Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

“Whoa, man! That was awesome!” I clapped and whooped where I was sitting in my favorite camp chair about a week or two later.

A wonderful week or two later. Who was keeping track?

Am flushed like he always did, holding the last note on his guitar, but the second he lowered it, he huffed. Things between us were back to normal, fortunately. The awkwardness had only lasted about two days before the elephant in the room decided to walk away on its own. “I thought I was off-key at the beginning.”

Crossing one leg over the other, I tilted my head. “You were a tiny bit flat, but I mean a tiny bit. And it was only once when you went into the chorus. I figured it was only because you were nervous. I can really tell you’ve been working on your vibrato by the way.”

Setting his guitar in its stand, he nodded, but I could tell he was pleased. “I was, but I did what Yuki said.”

She had happened to video-call me the other day while I’d been with Amos in the grocery store parking lot, and she’d asked him how the nerves were going. “Fine,” he’d responded sheepishly. Knowing he wasn’t being completely honest, she had given him some suggestions. I wasn’t going to tell him that hours later, she’d messaged me asking for a video of his upcoming performance so she could watch too.

“And I told myself it was only you,” he went on. “You’d tell me if I did something wrong.”

My little heart ached, and I nodded at him. We had come such a long way, and his trust meant so much to me. “Always.”

“Do you think I should move around more?”

“You’ve got such a beautiful voice; I think you should focus on the singing part for now. You’re going to be nervous, so why put more pressure on yourself? There’s only one Lady Yuki anyway.”

He slid me a side look and asked, way too nonchalantly, “Did you help her write that ‘Remember Me’ song?”

I knew exactly what song he was referring to, obviously, and I grinned. “It’s a pretty good song, isn’t it?”

His squawk didn’t even insult me. “You did?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer because we both turned toward the driveway at the sound of tires on gravel, and part of me expected to see a UPS truck because I’d ordered some mats for my car. The ones that came with it weren’t meant for snow and slush. But when the pickup pulled up into its usual spot, I frowned. Rhodes had just texted me a couple hours ago saying he’d be home around six. It was only four.

“What’s Dad doing here?” even Amos asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered as the man in question parked and got out, that long, muscular body moving so well in its uniform it almost put me in a trance. The memory of him coming over to my apartment last night filled my head. I’d asked him what excuse he’d given Am, and he’d laughed and said I was going to show him my old photo albums. Apparently, from the disgusted expression on the teenager’s face, he didn’t believe him, but that was exactly what had happened.

At least until we’d ended up taking each other’s clothes off and I’d wound up on his lap, sweaty and shaking.

It had been a good night.

Most nights since the day they’d gone to find me at Clara’s had been very nice nights. On that first one specifically, Rhodes had asked me more questions about Kaden once Amos had gone to bed.

How we’d met—through a mutual friend my first semester of college. I’d been studying to get a degree in education while he’d been in school for music performance. Rhodes said he could see me being a teacher, and maybe I could have been, but my heart wasn’t into the idea at all anymore.

What the stipulations were for the money I’d gotten—that I wouldn’t go after them in court for royalties or songwriting credit, because God forbid there be something in writing about divorce settlements.

There were so many things for us to talk about, and I didn’t want us to waste our time on that topic. But I would if there was something bugging him. I just hoped there wasn’t.

The past was in the past, and I hoped more than anything that my future was walking toward me right then.

“Hi!” I yelled at Rhodes from where I was still sitting. It was forty-eight degrees out, but not windy, so we had the garage door open. My aunt thought I was nuts when I told her I’d been wearing a T-shirt the last few days, but no one understood just how nice it could be, even with snow on the ground. That was low humidity life for you.

“Hi,” he greeted me right back.

Did he sound weird, or was I imagining it? What I knew I wasn’t imagining was his stiff gait as he made his way over, hands clenching open and closed at his sides. His head was just a little too down.

I glanced at Amos and saw that he was frowning as he took in his dad too.

“You okay?” I asked the moment he stepped inside the garage.

“In a way, yes,” he said in what was definitely a weird and tight voice that alarmed me even more.

I stood up. “What’s wrong?”

He raised his head then. The fine lines branching from the corners of his eyes were deeper than normal as he said, “Aurora . . . I need to talk to you.”

Someone meant business busting out my first name like that. “You’re scaring me, but okay,” I said slowly, glancing at Am. He was looking at both of us warily.

Those gray eyes were on me as he took my hands, very, very gently. “Let’s go inside.”

I nodded and let him lead me across the yard and up the stairs to the deck. It wasn’t until we were going in that I realized Am was following behind. Rhodes must have just then noticed it too because he stopped.

“What? You’re scaring me too,” the teenager said.

“Am, this is private,” he said seriously, that terribly sober expression still on his face.

“Ora, you don’t care, right?”

What was I going to do? Say no? Tell him that I didn’t trust him? “It’s okay.” I swallowed before eyeing the man who had talked me into going back to his room to sleep in his bed last night. “You’re not going to break my heart or anything, right?”

Rhodes tilted his head to the side, and his throat bobbed, scaring me even more. His eyes though were totally stricken. “For what it matters, I don’t want to.”

I balked.

His shoulders fell. “It’s not the way you think,” he went on gravely.

I felt sick, and he sighed.

Rhodes scrubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, angel. I’m screwing this up already.”

“Just tell me. What’s wrong? What happened?” I asked. “I’m not kidding, you’re scaring me. Both of us.”

“Yeah, Dad, tell her.” The kid made a sound. “You’re being weird.”

Rhodes shook his head and sighed. “Shut the door, Am.”

The kid shoved it closed and crossed his arms over his chest. My hands were starting to shake just a little as fear rose up inside of me as I tried to think of what he could possibly be this freaked out about. I’d seen him go face-to-face with a bat. He’d been up like twenty feet in the air with no problem. Was he sick? Did something happen to someone?

Rhodes blew out a breath and looked at the floor for a second before lifting his head and saying, “Do you remember me telling you a while back about those remains a hiker had found?”

I suddenly went cold inside. “No.”

“The day you picked up that eagle, I told you,” he reminded me gently. “There were some articles in the paper after that. People were talking about it in town.”

That didn’t sound familiar at all.

Then again, any time that conversations about missing people came up, I usually tuned them out. Any hope I’d had of having closure, of having answers, had died a long time ago. Maybe it was selfish, but it was easier for me to keep going, to not get weighed down by those cement blocks of grief, by not focusing too much on cases too similar to what had happened to my mom. For so long, I’d barely been able to handle my own pain, let alone taking on anyone else’s.

Some people came out of trauma with thick scar tissue. They could handle anything. They had been through the worst and could take any kind of hit because they knew they could survive.

On the other hand, there were people like me, who survived but with thinner skin than before. Some of us ended up wrapped in an organ even more delicate than tissue paper, with bodies and spirits buoyed only by our will to keep going. And coping mechanisms. And therapy.

“This hiker was out and came across some bones. He happened to be a trauma surgeon and thought he recognized . . . some of them as human. He called it in, and the authorities took what he found.”

“Okay . . .”

Rhodes licked his lips and squeezed my hands a little tighter. “They matched the DNA.”

A memory of that time about three years after my mom had gone missing, when remains had been found and they’d thought it might be her, filled my head. We’d been so disappointed when, after I’d provided DNA samples, it had come back that it wasn’t a match. A few years ago, the same thing had happened. A search party trying to find a missing hiker had come across a hand and a skull partially buried, but nothing had come of it either. The remains had been of a man who had gone missing two years before that. That had been the last time I’d had any hope of ever finding her.

But I knew. I knew before he said anything what was about to come out of his mouth next. My skin started prickling.

“The coroner’s office is going to be calling you soon, but I hoped you’d rather hear it from me first,” he said carefully, calmly, still holding my hands. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed.

I pressed my lips together and nodded, suddenly feeling numb. My chest started to tingle. “Yeah, I would,” I told him slowly, knowing . . . knowing . . .

He blew out a breath. That square jaw moved from side to side before he gently said the last words I would have expected and, at the same time, the only thing I could have imagined: “They’re your mom’s, sweetheart.”

He’d said it. He’d really said it.

I repeated his words in my head, then again, and again.

I bit my bottom lip and found myself nodding, fast and for too long. I was blinking quickly too as my eyes started to get watery. And I almost didn’t hear the tiny choking whimper that bubbled out of my throat unexpectedly.

My mom’s.

My mom’s.

Rhodes’s face fell, and the next thing I knew, his arms were around me and he was pulling me in tight, pressing my cheek against the buttons of his shirt as another choke worked its way into my throat. I tried to suck in a breath, but my whole body shook instead. I was trembling. Worse than the day of the Hike from Hell.

They’d found her.

They’d finally found her.

My mom who had loved me with her whole heart, who hadn’t been perfect but had always made it known that being perfect was overrated. The woman who had taught me that joy came in all different shapes and sizes and forms. The same person who had battled a silent illness as best as she could for longer than I would ever know.

They’d found her. After all these years. After everything . . .

The memory of the moment twenty years ago, when I’d realized she wasn’t picking me up, kicked me right in the very center of my existence. I had cried. Screamed. I’d howled my throat and my soul raw. Mom, Mom, Mom, please, please, please, come back—

“You can put her to rest now,” he whispered right before a big, wailing cry got muffled against his shirt. “I know, sweetheart, I know.”

I cried. From the deepest place in my body, I pulled the tears. Over everything I’d lost, over everything she had lost too, but also, maybe in a way, in relief that she didn’t have to be alone anymore. And maybe because I didn’t have to be alone anymore either.

Hours later, I woke up on the couch in the living room. My eyes felt puffy and crusty, and they hurt as I squinted. My head was in Rhodes’s lap. He was slouched against the couch, head resting against the back of it. One of his hands was on my ribs, and the other was on the back of my head.

My throat hurt too, I realized as I sniffled. The television was still on, softly, some infomercial playing. But I focused on the recliner, on the boy passed out on it. The same one who hadn’t left my side since Rhodes had broken the news. Since the coroner’s office had called and the woman’s words had gone in one ear and out the other because my brain had been ringing.

And that made me sniffle again.

I had always felt like I’d lost so much. I knew nobody got through life without losing something, sometimes everything. But the knowledge brought me no comfort then.

Because she was still gone.

I was never, ever going to see her again.

But at least I knew, I tried to reason with myself for not the first time. At least I knew now. Not all of it, but more than I ever would have expected. A huge part of me still couldn’t believe it though.

It felt so final now, her loss.

Nearly as fresh and painful as it had been twenty years ago. My body and soul felt cracked open, with all the vulnerable soft bits out for exposure. It was like I’d lost her all over again.

I tucked my cheek against my Rhodes’s leg and grabbed his thigh. And I cried a little more.

I would have wanted to believe that I took the news as well as could be expected in the days afterward, but the truth was that I didn’t.

Maybe it was because it had been years since I’d last let myself feel a shred of hope of finding her. Maybe because I’d been so damn happy lately. Or maybe, just maybe, because I’d felt like everything that had led me here had been for this. For these people in my life. For this hope of a family and happiness, and while I’d give anything to have my mom back, I’d been at something close to peace finally.

But I hadn’t been prepared for how hard I handled the days that came.

In those first few days after Rhodes’s confirmation, I cried more than I had since she had initially gone missing. If someone had asked me to tell them what happened, I would have only been able to recall pieces because everything became so foggy and felt so desperate.

What I knew for sure was that after that first morning, waking up again in Rhodes’s living room with exhausted, swollen eyes, I’d sat up and gone to the half-bathroom to wash my face. When I’d come back out, feeling stiff and almost delirious, Rhodes had been standing in the kitchen yawning, but the second he’d spotted me, his arms had dropped to his sides and he’d given me a flat, level look and asked, “What do you need from me?”

That itself had been enough to set me off again. To force me to suck in a shuddering breath through my nose a moment before even more tears welled up in my eyes. My knee had started shaking, and I’d bared my teeth at him and said, in a ragged, tiny whisper, “I could use another hug.”

And that was exactly what he’d given me. Wrapping me up in those big, strong arms, holding me against his chest, supporting me with his body and with something else that I was too heartbroken and numb to sense. I spent that day at his house, showering in his bathroom and putting on his clothes. I cried in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed, in his shower while the water beat down on me, in his kitchen, on the couch, and when he tugged me outside, on the steps of his deck while that long, solid body sat beside me for who knows how long, lined up completely against my side.

Rhodes didn’t let me out of his sight, and Amos brought me glasses of water randomly, both of them watching me with calm, patient eyes. Even though I didn’t feel like eating, they pushed small things at me, nudging me with their gray irises.

I knew for a fact I managed to call my uncle to give him the news, even though he hadn’t been all that close to my mom. My aunt had called almost immediately afterward, and I’d cried some more with her, remembering when it happened, that it was possible to run out of tears. I spent the night at Rhodes’s house, sleeping on the couch with him as my pillow, but that’s all I was able to process other than the finality of the news I’d been given.

But it was the day after that, that Clara came over, sat beside me on the couch, and told me all about how much she missed her husband. How hard it was to keep going without him. I barely talked, but I listened to every word she said, soaking up the tears that spiked her eyelashes, soaking in her mutual grief at the loss of someone she had adored. She told me to take as much time as I needed, and I barely said a word. I hoped the hug we shared had been enough.

It wasn’t until that night, when I was sitting on the deck after texting Yuki back and forth while Rhodes showered, that Amos came out and squatted on the step beside me. I didn’t feel like talking, and in a way, it was nice that Rhodes and Amos weren’t big talkers in the first place, so they didn’t push me, didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do other than eat and drink.

Everything was hard enough as it was.

My chest hurt so bad.

But I glanced at Am and tried to muster up a smile, telling myself like I had a thousand times over the last couple of days that it wasn’t like I hadn’t known she was gone. That I had gotten through this before and I would get through it again. But it just hurt, and my therapist had said that there was no right way to grieve.

I still just couldn’t believe it.

My favorite teenager didn’t bother trying to say anything though as he sat beside me. He just leaned over, put his arm over my shoulders, and gave me a side hug that seemed to last ages, still not saying a word. Just giving me his love and support, which made me want to tear up even more.

Eventually, after a few minutes, he got up and headed over to the garage apartment, leaving me there by myself, in my tangerine jacket on the deck, under a moon that had been around before my mom and would be there long after me.

And in a way, it made me feel better. Just a little as I gazed up. As I took in the same stars that she had to have seen too. I remembered being a kid and lying out on a blanket with her while she’d pointed out constellations that years later I’d learned were all wrong. And remembering that made me smile to myself just a little.

None of us were promised tomorrow, or even ten minutes from now, and I was pretty sure she’d known that better than anyone.

My head hurt. My soul hurt. And I wished for about the millionth time in my life, at least, that she was here.

I hoped she was proud of me.

It was then, as I was sitting there with my head tipped back, that I heard the chords to a song I knew well.

Then Amos’s voice started carrying lyrics that I knew even better.

The cold air filled my body just as well as the words to the song did, with tears I didn’t know I was still capable of wetting my eyelashes as I listened. I took in the message I had a feeling he was trying to share with me, absorbing it into my very essence. A memory I myself had shared with all the people who had ever downloaded Yuki’s version of it.

A tribute to my mom, like every song and most of my actions had always tried to be.

Amos pleaded to not be forgotten. To be remembered for what he’d been, not for the pieces he’d become. And his beautiful voice belted out for the one he loved to be whole, and one day they’d be together again.

Almost a week after the news, when I was in my garage apartment going through my mom’s oldest journals, even though I had them memorized at this point, someone knocked on my door. Before I could say a word though, it opened and familiar heavy footsteps made their way up, and then Rhodes was there. His face even, hands on his hips. He looked somber and wonderful as he stood there, as steady as a mountain, and said, “We’re going snowshoeing, angel.”

I looked at him like he was fucking nuts because I was still in my pajamas and the last thing I wanted to do was leave the house, even though I knew that I should, that it would be good for me, that my mom would have loved—

My throat burned. I shrugged at him and said, “I don’t know if I’d be good company today. I’m sorry . . .”

It was the truth. I hadn’t exactly been good company lately. All the words that usually found their way so easily into my mouth had mostly evaporated over the last few days, and though our silences hadn’t been awkward, they’d been foreign.

It had been so long since I’d felt the way I had lately, that even though I knew I would get through it and was fully aware it wasn’t some overnight thing I’d randomly wake up from feeling fine, it was still like treading water against a changing tide.

I couldn’t find my way out of it.

It was grief, and some part of me recognized and remembered that there were stages of it. The one no one ever told you about was the final one when you felt everything at once. It was the hardest.

And I didn’t want to put that on Rhodes. I didn’t want to put it on anyone. They all knew me as being cheerful and happy for the most part. I knew I’d be happy again just as soon as the worst edge of this faded—because it would, I knew it and I’d been reminded of it—but I wasn’t there yet. Not with my mom’s loss feeling so fresh again.

I was exhausted on the inside, and that was probably the best way to describe it.

But this man who had slept beside me every night the last week, either on his couch when we’d pass out in silence, or who would coax me into his room, tilted his head to the side as he took me in. “That’s all right. You don’t need to talk if you don’t want to.”

I blinked. I swallowed hard before I snorted, which even that sounded sad. Wasn’t that exactly what I’d told him months ago? When he’d been upset with his dad?

Rhodes must have known exactly what I was thinking because he gave me a gentle smile. “You could use the fresh air.”

I could. Even my old therapist, whose number I’d found a couple days ago and had only hesitated for about an hour before calling—she remembered me, which wasn’t surprising considering I’d gone to her for four years—had told me it would be good for me to get out. But I still hesitated before glancing back down at the journal in my hands. Rhodes had been beyond great, but I’d been feeling all kinds of ways. He’d been there enough for me lately; I didn’t want to push it either.

Rhodes tilted his head to the other side, watching me closely. “Come on, Buddy. If it was me, you would tell me the same,” he said.

He was right.

And that alone was enough to get me to nod and get dressed.

Before everything that had happened, I’d told him I wanted to try snowshoeing someday. And part of that pierced through my mood, reminding me of how lucky I was to have him. Of how lucky I was for a lot of things.

I had to keep trying.

Rhodes didn’t leave; he sat on the bed while I changed my pants right there in front of him, too lazy to even bother going into the bathroom. He didn’t say a word as he nodded at me to ask if I was ready, and I nodded at him back that I was, and we left. True to his word, he didn’t talk or try to get me to either.

Rhodes drove toward town, turning left down a county road and parking in a clearing that I was familiar with because I’d driven by it before when I’d gone for hikes. Out of the back of his Bronco, he pulled out two sets of snowshoes and helped me put them on.

Then and only then did he grab my hand and start leading us forward.

We moved quietly, and at some point, he handed me a pair of sunglasses he must have had in the pocket of his jacket because the only things he’d brought in his backpack were bottles of water and a tarp. I hadn’t even noticed I was squinting with the sun reflecting off the snow, but the sunglasses helped. The air was so crisp it felt cleaner than ever, and I filled my lungs with as much of it as I could every chance I had, letting it soothe me in its own way. On we went, and maybe if I’d been feeling any better, I would have appreciated more how well the snowshoes worked or how pretty the field we were going through was . . . but I was trying my best. And that was all I could do. I was here, and some part of my brain was aware that that mattered.

About an hour later, we finally stopped at the top of a hill, and he stretched out the tarp on top of the snow and gestured me onto it. I had barely sat down when he took the spot beside me and said in that husky voice of his, “You know I wasn’t around for any of Amos’s firsts.”

I crisscrossed my legs under me and looked at Rhodes. He was sitting with his long legs stretched out before him, hands planted a few inches behind him, but most importantly, he was looking at me. The sunlight was reflecting off his beautiful silver hair, and I couldn’t think of a single man I’d ever seen that was more handsome than him.

He was the best, really, and that made my throat hurt in a way that wasn’t bad.

“I wasn’t there for his first word or the first time he walked. The first day he used the toilet on his own or the first night he didn’t have to wear diapers to sleep.”

Because he’d been gone, living on a coast far away from Colorado.

“Am doesn’t remember, and even if he did, I’m not sure if he’d care, but it used to bother me a lot. It still does bother me when I think about it.” The lines across his forehead deepened. “I used to send money to them—to Billy and Sofie. For things he might need, even though they both said they had it, but he was mine too. I used to come and visit him every chance I had. Every vacation, any time I could swing it, even if it was only for a whole day. They told me I did enough, said I didn’t have to worry about it, and maybe that should’ve been good enough for me, but it wasn’t.

“It took him until he was almost four to start calling me Dad. Sofie and Billy corrected him every time he’d call me Rows—he couldn’t pronounce Rhodes, and that’s what they called me—but it took a long time for him to start calling me something else. It used to make me jealous when I’d hear him call Billy Dad. I knew it was stupid. Billy was with him all the time. But it still kind of hurt. I’d send him presents when I saw something he might like. But I still missed birthdays. I still missed his first day of school. I missed everything.

“When he was nine, he complained about them going to visit me during the summer instead of going to ‘do something fun.’ That hurt my feelings too, but it mostly made me feel guilty. Guilty that I wasn’t around enough. Guilty that I wasn’t trying hard enough. I had wanted him. I thought about him all the time. But I didn’t want to leave the Navy. I didn’t want to move back here. I liked having something reliable in my life, and for the longest, that was my career. And that made me feel guiltier. I didn’t want to give up one or the other, even if I knew what was more important, what really matters, and that’s my son, and it’s always going to be him. I thought me knowing that was enough.”

Rhodes blew out a breath before glancing at me, part of his mouth going up a little into that twist I knew too well. “Part of me hopes that I’m making it up to him. That it’ll be enough that I’m here now, but I don’t know if it will. I don’t know if he’ll look back on it and think that I half-assed being his dad. That he wasn’t important to me. That’s why I’m trying, so at least I know that I did. That I did everything I could think of to be there for him, but how am I ever going to know, right? Maybe he’ll be an old man when he decides. Maybe not.

“My mom didn’t even try to be a good mom. I can’t think of a single positive memory of her. My oldest brother does, I think, maybe the one right after him too, but that’s it. I’m never going to look back and think of her fondly. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything with her, and that’s shitty. I feel bad for her, for what she had to have gone through, but I didn’t ask for it either, and I got it anyway. But Amos, I asked for. I wanted him. I wanted to do better than what I’d known.”

I reached behind him and took his palm in mine, and when that didn’t seem like enough, I cupped the back of it with my other hand too, cocooning it completely with my own.

He squeezed it, his gray eyes roaming over my face. “Maybe that’s the thing about being a parent: you can just hope what you’ve done is enough. If you care. You hope that the love you gave them, if you really tried, will stay with your child when they’re older. That they can look back on what you did and be content. You hope that they know happiness. But there’s no way of knowing, is there?”

This man . . . I didn’t know what I would have done without him.

Pressing my lips together, I nodded, tears filling my eyes. Slowly, I lowered my head, until his fist rested against my cheek, and I told him in a croak, “He loves you, Rhodes. He told me not too long ago that he wanted you to be happy. I could tell from the moment I met you both that you loved him more than anything. I’m sure that’s why Billy and Sofie didn’t hound you about stuff or tell you that you needed to worry. If you hadn’t been doing enough . . . if you hadn’t been there for him enough . . . I’m sure they would have said something.” I tried to suck in a breath, but it came in choppy. “Good parents don’t have to be perfect. Just like you love your kid even when they’re not.”

The choke that gripped my throat was sudden and harsh, the slide of several more tears wetting my cheeks. I hiccupped; then I hiccupped again. And something—his hand, it had to be his hand—stroked the back of my head, his fingers combing through my loose hair; I hadn’t brushed it since I’d showered. His words were soft as he said, “I know. I know you miss her. Just like you could tell I love Am, I can tell you loved your mom.”

“I really did. I really do,” I agreed, sniffling, feeling my chest crack with love and grief. “It finally just feels . . . final, and it makes me sad, but it makes me mad too.”

He stroked my hair then my cheeks, over and over, my tears eventually spilling through his fingers, over the backs of his hands as he touched my face. Opening a dam with so many of the words I’d shared with my therapist over the last few days. But it was different with him.

“I’m so fucking angry, Rhodes. At everything. At the world, at God, at myself, and sometimes even at her. Why did she have to go on that stupid fucking hike in the first place? Why couldn’t she have done the trail she’d planned on taking? Why hadn’t she just waited for me to go with her? You know? I hate being mad, and I hate being sad, but I can’t help it. I don’t get it. I feel so confused,” I told him in a rush, taking one of his hands and squeezing it tight.

“At the same time, I’m so glad she was found, but I miss her, and I feel so guilty again. Guilty about stuff that I’ve worked out, things that I know I shouldn’t feel bad about. That none of what happened was my fault, but . . . it hurts. Still. And it’s always going to hurt. I know that. It’s supposed to. Because you don’t love someone and lose them and keep on going the rest of your life complete.

“I wonder too . . . did she know? Did she know I loved her? Does she know how much I miss her? How much I still wish she was around? Does she know that I turned out okay for the most part? That I had people who loved me and took care of me, or did she worry about what was going to happen? I hope she knows everything ended up okay, because I can’t bear to think that she worried.” My voice cracked over and over again, most of my words rambling and probably unintelligible, my tears soaking into the skin of the hand that was still touching my cheeks.

Rhodes tilted my face up and met me with those incredible gray eyes. When I tried to dip my chin, he kept me there. Everything about him so focused, so intent, like he was leaving me no room to misinterpret him. “I don’t know about some of that, but if you were anything like the way you are now when you were younger, she had to know how you felt about her. I’m sure it had to have lit up her life to be loved by you,” he whispered carefully, his voice hoarse.

I swallowed hard for a moment before I sagged, before I leaned over and rested the side of my face against his shoulder. And Rhodes . . . wonderful, wonderful Rhodes, slipped his arms under me and pulled me onto his lap, effortless, so effortless, one arm banding itself low on my back while the other curled around my side. And I settled in, right there, on top of him.

“It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be mad too.”

I pressed my nose against his throat. His skin was soft. “My ex used to get so frustrated with me when I’d have bad days. When I was extra sad. He’d say I’d suffered enough and that my mom wouldn’t want me to be so sad anymore, and that would make it worse. Usually I’m okay, but sometimes, I’m just not, and it’s random things that set me off. I want to live, I want to be happy, but I miss her and I want her back.”

One of his big hands cupped my hip, and I could feel the steady beat of his heart against my nose. “I thought we’d decided your ex was a moron,” Rhodes murmured. “I hope someday that if I’m gone, someone loves me enough to miss me for the rest of their life.”

He killed me. He really, absolutely did. I snorted a little into his throat, sagging even more into the warm wall of his frame.

“My dog, Pancake, died a few years ago, and I still get choked up when I think of him. I tell myself I can’t get another dog because I’m not home enough, but between us, considering it in the first place makes me feel like I’m being disloyal to him.” I’d swear he brushed his lips across my forehead as he held me even closer. “You don’t ever have to hide it—your grief. Not from me.”

Something painful and wonderful pricked my heart. “You don’t either. I’m sorry about your Pancake. He was the one in the picture I gave you, right? I’m sure he was amazing. Maybe, if you ever want, you can show me some more pictures of him. I’d like to see them.”

Rhodes’s voice got tight. “He was, and I will,” he promised.

I pushed my face even closer to his throat, and it took me minutes before I could get more words together. “My mom would want me to be happy, I know that. She’d tell me that it wasn’t like I didn’t already know she didn’t want to leave me. She would tell me not to spend more of my time being upset and live my life instead. I know it. I know in my heart that whatever happened was an accident and there’s nothing I can do to change it. And I really am happy with where I am now. It’s just hard . . .”

“Hey,” he said. “Some days you pick up eagles like they’re chickens, and some days you run screaming away from innocent bats. I like you both ways, angel. All ways.”

A choke that was a mixture of pain and laughter exploded out of me, and I’d swear his arms got even tighter.

I couldn’t help but hug him tight right back. “I just . . . I really just wish . . . I hope she knows how much I love her. How much I wish she was here. But also, that if all these shitty things were supposed to happen . . . I’m glad they brought me here.” My fingers curled around his forearm. “I’m glad you’re here, Rhodes. I’m so glad you’re in my life. Thank you for being so good to me.”

His hand stroked my hair, and his pulse beat under my cheek, and I could barely hear him as he said, “Any time you need me, I’m here. Right here.”

I clung to him and lowered my voice. “Don’t tell Yuki, but you’re my best best friend now.”

His throat bobbed against me, and I didn’t imagine how hoarse his voice came out as he said, “You’re my best best friend too, sweetheart.” His next swallow was just as harsh, his voice even more rough, but his words were the softest, most genuine thing I’d ever heard. “I really missed hearing you talk, you know that?”

And it was then, with my face against his throat, his body warm beneath and around mine, that I told him about some of my fondest memories of my mom. Of how beautiful she was. Of how funny she could be. Of how she hadn’t been scared of anything, or at least it had seemed that way to me.

I talked and I talked and I talked, and he listened and listened and listened.

And I cried a little more, but it was okay.

Because he had to be right. Grief was the final way we had to tell our loved ones that they’d impacted our lives. That we missed them so, so much. And there was nothing wrong with me mourning my mom for the rest of mine, even as I carried her love and her life in my heart. I had to live, but I could also remember along the way.

The people we lose take a part of us with them . . . but they leave a part of themselves with us too.

In the days that followed, with my grief still curling around my heart but with a knowledge and strength that I’d pulled from the bottom of my soul, I tried my best to keep my chin up. Even if it wasn’t easy. But every time I started to feel that drag pulling me down to a place I’d been at before, I tried to remind myself I was my mother’s daughter.

Maybe I was a little cursed, but it could be worse. In some ways, I was one of the lucky ones. And I tried not to let myself forget it.

The people I cared about and loved didn’t let me forget it either, and I was pretty sure that’s what helped me the most.

When the time came, I had my mom’s remains cremated and spent a lot of time thinking about what to do with them. I wanted to do something to really honor her spirit.

And that came in two forms.

The idea to turn her ashes into a living tree had been Amos’s idea. He’d come up to me one day and slid a printout of a biodegradable urn across the table and headed back into his room as quietly as he’d left it. And it had felt right. My mom would have loved being a tree, and when I’d told Rhodes about it, he’d agreed we could easily find somewhere to plant her. We made plans to pick somewhere during the summer and do it.

The second idea had come from Yuki the very next day. She found a company that would send a family member’s ashes into space. And I knew without a doubt that my fearless mom would have absolutely loved it. I figured my blood money couldn’t have been spent any better than on that. I could even go see the launch.

My heart and my soul ached, but there couldn’t have been two more perfect ways to say goodbye to my mom’s physical body.

So I hadn’t been expecting to get home from work one day to find a bunch of cars parked in front of the main house. At least seven of them, and other than Rhodes’s, I only recognized Clara’s and Johnny’s. She had left early and let me close, claiming she had to do something with her dad. I’d taken off almost two weeks of work after finding out about my mom and would have managed the shop by myself all day every day, I’d felt so guilty for leaving her with that kind of load. I hadn’t thought twice about it.

But seeing her car with Johnny’s, and then five other cars with various license plates, completely threw me off.

Rhodes wasn’t the kind of man who invited anybody over other than Johnny, and even that wasn’t often. His work truck and the Bronco were both there too, hours earlier than they should have been. He’d told me that morning as he’d gotten ready for work that he would be sticking around close by and would be home about six.

I parked my car closer to the garage apartment I’d barely spent any time in lately and grabbed my purse before crossing over to the main house, confused. The front door was unlocked, and I went in. The sound of several voices talking surprised me even more.

Because I recognized them. Every single one.

And even though I’d been crying a lot less recently, the tears instantly welled up in my eyes as I crossed the foyer and into the main living area.

That’s where they all were. In the kitchen and around the table. In the living room.

The TV was on, and there was a picture of my mom in her twenties scaling some rock formation that would have made me pee myself. The image changed to another one of both of us. It was a slideshow, I realized before even more tears boiled over, falling down my cheeks in absolute surprise.

I was overwhelmed.

Because in Rhodes’s living room, in his house, were my aunt and uncle. All of my cousins, their wives, and a couple of their kids. There was Yuki and her bodyguard and her sister, Nori, and their mom. There was Walter and his wife, and Clara and Mr. Nez and Jackie. And just beside Johnny was Amos.

Moving toward me from that same direction was Rhodes, and I don’t know if he pulled me into a hug or if I threw myself like I seemed to always be doing, but there we were a second later. With me tearing up in a bittersweet sense of joy, straight into him.

After a lot more tears and more hugs than I had ever remembered getting at once, I got to celebrate my mom’s life with the people I loved the most in the world.

I really was one of the lucky ones, and I wouldn’t let myself forget it. Not even on bad days. I promised myself that then.

And it was all because of my mom.