Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
She said those words, but I couldn’t imagine how they could be true. Nothing was all right.
Grandma sniffled. “I’m going to go check on things. Make sure everyone has enough booze to forget we’re sad.” She pulled back slightly, brushed away her tears, then placed her hands against my cheeks. “Grandma loves you.”
I bent down and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, too.”
She walked out of the kitchen to the rowdy living room space that was playing all of PaPa’s favorite music on the jukebox. As she pushed open the swinging door, “A Horse with No Name” by America blasted through the air.
I wished more funerals had highly inappropriate music for the occasion. It made it all feel a little less traumatic.
I wasn’t ready for the music, though.
I stayed in the kitchen, standing still in my fucked-up emotions. I picked up PaPa’s tin of recipes and began to flip through them. They were covered in flour and oils from being used so often. For decades, his fingers paged through those cards. His fingerprints were imprinted on the cards. His love was within his cursive writing on those pages. But still…he was gone.
I felt sick.
I felt confused.
I felt lonely.
The kitchen door pushed open, and in walked Willow. She stood there with her hair in two French braids, dressed in orange, and a small smile on her face. Her eyebrows knitted together the moment she saw me.
“Hi, Mr. Grump,” she whispered, walking toward me.
“Hi, Weeping Willow.”
“I heard rumors of your mother maybe being here.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Sad?”
“Yes.”
“Confused?”
“Very.”
“Angry?”
“Beyond.”
“Okay.” She took my hands in hers, laced our fingers together, then pulled me into a hug. I shut my eyes. There it was. Comfort. Willow Kingsley and her goddamn comfort.
I tried to stay as stable as I could as I leaned into her.
“It’s okay, Theo,” she softly said. “Go ahead and break. I’ll keep you from falling.”
That permission was all I needed before I burst into grown-man sobs. I never cried in front of anyone, except for my grandparents, when I was a kid and got fed up with the bullying. I never fell apart in public where another could witness my cracks. I’d never shattered with an audience. Yet for some reason, Willow didn’t feel like just another person. She felt like another piece of me. A stable post that kept me from drowning.
I still felt sick.
I still felt confused.
But I didn’t feel alone.
“Willow?” I whispered.
“Yes?”
“Can you p-please do me a fa-favor?”
“Anything.”
“Stay with me? Please. Just…s-s-stay.”
She held me tighter, a simple sign that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I was thankful for that.
All I ever wanted was for someone to stay.
CHAPTER 28
Theo
Iwished I could say the night got better, but it didn’t. My mother stormed off after ruining the whole afternoon for me, and then I had to deal with walking past people and hearing them whisper about the latest gossip of Christina Langford’s return from the dead.
My annoyance with PaPa was still high, but hell, yelling at a ghost didn’t seem like it would do me any good. I walked through the crowded house, being stopped by individuals who truly didn’t give a damn about me, asking me how I was coping.
“Oh, sweetheart. It’s a shame,” Jane Forest said, tapping her hand against my forearm. “I cannot believe he’s really gone. He was a good man.”
“Wild that your mama popped back up, too, though,” her sister, Sarah, stated. “Have you two been in contact?”
I stared blankly at the two sisters before walking away without offering them a word. That continued, and people grew more and more bold with their gossiping as more whiskey was poured.
The one who started speaking the most whiskey thoughts out loud, though?
Good ole Peter Langford.
My dumbass cousin.
He crossed my path in the dining room as I was collecting empty beer bottles. Peter patted my shoulder, the whiskey scent almost oozing from his pores. “Holy shit, Christina’s back, huh?”
I grumbled.
He was the last person I wanted to speak to about my mother’s arrival to Westin Lake.
“Not talking about it,” I muttered.
He took a swig from the whiskey bottle in his hand because that was the level of drunkenness he’d made it to—no glassware needed. Drinking straight from the bottle. Mr. Classy over here.
Peter tapped his temple. “I don’t know about you, but that would fuck with my mind, my mama coming back to town for two years and not wanting to see me at all.”
“Peter,” I scolded, “fuck off.”
He held his hands up in surrender with a chuckle. “Whoa, whoa. Don’t rage at me, Theo. I’m not the one who abandoned you. Just imagine,” he said, sliding an arm around my shoulders, “your mother hates you so much that she’d go out of her way not to see you. That’s almost comical. I bet Saturday Night Live could do a hilarious skit on it.”