“And you called him an asshole.”
“Well!” I answered, waving my free hand before letting it fall with a slap to my bare thigh. “He is! The first time I saw him, I waved, and he didn’t say anything back. Then he comes barreling into my house that night I cut my foot and he carries me all close to his chest and makes a joke about my shoes, but leaves just as fast as he came in, and doesn’t talk to me for a week. Then he checks on my foot, and he offers to help me fix this place up, right? So I say ‘no, it’s okay,’ thinking he’ll surely insist. But he doesn’t. He just leaves. And then he stares at me all night at the bonfire like he wants to eat my face and now here we are.”
I was out of breath and I reached for the water, chugging half of it before setting it back down and cupping my hands around my mug. Momma Von stared at me, blinked, and then barked out a laugh.
“Oh, peaches, you are a mess.”
I sank into the sheets with a whimper. “I know.”
My eyes were on the caramel coffee in my mug, and I kept them there, sipping occasionally, waiting for Momma Von to say what she needed to say. She was watching her own hands, and she seemed to be searching for the right words. When she’d found them, she sat up a bit straighter and lifted her eyes to me.
“Anderson used to be very, very different when he was younger,” she started. “And as fun as those stories were that everyone was sharing last night, his kind of crazy wasn’t always the good kind. He got into trouble. A lot.” Momma Von tapped her thumb against the handle of her mug as she continued, eyes bouncing between it and me. “Went to jail a couple of times, got into hard drugs for a while, had a complete disregard for anyone else but himself. Well, and one other person, which we’ll get to.”
Already I’d perked up, pushing myself up to lean against the headboard again. I didn’t ask questions though, just drank my coffee and waited for her to tell me the way she needed to.
“He worked, various jobs around here and down in Gold Bar, but he’d blow his paycheck on pills or car parts or whatever else he was into at the time. He was always a good guy, a good friend to those whom he felt deserved it, but he lived fast and didn’t care if he died young. That was just who he was.”
She smiled, a half smile, one that didn’t fully reach her eyes.
“But there was one person who always kept him grounded. It wasn’t his Aunt Rose, though the poor woman tried,” she added with a chuckle. “No, it was his cousin, Danielle.”
It was suddenly hot, and I kicked the covers off my legs and pulled my knees up to rest under my chin, setting my mug on top of them.
“She was younger than him, and he was protective of her, but half the time she treated him like she was the older one. She was a good girl—straight A’s in school, college girl with dreams set on getting her doctoral degree abroad. And when Anderson stepped out of line, when he took things too far, she was always the first one to smack him back down to reality.” Momma Von paused, smiling with a shake of her head, thumb still tapping. “She was a light in this town, and in his life, especially. And then, almost seven years ago to the day, she left this Earth,” she said, her eyes filling. The tears didn’t run, just pooled in her eyes as I covered my mouth with one hand. “She was just twenty years old, here one day and gone the next. And the Anderson she left behind is the one you know now.”
Maybe it was the hangover, or maybe my emotions were unstable from my own mourning, but my eyes welled right along with hers. I had a baby brother, and the thought of losing him so young made me feel like my throat was closing in.
“Last night, when you said Rev, he didn’t know it was your cat,” she continued. “I didn’t either, the first time I heard you call it that. You see, that was Dani’s nickname for Anderson, and it caught on pretty quickly. Everyone used to call him Rev, but ever since she died, no one mutters it at all. I think hearing it from you shocked him, freaked him out.” She paused. “Last night was the first time he’d been out in years. It was already so much for him, and I think that just pushed him over the edge he’d been balancing on since he walked into that back yard.”
She sniffed, wiping at her cheeks that were still dry, and I drank the last bit of my coffee, letting it all sink in. I understood now, yet still I never could.
Seven years.
It seemed so long to grieve, which led me to ask the only question I had as carefully as I could.
“What happened to her?”
Momma Von shook her head, reaching forward to pat my knee. “That’s not my story to tell, peaches. I only told you what I felt you needed to know. Anderson is a good man, he just has scars like all beautiful and tragic things in life.”
I chewed my lip, heart aching for the man I didn’t know, the man I was curious about, the man I didn’t need in my thoughts at all. “Well, thank you. But it’s probably for the best.” I swallowed. “I came out here for me, and that’s been hard enough as it is without getting wrapped up in a guy with nice arms.”
“And that’s fine,” Momma Von said, standing. “I respect that. And you don’t have to give him attention.” She tilted her head down, looking pointedly at me over her nose. “But you do have to give him an apology.”
My stomach turned and I tucked my knees in closer like they’d protect me, like they’d get up the nerve to apologize to Anderson for me. Because even though I hated it, Momma Von was right. There was no excuse for what I said last night.
Momma Von gave me a sympathetic, understanding smile before rounding the bed and heading for the stairs. “There’s a full pot of coffee downstairs,” she said, pausing on the top stair. “And, please, take a shower before you go see him. You smell worse than the homeless boy I dated in my hippy days.”
I let out one short laugh, and she winked at me before descending, leaving me alone in the bed I’d made.
I took my time showering, drinking another cup of coffee while I dressed and put on my makeup before switching over to the bottle of water Momma Von had given me. I curled my hair, put on my favorite lipstick, and tried on four different outfits before settling on a white, off-the-shoulder sun dress with a high slit. It was peppered with dark red peonies and I loved the way it hugged my shoulders, drawing attention to my exposed collar bone.
It was sunny out, but the temperature was hovering somewhere right under seventy., so I grabbed a light cardigan just in case and tossed it over my arm to use when the nerves settled and my body cooled.
And when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t feel even two percent ready to do what I had to do.
I hated saying sorry, mostly because I’d said it so much in the past few years that the word made me sick. I’d apologized for who I was, who I wasn’t, for trying and failing or not trying at all. But the difference was that this wasn’t Keith, and I actually had something to apologize for.
Thankfully, it took a little while to track Anderson down. The entire time I wandered around, asking where he might be, I dried my sweaty palms on my dress and recited what I’d say in my head. My throat still felt tight when I finally found him, and everything I thought I’d say flew away the moment I saw the muscles in his arms catching the light and the shadows as he worked under the hood of old man Ron’s truck. I pulled my eyes away from the way his dark jeans hung off his hips and focused them instead on the hard line of his jaw, the same one I’d traced with my eyes a million times in the fire light the night before.