ll be okay, I won’t be out here much longer. I’m almost finished.” She tilted her head to the remaining portion of the pasture.
That may be true, but I had plenty of time to go down and grab one and be back before she was even close to being done, but Dove was stubborn, so I didn’t push.
A few bites later, we finished our sandwiches. With them gone, I had no reason to linger. She still had to finish, and I wanted to take a walk along the property—have a look at what might need fixing. My dad had been good at keeping up, but he’d been distracted since Josie’s diagnoses, something I only knew from old high school friends and their updates. And a voicemail from Dove, of course. It’d been one of the only times she’d called me since I’d been gone. I hadn’t received one call, text, or letter from my father since that night he told me to pack my bags and leave. I hadn’t expected one, not when I was practically dead to him.
Funny how that worked out in reverse for us, in the end.
Even though I hadn’t been here, I’d made sure I knew what was going on with my family. I had to for my own sanity. Thank God for my local friends, who kept me up to date when they could—perks of living in a small town.
“Well.” I stuffed my hands into my back pockets and rocked back on my heels. “I’ll let you get back to it, I guess. I’m gonna walk the fence line and make sure everything looks good. Don’t want any of the animals escaping.”
She nodded, giving me a look I couldn’t quite read.
The inability to understand her expressions now bothered me, but I supposed there were parts of each other we weren’t familiar with anymore. The thought stung, but the guilt stung harder. It’d beenmyabsence that caused it, after all.
When she didn’t say anything, I turned to make my way back down the path I’d come. I only managed a few steps before she called out my name.
Glancing over my shoulder, she cast me a tiny half smile. “Thanks.”
The sound of the mower starting back up covered the excited beating of my heart.
6
DOVE
Then
Ihated it here.
Or rather, Iwantedto hate it here.
What I really hated was how much Ididn’thate it, not really. Not like how I thought I would.
Mom was moving on from the tragedy of Dad, while I struggled every day to pretend like a part of me hadn’t died right alongside him in the accident four years ago. Not only had I lost him, but then we lost the house—ourhome—and were forced to live in an apartment that made a shoebox seem roomier. Remember that nursery rhyme about the woman who lived in a shoe? Well, I could sympathize with her. Ask yourself, which was cozier, the shoe or the box it came in?
Shrouded in the grief of losing my dad, and drifting farther from my mom, the only thing I’d been thankful for was still being in the same school district. At the very least, I had my friends to lean on. Not that they could understand what I was going through, when their families remained whole and intact, untouched by the cruel kiss of fate. It was a relief to have them,though, as they were the one unchanged thing in my life, even if everything seemed different after the funeral. Less permanent, somehow.
While things hadn’t been getting better, really, I was at least adjusting to this new normal, where I woke up in cold sweats at night, the phantom taste of fresh strawberries and the metallic tang of blood lingering on my tongue, where the screech of a car brake could send me careening into a flashback. Since that day, my mind had become a dangerous place to be trapped in, but I was learning to live with these things. Having a routine helped. My friends helped.
Until I got that taken from me, too.
Of all the men my mother could have chosen, it had to be a man who lived on afarm, of all places, in the middle of nowhere, nearly an hour out of the city. As if the universe had heard my pleas within the suffocating walls of the apartment, it answered with a twisted sense of humor, gifting me the space I’d craved so badly. So much of it, now, it was nearly isolating.
Since my mother still worked her job in the city, she commuted early. Which meant I rarely saw her before she left. It was summer, so I wasn’t forced to get up at an ungodly hour to meet the bus. That was my excuse, at least. The real reason was my nightmares had increased, making it hard for me to sleep at night. My therapist had warned me moving to a new environment might do that. Exhausted from disrupted sleep, I often slept past when mom left for work.
I told myself it was for the better, anyway. She didn’t have time to make breakfast like she used to, when her job had only been fifteen minutes down the road. Breakfast had always been our favorite meal together. She’d make stacks of pancakes, scrambled eggs, and buttered toast. Before the accident, we’d all sit together and wake with the day, my dad’s smile slowly warming up for the both of us. After he was gone, she still madea feast out of habit, and we’d sit there together, just the two of us, slow and sleepy-eyed, and justbe.
Those mornings were the only time I felt close to my mom after the accident. It reminded me that, despite the lack of my dad’s presence, we still had each other, we were stillhere,even if we didn’t have the best ways of expressing it.
Those moments, sitting around the breakfast table before the day had a chance to separate us, had been for us, and us alone.
Not so much anymore, now that it was my mom andGareth… and his son Josh.
Even if my mom had time to make breakfast in the mornings like she used to, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t beours.
Despite that, it still wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined it to be. Gareth and Josh were always busy, and the house was spacious. I had my own room to hide in, which faced out into the backyard so I could glimpse the sun rising over the trees, glistening over the still water of the lake that peeked out of the woods, the dock hidden beyond the trees calling for me to come sit on it. It wasn’t enough to make me stop missing my friends, but it was better than the apartment, at least.
