“Tucker said he’d go with her, but it was a bad day to be on the river and he knew it. The waters were rough, the rocks more exposed because of how shallow the river was that summer. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was just her or the two of them or our entire crew.”
“Oh, God,” I whispered, covering my mouth with my hands.
“They both flipped out of their tubes. Tucker made it to shore but Dani hit her head on one of the rocks.” Momma Von’s voice cracked. “Anderson was the first person Tucker saw, and he’d run to the river, finding her lifeless and wrapped around a rock near the bank.” She wiped at her nose. “He tried to resuscitate her when he pulled her out of the river, but he was too late.”
And just when I thought my heart couldn’t break any more, her words crushed it into pieces.
Momma Von took a deep breath, shaking her head. “Nothing was the same after that. Tucker blamed Anderson, Anderson blamed Tucker, then they both blamed themselves. And where Tucker eventually let go and learned to live again, Anderson never did. Well,” she added, soft gray eyes finding mine now. “Until you, that is.”
My hand still covered my mouth and all I could do was shake my head, eyes blurring along with Momma Von’s. “And when he watched me fall into the river earlier today, he saw her, didn’t he?”
Momma Von nodded. “He hadn’t been able to save Dani, but he was there to save you. And when he finally got you on the shore, he couldn’t control his emotions. He lost it because he was scared of losing you, Wren.”
I bent at the waist, abandoning my mug on the coffee table so I could wrap my arms around my middle. I wanted to run to him, to hold him, to rock him and tell him I’m okay and he’s okay and everything would be okay. The urge was almost strong enough to lift me from my seat, but then reality crashed in again.
The truth was that though his fear was sparked from Dani, it still came back to losing me. And that fact wasn’t changing, even if it wasn’t the river that was taking me.
“Do you understand now why he acted the way he did?”
I nodded, arms still wrapped around myself and eyes on my sock-covered feet. “I do.”
“But?”
My eyes squeezed tight, and two tears slipped free. I didn’t even know how it was possible to still have tears left to shed.
“But it doesn’t change anything I said to him. I’m leaving, Momma Von,” I said, peeking up at her. “We’ve known from the start that this was only temporary. This is it. It all ends here.”
“But why?” she challenged. “Is it impossible to be long distance? To overcome the hour between here and the city?”
“It’s not just the distance. He’s never had a relationship. Not one.”
“And you’re scared to be the first?”
That question knocked the breath from my chest. “No. Yes.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m so confused, I’m lost, and I came out here to find myself but all I did was find myself in another man’s arms.”
“So, is this about Anderson or about you?”
“Both,” I answered quickly. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’s not ready for me, I’m not ready for him. I mean, he’s still healing from Dani and I haven’t even been divorced for a full year. Not even a full seven months yet! It’s just crazy. We were a summer fling, a distraction, a way to pass the time.”
Momma Von clucked her tongue, setting her mug next to mine on the table and turning to face me completely. “I don’t believe that, and I know you don’t either. So why don’t you just tell me why you’re really afraid of loving him.”
My heart stopped, kicking back to life again with a force that made me whimper. Love?
Did I love him?
And that’s when I realized that I’d never asked myself that because I knew in my gut the one solid truth that trumped any answer I would have had.
It didn’t matter if I loved him, because I wasn’t allowed to.
“I can’t love him,” I croaked, throat dry and hoarse. “I haven’t even been single. Sarah even said at the pig roast how quickly I’d moved from one man to the next. The timing is all wrong. I can’t love him when I’m still trying to love myself.”
“There you go again,” she said. “Living your life like you think you should because of what other people think or say. Maybe it is too soon, maybe Anderson is a mistake and you’ll both crash and burn at the end of it all, whether that end be tomorrow or next week or ten years from now. But wouldn’t you rather live your mistakes this time instead of playing it the way you’re ‘supposed’ to?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It can be,” she argued, pulling the blanket from her lap and standing. She looked down on me with both pity and challenge in her eyes. “If you don’t love Anderson, if you feel like you can walk away from him without regretting it, with steady hands and a head held high, then do it. Take everything you learned from him and all of us out here this summer and go back to your old life. Go find yourself.”
She paused, chewing her lip, her old eyes tired as they implored me to listen.
“But if the thought of losing him forever makes you lose your breath, if living without him seems impossible now, then don’t let him go. Don’t walk away so easily. There are no rules when it comes to life and love, and even if there were they would only exist to be broken. There’s no methodology, no equation, no right or wrong or guided path of light. Stop asking yourself what other people will think or what you should do and listen to your heart. You ignored it for years with Keith,” she reminded me. “Don’t take away its voice now that you’ve finally stopped to hear it.”
I blinked up at her, unable to grasp it all, to make sense of any of it. She was right, but so was I, or were neither of us? Why did everything feel laced with bad decisions?
I wanted to ask her, beg her to tell me what to do, but she’d said what she’d come to say. With my mind still racing, she simply reached for my hand, squeezing it softly with a knowing smile before turning and leaving me alone to sort through the mess.
And what a mess it was.
Hold on.
Those were the words I’d seemed to live by my entire life.
I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, but part of me thought it must have started with my mom. Not that I held onto her, but that her leaving taught me to hold on to those closest to me. That had always been Dani and Aunt Rose. And when Dani passed, I still heard those words.
Hold on.
And so I did.
I held onto the memories of her, of us, of our family. I held onto the hope for what she could have been. And more than anything I held onto the guilt I felt about how she died.
It was my fault. That was a fact that would never change.
But my outlook on it had to.
It was a dreary day, low clouds setting the mood as I climbed the cemetery stairs. My long-sleeve shirt was damp, clinging to every inch of my skin, and the hat I wore rode low, nearly covering my eyes. Everything was heavy—my boots, the mist I walked through, my heart. I wasn’t ready, but it didn’t matter.
Today would be the day I let go.