“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel worthy of falling in love, having a family, and living a good life. I botched it all up so badly the first time.”
She jerks her thumb toward the tent. “That little boy loves you, and I’m sure he’s heard all the rumors about what happened to his mother. Kids can be cruel. And he loves you anyway.”
I grit out a laugh. “Kids have no sense of self-preservation.”
“He’s happy here with you.”
I nod. “He seems to be.”
“Do you still look at your phone while you’re driving?”
My head jerks so I can look at her. “Never. Ever.”
“Good.” She finally uncurls her legs and eases back a little, resting her head on the back of the chair. She stares up at the sky. “We all do stupid things from time to time. Thoughtless things. Things that we look back on and know were bad decisions.”
“I’m afraid mine will follow me for the rest of my life,” I admit. I finally bend my neck so I can wipe my face on my sleeve.
“It’ll only follow you for the rest of your life if you keep running from it,” she says, her voice strong but quiet.
And her comment sinks deep into the center of me.
“Don’t give me hope, Abigail,” I say, almost pleading. I let out a wet chuckle. “That’s the last thing I need.
She smiles. “I’m a little bit in like with you, so you’re going to have to give up on that.”
I lift my head to look at her. “Still?” Even after all that?
She nods, staring up at the sky. “Still.”
She reaches over and takes my hand in hers, and she holds it as we sit quietly and stare up at the stars. We sit there until the logs on the fire have become nothing more than small glowing embers, and I see her shiver.
“I had better get home,” she says over a yawn. She stands up.
“Do you have to?” I grin at her. I’ve never felt as much peace as I feel when she’s around.
Suddenly, a quacking sound comes from down the lane.
“Is that Wilbur?” she asks.
“Sounds like it.”
We both stand and watch as Wilbur toddles down the lane in the moonlight, and then he walks straight into the open door of the tent, settles onto his pile of blankets, and lays his head down.
“You think he got laid?” I ask.
“He does look awfully content.” And Abigail laughs out loud. Then she covers her mouth, appalled at the fact that she made so much noise.
“For what it’s worth,” I say to her, “I’m still in like too.”
She steps up onto her tiptoes and presses her lips very quickly against my cheek. I want to draw her to me, and I want to kiss her for real, while she’s pressed against me. I want to hold her.
But I also want to give her time to think about everything I told her tonight. I want her to decide if she can live with it or not. I have to live with it, but she doesn’t.
Aside from Melanie’s death, which was something I would never get over, the worst part about that day and the events that followed—the very worst part—was that I’d never learned when Mitchell had finally given up his pacifier. I wasn’t there so I didn’t know how it happened or what made him want to do it.
And the loss of small details like that…those were what made all the wasted time over a dumb choice I’d made seem like such a tragedy.
22
Abigail
The next morning, I wake up feeling like crap. My throat hurts, my head feels like it’s in a vise, and even my skin hurts. I go from freezing to sweating every five minutes, so I get up, go to pee, and then go straight back to bed. I stay there, and I’ll probably stay there for the next week.
In the back of my mind, I wonder how things are going for Ethan. I wonder if Mitchell slept all night and then got up really early. I wonder if they got the chance to try out that fishing pole that Ethan bought for Mitchell. I wonder a lot of things, but my body hurts too much for me to get up and go check on them, not to mention that I don’t want to infect either one of them with this creepy crud that has taken over my whole body. I reach over and grab a tissue to blow my nose, and I wish that I had some pain relievers in the house. There’s nothing, because no one ever gets a headache at the lake unless you’ve drank too much.
I pick up my phone and dial Gran. She answers on the fourth ring, which probably means that she forgot where she left her phone.
“Gran,” I say, my voice sounding as weak as I feel.
“Abigail?” she says, and I can almost see her stand up to her full height in my mind.
“I don’t feel well, Gran.”
“Is it your tummy? Sometimes if I don’t poop for a few days—”
“It’s not my poop, Gran,” I say as I roll over, cough a few times, and close my eyes. Even the sunlight that’s coming through the open window hurts. “I think I’ve caught a cold or the flu or something.”
“You’ve got that kissing disease,” she says.
“I do not have mono,” I retort.
“You want me to come and take care of you?”
The good thing is that if I said yes, she’d be here in an hour. She wouldn’t wait. She’d come in, she’d bathe my forehead with cool water, rub my temples, and feed me purple juice and chicken soup with little pasta stars in it. She’d do all that and more without complaining because she loves me.
“I’ll be okay,” I say. I roll over again, my whole body aching so much that I can’t find a comfortable position to lie in. “Do you have any pain relievers hidden in the cabin?”
“No, I packed them up with everything that was in the medicine cabinet when we closed the cabin at the end of the season.”
“Oh.” I heave out a heavy breath, which makes me cough. “I felt fine yesterday.” I rest my palm on my forehead, wishing like crazy that I had someone to rub it for me. The vise keeps getting tighter and tighter.
“Were you around anyone with a cold?” she asks.
Come to think of it, the day I arrived at the lake, when I’d stopped at the tackle shop to buy some shirts, there had been a woman in there walking around carrying a damp handkerchief, and she’d been coughing up a storm. “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe someone at the store.”
“I’m telling you, it’s that kissing disease.” She laughs.
“I told you it’s not mono. And I haven’t been doing that much kissing.” I add the last more as an afterthought.
She cackles. “So there has been some kissing going on. Okay. Go Abigail,” she sings quietly. “Go Abigail, it’s your birthday.”
I frown. “It’s not my birthday.”
“Well, I know that, dummy,” she says. “It’s a song.”
“You couldn’t carry a tune to save your life.”
“Boy, you do feel bad,” she says. “You’re cranky. Always were kind of sour when you got sick. Your daddy was the same way.”
“I’m going back to sleep, Gran.”
“Wait,” she calls out, and I hear her even though I’ve already dropped the phone on the bed.