Page 77 of Where It All Began
She shook her head. “Uh-uh. Thankyou.”
There just weren’t enough thank yous in this world. She had everything her heart ever could have wanted right here on this land.
She leaned in and kissed John long and hard until the boys all made vomiting noises.
Harvest
Chapter Twenty-Eight
2011
Phoebe rested her forehead against the glass of the car window and hoped that the coolness would quell the throbbing in her head. Carter, her quiet, steadfast rock, was behind the wheel. Beckett, the perpetual leader, and Jax, the creative troublemaker, rode silently in the backseat as they drove away from the hospital, away from John.
His death had been peaceful, beautiful almost. He’d passed with his sons surrounding his bed, his hand clasped in hers, and the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. With a quiet whisper of “thank you,” John Pierce was gone from her life forever.
From diagnosis to death, it had been a handful of months. Not nearly enough time to prepare.
She felt… Phoebe wasn’t sure how she felt. His suffering was over. Never again would he face another treatment more painful and withering than the disease it fought. Never again would he try to hide the bone-deep pain from those who hurt for him. He was finally free, and she was going home.
Home.The word rang flat in her head. Home was where John was. In the fields, on the tractor, in the bed they’d shared for twenty-six years. Where was home now? Where was her heart now?
Jax, eyes red-rimmed, leaned forward between the seats. “Maybe we should stop and get ice cream?”
The corner of her mouth tugged up. Jax took after her in the emotional eating department, and it looked as though three years in L.A. hadn’t changed that about him.
“Ice cream?” Beckett rumbled from the back, his voice raw. “You think ice cream is going to make you feel better right now?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Jax argued.
Beckett punched Jax in the shoulder. Jax retaliated with a blow to his brother’s thigh.
“Ouch!”
“If you two assholes don’t knock it off right now, I’m going to dump you on the side of the road, and then Mom and I are going for ice cream,” Carter said calmly. He held his hurt further under the surface, Phoebe had noted. Even with everything else happening around them, she’d seen the shadows in her son’s eyes. His hurried arrival at the hospital yesterday came on the tail end of twenty-three hours of frantic travel from his assignment in Afghanistan.
Sorries were grumbled from the backseat.
Well, at least that part of her life was intact, familiar.Her sons loved and fought with the same ferociousness. Arguments and tussles should have been left behind them, each one an adult now. But old habits—or family traditions—died hard. And Phoebe tried to take temporary comfort in the familiarity of it.
The bickering picked back up five miles from home. Law student Beckett was trying to discuss the next steps: funeral home, estate lawyer, obituary. Jax weighed in with his opinion that now wasn’t the time to start berating their mother with details. Carter mentioned that maybe they both should get their heads out of their asses.
It’s important to know what you want.She heard John’s voice, clear as day in her head. She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. He was with her. She could feel his calming presence and wished their boys would shut the hell up and feel it to.
It’s important to know what you want.He’d told her that their first summer together when she’d been convinced that she had life all figured out. What she would have missed out on had she stayed the course.
If John wanted her to do what she wanted then she’d… well, right this second she wanted some quiet time. Silence. She wanted to lay down on that big bed, on the sheets that still smelled like her husband, her best friend, her partner in life. And she wanted to weep until she had nothing left inside her. And then she wanted to sleep until she could stand the thought of waking up to a world without John.
By the time they pulled into the farm’s drive, Phoebe’s headache had dug in like a pickaxe behind her eye, and everyone else was yelling. She just needed to get inside, lock the boys out, and let them fight it out in the yard like the old days.
She wanted peace.
But there was a car in the driveway. And her dearest friend Elvira Eustace was sitting on the porch swing holding a casserole dish in her lap. A bottle of wine sat on the cushion next to her.
Phoebe slipped out of the car, leaving her bickering boys behind, and trudged toward the house. Elvira met her at the foot of the porch steps. With the knowing that came from a long friendship, Elvira simply wrapped her arms around Phoebe’s shoulders and held her tight.
“He’s gone,” Phoebe said the words out loud and felt her world crumble just a little more.
“Beckett called,” Elvira said.
