Page 84 of The Wedding Ranch
“I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“It’s complicated. He was such a good kid. Way smarter than I was. People thought we were twins. We were so close when we were young.”
“Diane and I have always been close.”
“It was different for us. Somewhere along the way, it was early—like before junior high, he got in with the wrong people. I don’t really know how it all shifted, but he started drinking and getting into trouble. He never found his way. He didn’t even finish school. He’d lie, cheat, and steal without a blink, living on a constant high.” She pressed her hands together. “I don’t know how we ended up so different. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lay that all on you.”
“You were close once.”
“Inseparable, but when he got to the point that he stole from my parents, and so many lies. I just… it was like I’d lost my brother. I’ve tried to understand it, but I can’t. When I got the phone call that he’d died, I didn’t even cry. I’d written him off years before that.”
“You lost him twice.”
“Yeah. I guess I did. In my heart, he was still that sweet boy that let me play trucks with him in the sand pit, and one time he even dressed up in a tutu to have tea with me and my stuffed animals. He was a good big brother.” She lowered her gaze. “Until he wasn’t. So rather than deal with the awful truth, I shut him out and held on to the good parts.”
Ryder chuckled at that. “Got to cling to the happy memories. I’d have killed Diane if she tried to make me wear a tutu.”
“He didn’t like it much. I tried for so long to help him,” she admitted. “We had the exact same upbringing and yet I had this intense drive to succeed and he was just in neutral. He had no faith that he was good enough. No faith at all. Wouldn’t go to church. Not even with the family on Christmas. The drugs were all he lived for. He never had a real relationship that I know of.”
“That’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
“It is. He had a very sad life. A constant struggle, and it was hard on all of us. I wonder, if we had quit focusing on the substance abuse and gotten him psychiatric help, if he may have had a chance. I think there was more at play than the addiction.”
“Root cause,” Ryder said. “You can’t fix a problem by addressing the symptoms. Never works.”
“Right. So why didn’t we see that soon enough?”
“It’s hard to dig down to the root cause. It’s in the rotten underbelly of everything we see. It takes patience and in this microwavin’, drive-thru, instant gratification age, it’s nearly impossible to see things for what they are. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“Easy to say for someone else, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We both need to live in the future, and put the past behind us.” His words were soft, understanding.
“I’ve been trying.”
“Haven’t ever met anyone quite like you before.”
“Is that good?” She eyed him playfully, trying to lighten up the moment. Why had she told him all that?
“Yes. It’s very good, my friend Lorri. Troubling at the same time. I’m a little out of my element here. I haven’t made a new friend in a long, long time.”
She pushed her hair back from her face. “All my baggage hasn’t scared you away, has it? Still friends?”
He stretched his hand out. “You will forever be considered my friend Lorri.”
My friend Lorri. Those words tickled her heart.“I really like it when you say that.”
“Then I’ll say it more often.”
Chapter Twenty-five
It was the morning of Craig’s wedding and Lorri couldn’t shake the black mood that hung over her. It had seemed so far off, and now it was here. Agitated with Craig and Tiffany for getting married here in her town, she couldn’t help but feel like it was a personal attack.
Her phone rang, breaking the obsession for a moment, but for the first time since the day she’d given Ryder her phone number, she let it go to voice mail when he called.
The next phone call was Pam, but Lorri wasn’t up to admitting the emotions or being consoled for them so she let voice mail get that one too.
Lorri was overwhelmed by her mood. The thought of the friends she and Craig had spent so many years socializing with rejoicing in his happiness with someone else practically in her own backyard was eating away at her.
