Page 48 of Chasing I Do
One time, when they’d gone to visit his dad’s grave, like they did every Sunday morning, she’d admitted to him that the years without her Benjie felt like a long goodbye that had no end. It was no secret that Margo had fallen into a deep depression after his death, but until this moment, Gage hadn’t realized that she never fully recovered.
“When was that taken?”
“The night he opened his bar.” Margo clutched his hand, and when she spoke, her voice was so fragile it made swallowing difficult. “He’d worked so hard for that bar, scrimping to get the down payment. Grandpa Easton offered to give him a loan, but Benjie wouldn’t hear of it. He was determined to make it on his own. He was a man of his own making.” A nostalgic smile teased her lips. “He’s kind of like you in that way.”
“What did Grandpa say?”
Clark Easton made his fortune in the lumber industry back in the thirties, leaving behind a legacy for his family. All of his sons had followed in his footsteps, except one—Benjie. Benjie loved brewing and he loved beer, but most of all he loved talking to people.
But being an Easton, he didn’t open any ordinary brewery. Oh no, Benjamin Easton turned his dream into a money press, blending his two loves, and creating one of Portland’s premier brews. By the time Gage and Kyle came along, Stout had five different locations around the state, and sold their brand nationwide.
“A black sheep can always get more for their wool.”
Gage noticed an elegant box sitting on the end table. Its lock was broken, and the leather strap cracked, but the outside was in impeccable condition. “What’s that?”
“My love box.” She picked it up. “Did you know that your father wrote me a love letter every week when he was away at Stanford? Every week for six years, he never missed a one. Said his love grew so much every day that he’d explode if he didn’t tell me.”
“That’s Dad,” Gage said, thinking back to all of the times Benjie would pull him aside to tell him he loved him—just because. Benjie believed that love needed to be let out so it created more room to grow.
“He was a wordsmith, that’s for sure. It’s where Rhett gets his love of writing songs,” she said, slowly flipping through the envelopes, not really seeing any of them. “When Benjie came home from college he still wrote to me every week. Can you imagine?”
Yeah. Gage could. His dad was one of the greatest men he knew, and his capacity to love was astounding. His love got this family through a lot, and there were times Gage wondered how much better they all would have fared if he’d been there to help them through Kyle’s death.
“Getting the bar up and running, raising six kids, even through cancer,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “He’d sign them, Eternally Yours, no name. Just Eternally Yours, then put a stamp on them and mail them, even though we lived in the same house.” She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
“No, that’s commitment.”
His mother looked up, her eyes soft and lost. So damn lost Gage hunched down on the balls of his feet and took her hands. “What’s going on, Mom?”
“After he passed, I still got notes. For about a year. He’d written them ahead, knowing he wasn’t going to beat the cancer.” She pulled a letter out of the back of the box. It had been read and reread so many times it was as thin as tissue paper. “This was his last one, he told me in it that it was his last one. He’d written it while watching me beside him in the hospital. I didn’t leave the house for a week when I got it. I couldn’t. Walking outside, looking at everyone living their lives, knowing that mine had ended was too much.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“But then that Friday, the postman came, and I went out to check, to see if maybe he’d been wrong and was able to write one more.” She smiled. “And there was one.”
“He wrote another one?”
“No.” She took a moment to swallow the emotion. “It was from Kyle. A little love note for me, telling me how much Dad loved me. And every week, on Friday just like your dad, a note from Kyle would arrive. I don’t know if Benjie asked him to, or if he did it on his own. But those notes made your dad seem not so far away. But then Kyle—”
She broke off and held the letter to her chest. And Gage had a hard time holding everything in his chest together. Because she’d lost her son and her husband in the same accident.
“Kyle died and the letters stopped,” he guessed.
She looked at the album one last time, then her eyes filled with tears. “No. He proposed to Darcy, then the letters stopped.”
Ah shit.“Please don’t put that on Darcy,” Gage begged, because he knew, in his gut, that she wasn’t the problem. A year or so before his accident, Kyle had begun to grow distant. Skipping bar night, missing family dinners, and it was Darcy who encouraged him to make time for his family. “That’s on Kyle. He started spending more time away from everyone, even me.”
Mother fucker.
Gage knew exactly why Kyle had started acting weird around family—because he’d been up to no good. Even as a kid, whenever Kyle got a wild hair up his ass, he’d start acting weird. Keeping secrets, spending time away from home, coming home late and smelling like trouble. It was as if he didn’t want to disappoint his family, but wasn’t willing to toe the line.
So he’d kept the two worlds separate.
“I blew it,” she whispered. “I couldn’t take not being able to see her, see what my granddaughter looked like, and I ruined everything. I thought if we met, the girl would want to come visit, and I blew it.”
He pulled her into his arms, suddenly aware of how fragile she felt. How small she’d become. “Whatever happened, I can fix this.”
“She won’t let me see Kylie now, I know it,” she said into his chest. “She took Kyle away from me, and then Kyle’s daughter.” She looked up and wiped angrily at her tears. “What kind of woman keeps a grandchild away from her grandmother?”
