I petted his head and faced him toward Eli, whose arms were still occupied by my large box of clothes.
“Oh, sorry.” I set Mo on the floor. “My room is this way.”
The dynamic duo of distraction otherwise known as Mo and Eli had prevented me from hearing Nancy Thompson in the dining room with my mother. Mom must’ve called her for an emergency session after last night, and then hoped they’d finish before I got out of my class.
“Oh, hello.” I’m pretty sure my attempt at not frowning failed. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Could everyone hear my sarcasm, or did it sound that way only in my head? Fortunately, my mother was too preoccupied with the handsome stranger in her living room to care.
“Mom, this is my friend Eli. Eli, that’s my mom, Madeline Turner, and her . . . friend Nancy.” Like my mom, Nancy had also become engrossed in Eli. Who could blame them? He was by far the best-looking thing in the entire house.
Eli nodded. “Good morning, ladies.”
“Sorry to interrupt. Just passing through.” My goal now? Keeping Nancy from explaining her presence, it being far too early in our acquaintance for Eli to discover exactly how crazy Turner women could be and that my mom paid to talk to dead people. Yet suddenly sadness hit me, because for Mom to bring Nancy back so soon reeked of desperation, which suggested she was still deeper in grief over Dad than I’d believed.
“We’ll leave you alone,” I said, brows pinched thanks to the unhappy revelation.
We’d taken one step toward my room when Nancy blurted, “Karen says it’s time to be happy.”
Eli tripped, dropping the box, his face now as pale as Mo’s white fur. He stared at Nancy, lost and aghast. “What did you say?” Pain sharpened his words.
Nancy’s gaze ping-ponged between my mother and Eli. “I’m getting a message from a woman named Karen. I don’t know who is the intended recipient.”
Eli’s expression hardened as color rushed back to his face. Avoiding my gaze, he mumbled something that sounded like “Outta here” before bolting through the front door, leaving his yoga mat behind.
My ears funneled sound like the inside of a conch shell. Could Nancy actually talk to the dead? And if so, who was Karen?
I retrieved Eli’s mat and chased him outside, leaving Mo behind.
“Eli, wait!” Dewy grass clung to my bare feet, but I caught up to him before he got into his car. “You forgot your mat.”
His haunted eyes flashed with discomfort when he took it from me and tossed it in his back seat. “Thanks. See you round.”
“Wait.” I reached for his arm, but he flinched, so I pulled back, raising my hands. “My mom’s paying that kook to communicate with my dad, who died last year. I’ve told her she’s flushing her money down the toilet, but your reaction makes me wonder if maybe there’s more to Nancy than sneaky Google searches. Please, can you tell me what spooked you?”
His chest rose and fell on a heavy exhale.
“That ‘kook’ might’ve delivered a message from my dead wife.” He’d been staring at the house when he said that, so he didn’t see my face fall.
His dead wife.
“I’m so sorry.” It felt like a medicine ball had landed on my stomach. “Something about you seemed sad, but given your age, I never thought widower.”
As soon as those words emerged, I wished I could spit my foot out of my mouth. Eli didn’t show any sign of having heard me, though. He remained fixated on the house as if Karen might appear in the window. He stood like a sentinel, his hands on his hips, sorrow etched across his face.
My gaze followed his, but my thoughts wandered. “That’s why you stopped writing songs . . .”
He faced me then. My breath stayed locked in my lungs; he swallowed hard. Concentric circles of tension vibrated around us, holding us in place.
Death and grief loomed everywhere. My sister, my mother, Eli . . . Even I still clung to my dad’s memory every single day. “Eli, I’m not the most tactful person, and maybe you don’t want to talk about this . . . but I know that emptiness . . . that excruciating absence of someone. Knowing you’d cut off your arm to hear another ‘I love you,’ or spend every penny you had to make them laugh. Last summer I barely made it out of bed most days. By fall, I still struggled to go to work and get through a day without tears. To make sense of why the person who most loved me was taken from me without warning.” I dabbed my eyes before massaging my throat to untie the knot that had formed. I recalled unloading my sorrow on Hannah one day when I’d first discovered her shop. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk about hard things with strangers than with friends. So if you ever feel like unburdening yourself, I’ll do my best to help you get through another day.”
He turned back toward the house, his hands now flattened against the roof of his Subaru. I didn’t dare move or make another peep, knowing I’d already probably said too much. Although his gaze didn’t waver from the living room window, he seemed a million miles away. “Karen loved the mountains and stars, campfires and guitars.”
A couple of heartbeats ticked by while I waited for wherever that statement might lead.
“She was a diabetic. We knew we’d taken a risk with her getting pregnant. But it’d been proceeding so well we’d let our guard down. At around twenty-eight weeks, she suggested a weekend camping trip to the Great Smokies, a few hours outside our house in Nashville. She had her meds, we’d had no signs of any trouble. Great forecast. Air mattress. Two nights . . . ‘What could happen?’ she’d said. ‘It’ll be our last chance to enjoy camping for a while.’”
He paused, eyes misty. I almost stopped him from continuing rather than watch him relive the pain or fall apart in front of me. The grisly details of whatever went wrong weren’t any of my business, but I couldn’t walk away after inviting him to share. “She woke in the middle of that first night, bleeding pretty heavily, crying from thinking she was miscarrying. That was her only concern—the baby. But by the time we got to the nearest hospital—an hour away—she’d stopped crying because she’d gone into shock. Placental abruption, then complications from massive blood loss. Both she and our baby died . . . my son . . .” Tears welled in his red-rimmed eyes, which he dabbed with the heel of his hand.
“I’m so sorry, Eli.” I stroked his arm, wanting nothing more than to offer a comforting hug, yet sensing from his tightened muscles that one would not be welcomed. It’d take a lifetime of yoga to work through that pain.
He squeezed his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If I could go back, I’d insist we adopt, but she was so damn sure . . . so optimistic. That’s how she approached everything. Embracing life and challenges. Refusing to be limited by her illness. We should never have gone someplace remote like that, but she’d had me believing in her fairy tale, like always.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a fond smile before his voice broke apart. “If I’d been smarter, she might still be here.”
I knew that feeling, too. If I had begged my dad harder to stop smoking. If I had paid more attention to his huffy breath instead of teasing “the old guy.” If I hadn’t gone to Dream Cream and helped him clog his arteries. Jesus, the way we tortured ourselves over fates we didn’t control boggled the mind.