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Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ithink I’m ready to face my mom.” Tricia’s declaration came exactly a year after we’d gotten together in Denver. I wondered if it was her way of celebrating our anniversary, or if it was more a case that she’d finally accepted she wasn’t entirely to blame for her mistakes and wanted to move her life forward.
The day before she said this I’d been in a pretty reflective mood. It had led me to take the morning off from work to visit a high-class jeweler my mom used for maintaining her antique pieces.
For most of the previous month, I’d contemplated proposing to her, but had talked myself out of it because I’d thought I was being selfish when she had so much more emotional angst going on.
Hitting the year anniversary without a significant gesture felt wrong. My father had shown his faith in me by sending me to Denver, and Tricia and I had shown the same in one another by deciding to be together. That reasoning told me to trust myself and do what my gut felt was right. My gut, like the rest of me, wanted her to be my wife, so I went and chose a ring.
“Yeah?” I asked, stopping in my tracks from stuffing towels into the beach cart we usually took when heading there. We had been packing for a day at Sawyer and Billie’s, a day of fun in the sun. Sawyer and I had gone halves on a boat, named Marina Stuntman and our new baby was a Martimo X60, a sixty foot, high-end, eight berth sporting yacht with fabulous seating on the upper deck and reliable Volvo engineering.
We’d ordered it one night on impulse when we were very drunk, and our women had gone on a girls’ weekend to a spa. This was the result of a discussion we’d had about the old fishing lake back at our parents’ place, not that we’d ever fished together. Buying a boat had felt like the perfect solution to remedy this.
We could have afforded plenty of boats of our own, but we’d decided to go halves on a sizable sporting yacht as a bonding exercise. As he already had a large dock and jetty at his oceanfront home, the logistics of owning one had been taken care of and the next thing we knew, we were trolling the internet for one.
“I found a text from Marnie this morning. She’s heading over to my parents’ house at the weekend. I thought we could go over there tomorrow, and I’ll introduce you properly, since they only met you briefly when Billie invited them to the wedding.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed.
“What would you say if I invited my mom to New York for the weekend? Then it would give me the opportunity to get her on her own and have it out with her without anyone else around.”
“I like that you feel strong enough to do it,” I stated, proudly. I stopped packing the cart and hugged her. Tricia rested her cheek on my chest, drew a deep breath in, and huffed it out. I felt the tension within her relax.
“Right,” she stated with some finality in her tone. “I’m going to do my best to enjoy myself today because the next few weeks may feel a little overwhelming at times.”
Taking her by her upper arms, I pushed her back and dipped my head so I met her eye to eye. My heart squeezed with the turmoil that clouded hers. “I’m here, Tricia, and I got you. You can do this.”
She nodded. “I can. With you and Miles behind me, I feel so much stronger to face whatever comes out of this.”
“Answers will come, and they’ve got to be positive,” I reminded her. Even if it wasn’t the answers she was expecting, they were a piece of the puzzle that had stunted Tricia’s life decades before.
“Right. Enough, let’s get moving, the kids will be climbing the walls waiting to get out on the boat,” she said, changing the subject. Smiling, I left her and went to finish the task I’d been doing. I wondered whether to put the plans I had had for that night on hold or whether to fire ahead and propose to her regardless.
* * *
“There you are!” Brynn exclaimed, as Colby rushed forward and opened Tricia’s passenger side door. Standing dressed in her Minnie Mouse swimsuit and a pair of bright pink flip-flops, her expression told of the anguish she felt at being made to wait for our arrival.
I bit back a grin at how contradictory her unruly dark hair had been swept into a severe schoolmarm bun atop of her head, alongside the fake tattoos she had at various places on her right upper arm was against her outfit. The girl was her rock star father’s image through and through.
“Move back then and let me get out,” Tricia told both kids. Colby grabbed Brynn by the hand and did as she asked.
“Go tell Dad they’re here,” Colby instructed his sister, who ran off with slapping sounds from her little flip-flops ringing in our ears.
“That one has been driving us nuts waiting for you guys to get here,” Colby informed us.
“She’s a handful,” I agreed, as Tricia popped the trunk but said nothing. Joining her there I lifted the beach cart straight out of her SUV and set it down on the ground. Extending the cart handle we headed into the house, dragging it behind us.
Hammer was in their music studio working but came out when he saw us arrive and headed over to the coffee machine. “Great boat, James. Sawyer showed me around yesterday when it arrived. The kids are peeing their pants with excitement, they can’t wait to get out there.”
We stood making small talk for a couple of minutes until Billie came to the open sliders on the other side of the house.
“Would you guys get a move on, I’m about to go bald trying to contain these three out here. Brynn’s already jumped off the jetty on the other side of the boat once.”
I snickered at being told off and concluded my conversation with Hammer before making my way outside.
“Auntie Tricia,” Remy called out from the stairs on the upper deck of the boat where Sawyer stood.
“Hey, bud,” I called back to my nephew and ignored that he’d spoken to her. “Permission to come aboard?”
