Adam wasn’t in charge of my movie dates. Adam was in charge of my life. And I did not bother begging him for anything because he just never relented. He made up his mind and his mind was made up. That was that. I either obeyed or I didn’t and paid the consequences.
I learned pretty early that disobeying Adam was not gonna get me far. He was much easier to be around when you just did what you were told.
So my relationship with Adam, from the time I was ten until just after my seventeenth year, was mostly just following orders and going to church with him.
He was a stickler for that Sunday trip to fucking church.
But things started to change the summer I turned seventeen and saw him on his knees with hands in the dirt in our gardens.
At first, I just watched him from one of the windows. He had lots of deliveries from a nursery in a town about thirty miles away. They would pull up in their truck and Adam would stand there and point as they unloaded them. He would tell them exactly where to put each pot. But he didn’t ask them to help plant them. He did that part himself.
We had a small backhoe in the garden shed—which was really more of a building than a shed—and every other kind of garden equipment you can imagine. That’s where Nate and I got those chainsaws to clear trees back when we were eleven. And every morning in the early summer that year I turned seventeen, Adam was up with the sun digging holes and planting things.
I watched him do this for five days. McKay was busy with a few of the teams Adam told him to run, so he was in and out during this time. And Nate was busy with school things. And his grandfather, who was very, very ill at this point.
And I was alone.
Just Adam and me.
So on day six of this planting stuff I went outside in jeans and mud boots and asked Adam if I could help. It was like six in the morning, but it was already hot. So Adam took off his baseball hat, wiped his brow with the back of his hand, pointed to a row of potted evergreen shrubs, and said, “You can do those, Indie. Just put them in the holes and cover them with a nice mound of dirt and three inches of mulch. Then, when we’re done, you can water them.”
I nodded and did that. It took me all day.
They were not much to look at when all this took place and I said so when I was done. But Adam just smiled and leaned on a shovel. Then he said, “Don’t worry, Indie. This coming winter they will have pretty purple flowers with a scent you will die for. And next fall they will have bright red berries and the thrushes will come from miles around to feed on them. They will stay through the winter and the next spring we will have small, cup-like nests on all the trees and they will be heavy with blue-green, brown-speckled eggs.”
He was smiling when he said all this. Like talking about the berries and the birds was a fond memory he was conjuring up from long-ago days. He sounded a lot like Nate back when we were kids and my heart made room for Adam that day.
I think… I might even have fallen a little in love with him.
Because that was a new side to Adam that I had not seen before. I had never once imagined Adam as a boy growing up here at Old Home the way I did. I had no idea he was a swamp kid, like me.
But how could he not be?
He has no brothers and sisters. There was probably no one here but him when he was small. No mother. None of us had mothers. And the more I thought about it, the more I could picture Adam being Nate when he was small. Just a boy, all alone in the woods next to the duck lake and the river. Fishing from a little boat. Making fires on the beach and catching fireflies in jars to light up forts in the night.
I started wondering if he had a girl like me when he was young.
I even asked him once, late that summer when McKay was gone and we were taking advantage of the pavilion without him. Adam was watching college football on the TV over the fireplace and I was lazing around on my bed swing. And I said, “Did you have a best friend when you were a kid, Adam?”
He didn’t look at me right away, just kept watching the football game. We had barbecued that afternoon. Hot dogs. I was still full from eating three.
But eventually his eyes found mine. “What do you mean? Like… McKay?”
“No. Did you have a girl like me when you were growing up here at Old Home? Or were you all alone?”
It came out sadder than I meant it to. Because I didn’t want to imagine Adam all alone. It made my heart hurt.
“I didn’t have a girl like you. Not until you came along. You’re one of a kind, Indie.”
I chuckled. Because I knew he was saying it to make me chuckle. But there was a stab of pain in my chest when he said that.
“I’m sorry, you know. For hitting you that day. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyes went sad then. And I wanted to take it back. But I didn’t take it back. I couldn’t take it back. I had been wanting to tell him that since he woke up on Nate’s living room floor covered in blood.
Finally, he sighed. “It’s just who you are, Indie.”
His reply hurt me more than it soothed me. Because… was that girl who hit him in the head with a candlestick who I was?
I gave him a brain injury. He almost died. And sure, by this time I had killed my share of people on different jobs. I had hurt more than that too. But I never wanted to hurt Adam. If McKay had not insisted on taking him to the emergency room, he would’ve died, or at the very least gone unconscious and never woken up again. His brain was swelling up and cutting off his oxygen flow. And even though he recovered, and by this time he was mostly back to normal physically, he had to have therapy for months afterward. And learn to say a few words all over again because his mouth didn’t quite work right.
I did that to him. And I was very, very sorry.
But the truth was… I didn’t actually remember doing it. I didn’t know how that candlestick got in my hand. I didn’t know how it struck Adam on the side of the head. I didn’t remember any of it. And that scared me. Really bad. And I wanted to tell this to Adam but I didn’t want him to worry about me or think I was losing it. Because I had heard Donovan talking to McKay and Adam over the years. He was always worried that one day I would ‘lose it’ and that’s why he’d been coming to talk to me since I was a little girl. So I didn’t lose it. So I could hold everything together in a tight, tight ball and never go insane.
But I didn’t know how to say that. I should’ve started with this train of thought instead of ‘I’m sorry’. Because now it felt like the conversation was over.
So I got up from my swing, walked over to Adam, and sat in his lap. And I hugged him. And then I was just… more sad than afraid. Because I had hugged McKay millions of times by this point in my life. And Donovan, a couple dozen, at least.
But I had never, ever, not once, hugged Adam. Or thanked him for saving me from that snake. Or giving me this home. Or making sure I was taken care of by McKay. For saving my life in the early days of those jobs. Or anything else that he’d done for me since I first became his more than seven years ago.
It took him almost a full minute to relax and put his arms around me, and hug me back. But when he did, something changed between us.
We both felt it.
And then his head turned and he kissed me on the cheek and pulled my face into his neck and whispered so softly, I could barely hear his words, “I love you, Indie. No matter what you do, I’m on your side, kid. Always and forever.”