Look at that, Daisy Mae, Daddy had said to me from where he knelt at my side. Makes you feel small, doesn’t it? But it reminds you that you’re here. Don’t forget that feeling.
What he hadn’t told me was that death gave you the same feeling. The reminder that you’re here. The smallness you felt. But joy was exchanged for pain. You were here, but without the one you loved. You were small, insignificant, your life so fragile that it could be gone in a second. A heartbeat that might be the last.
I’d spent much of yesterday in the past, sitting at Drew’s grave, thinking about him. About what might have been, the life I’d imagined at eighteen with the boy I loved. For so long, I’d only been able to imagine us together, never able to comprehend the reality of relationships. He’d been set to go off to UT, but I was going to stay home with Mama. It was only an hour away. But what might have happened? He could have met someone, fallen in love, left me. Maybe we’d guessed right—we might’ve stayed together forever, if we grew and learned and changed at the same pace. But the older I got, the more I saw how rarely that happened.
It was strange to have years of certainty on a thing broken and reshaped to fit reality. Like learning that fairy tales weren’t real and the good guys won sparingly.
I knew it sounded cynical, though I was generally no cynic. Truth be told, it was a little bit of a relief. It meant I wasn’t forever shackled to him. We were bound, but I was no prisoner of my love for him. The feeling came and went, sometimes by the week and sometimes by the hour. Yesterday, I was a pendulum. For a moment, I sat in Keaton’s warm kitchen that smelled of cookies and hope and believed in moving on. And then I sat next to Drew’s grave in the thick, springy grass, caught in a past life. Split in two, but the break wasn’t clean. It was a jagged edge, dangerous, sharp.
Drew was still with me as Gretchen and I panted at the top of that hill. He and I had ridden through here a hundred times, ever since we were little. We’d grown together even then, so who was to say we wouldn’t have been able to keep that going?
There was no point in considering it. That life had been lost to me long ago.
Didn’t stop me from wondering, though.
I’d told Keaton how to move on as if I knew how. It was easy to be brave for the sake of someone else. But the core of that courage wasn’t a solid. It wasn’t even a liquid, containable by something as simple as bare hands. It was like the slithering mist in the valley below me, never stopping, never grasped, ever shifting.
A hard swallow did little to open my throat, tears clinging to my lashes in defiance. And rather than let them take me, I clicked at Gretchen, spurring her down the hill and toward that sunrise, letting the wind carry those tears away.
We ran hard across the property, about two miles to the house. Through fields of flowers, past cozy bee boxes lined up in green patches. Past the tree house Daddy built for us so long ago, past the cottages at the skirt of the big house. And then the house itself was in view, bringing me back from the past with every gallop.
Once in the stables, I brushed Gretchen out as quickly as I could and made my way around the stable, giving everybody an apple and telling them good morning. After that, I headed inside, hoping no one was awake yet.
I’d never been one of the lucky ones.
The kitchen bustled with activity. Mama was at the griddle cooking eggs and hash browns, singing along to Reba. Poppy, Jo, and Grant sat at the table, coffees in front of them and sleepy smiles on their faces. It was later than I thought, and though I wouldn’t have wanted to cut my ride short, I might have if it meant avoiding everyone.
So I did what I always did.
On went my smile and smooth went my brow as I closed the door behind me.
“Hey,” Jo said fondly. “You ride this morning?”
“Gretchen wanted a stretch,” I answered, taking off my jacket and hanging it on the hooks over the bench.
Mama turned around and looked me up and down, pointing her spatula at me. “Take those boots off, Daisy Mae.”
“Yes, Mama,” I said, taking a seat to pull off my muddy boots, which would have been all right if the hems of my jeans weren’t gritty and wet too.
“You have breakfast yet?” Mama asked.
“No, but I’m gonna go shower, if it’s all right.”
“Course it’s all right.”
I stood and headed for my room. “Be right back.”
I took my time getting ready for the day, changing into something a little less cowgirl and a little more business casual. It was my hope that everybody would be off for their chores and I could eat without interference.
But again, luck wasn’t on my side.
It seemed they’d all waited for me, though their plates were empty.
“Here, baby,” Mama said, hopping up to fetch the plate she’d made up from where it was being kept warm in the oven.
“Thank you,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee and taking one of the empty seats.
“What are y’all up to today?” I asked so they wouldn’t ask anything of me.
“Well,” Poppy started, “Our doc for the shelter just got to town, and I have two social workers coming down from San Antonio, so I’ll be busy with them all day. Jo and Grant are working on some fundraisers.”
Jo perked up at the mention, and Grant just watched her, amused.
“We’re going to do a car wash,” Jo said, grinning.
I frowned. “Like, you’re gonna put on a bikini and wash cars for money?”
“Nope. The guys are.”
One of my brows rose in Grant’s direction, and he shrugged. “Including me.”
I snorted a laugh. “In a bikini?”
“Shirtless, in trunks with five-inch inseams,” Poppy said on a giggle.
“Oh, you are gonna earn so much money.” I shoveled up a fork of eggs and popped them in my mouth, cheery for the first time today. When I’d swallowed, I asked, “Who else?”
“Notably, Sebastian, Wyatt, Evan, and the Meyer brothers,” Jo answered.
I paused, fork loaded and midair. “All of them?”
Evilly, she smiled. “All of them.”
The thought of Keaton with no shirt on set my temperature on the rise. I mentally double-checked that I’d put on deodorant and was relieved to remember I had.
“And we’re all going to be their supervisors. I got us matching coveralls.”
“Stop it,” I said, giggling.
“I can’t. It’s too much fun,” Poppy said.
“The idea is to get the community involved, so we’re thinking a walk-a-thon, an auction, a pancake dinner. That sort of thing,” Jo added.
“Pancakes, huh? Do they know that’s your specialty?” I asked.
“They’re about to find out.”
A moment of content silence stretched out before Poppy asked, “How was seeing Drew?”
I took a heavy breath and set down my fork in favor of my coffee. “It was like it usually is.”
They nodded their understanding, Mama knowing best of all. Grant sat quietly at Jo’s side, his arm on the back of her chair, an observer who never felt like an intrusion.
I changed the subject. “On my way, I stopped by the Meyer’s to drop some contracts off for Cole. Problem was, Cole wasn’t there. Keaton was.”