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My eyes fill with tears that I let fall. Penny isn’t alarmed to see me cry. She’s seen me do it plenty of times over the years. I’ve explained to her that adults are just big humans like she’s a tiny human and all humans, no matter their age or who they are, cry and that’s a very healthy thing. Have I hidden so many other details from her while I gave her that truth? Of course. Have I lied to her because I felt it was best? Yes. I hate myself for those lies.Constantly.
I told her that her grandparents lived too far for us to easily visit. I live in Dayton, Ohio now, which was about as out of the way a place I could think of to move when I needed to lose myself. A long drive, but a short flight. She asked me last year for the first time about her father. I explained to her that sometimes moms and dads part ways and that doesn’t mean they love their children any less. I gave Raiden and my parents the same, though much more complicated and convoluted version of that story years ago, when I was a few months pregnant. I’ve kept my family at bay for years, though since Raiden was released from prison, we do talk regularly through text and on the phone. I thought I could keep doing it. Keep trying to piece my unraveled life back together until I had something that approximated happiness.
“I know sweetheart.” I stroke her soft, fine hair. Baby down, even though she’s no longer a baby. I didn’t want to tell her at all, but we were staying here, and she’d see her grandma getting weaker every day. “I don’t want her to die either. It’s hard, saying goodbye, but death is a part of life, and you don’t have to be afraid.”
“Will it be a long time before I die?”
Oh my god. A brutal bolt of fear liquifies my insides. “Yes. A very long time. When you’re very, very old.”Please, please, please, let that be true.Words and hopes uttered by every parental heart and meant with all their being.
“What’s it going to be like?”
I’ve spent days looking this up, ever since Raiden called me and told me about my mom. Dad called him first, right after they got the diagnosis. They’d barely left the hospital before he called Raiden, broken, panicked, and in tears.
He didn’t have Raiden’s private number. He called the clubhouse and asked for him. I know why he did it. Raiden was closer, right here in Hart. I haven’t spoken to my parents in almost five years, not since they told me not to bother coming home if I didn’t have a ring and a man along with a baby. It doesn’t matter who they called first. Not at all. The only thing that matters is that we hold ourselves together, even if we have to pretend to be the family we once were and can never be again.
“Peaceful.” I kiss Penny’s forehead. “Grandma is in some pain, but the doctors are giving her medicine to help her feel better, even though they can’t make her better.” My mom’s sister, who lives down in Florida, and her brother, in Texas, are going to be flying in soon to be here. Both my parents lost their parents fairly young. I haven’t had a grandparent since I wastwelve. “She’ll be surrounded by people who love her, and she’ll know that. You might see people crying and you might want to cry too and that’s okay. We’re just sad because Grandma won’t be here anymore and when you miss someone, you cry.”
“But you’ve always missed them.”
“Yes.” I sniffle, swiping the moisture from my cheeks with the back of my hand. I try to give my daughter a brave smile. “Yes, even when they were always right here. I should have come back sooner. I wasted a lot of time, and I can’t undo that. That’s the hardest part of life. Learning lessons too late.”
“But Uncle Raiden said we made it in time. He says there’s lots of time for hugs and cookies and flowers.”
“Yes. Flowers. If I ever finish pulling up these weeds.”
Penny leaps off my lap with the renewed energy of a four-year-old ready to take on the world. She’s been like that since birth. Happy, but frustrated to be trapped in a tiny body when she has so much energy and so many grand dreams. She’s smart, strong, innocent, and sweet. Most parents think their children are a gift, but I’ll never stop thanking whatever is out there for the privilege of being this girl’s mother.
Penny bends and starts to grab up weeds in her small fists. She tears them, just removing the leaves, but she’s right there beside me and that makes this day perfect, despite all the things that are wrong in the world.
I straighten as soon as my ears pick up a dull rumble in the distance. I shade my eyes with my hand and stare out at my parents’ front yard. I can’t see much past the hedges, which are overgrown and so tall that they obscure the road completely. My dad carved in a small walkway just for the sidewalk. The roargrows steadily louder until the small pebbles on the sidewalk literally vibrate.
Penny looks at me questioningly, but there’s no denying the glint of excitement in her eyes. Raiden dropped us off here in my parents’ car a car, but he came back the next day on his bike. Penny had never been so thrilled or fascinated with anything in her life as she was with that massive black and chrome Harley, so loud that she had to clap her hands over her ears before it even pulled up at the house.
I expect Raiden.
I gather Penny up in my arms even though it’s six billion degrees out here and I’m a soaking wet mess, so she can see her uncle pull up past the hedge.
I raise my hand in greeting as the bike nears, my feet firmly planted on the sidewalk.
I can’t see much of anything, but the roar of the bike is deafening and then it shuts off and there’s nothing but undisturbed silence on the quiet residential street I grew up on.
Against the backdrop of bright sunlight, a shadow appears through the gap in the hedges. “There’s uncle,” I tell Penny, smiling widely.
God, I’ve missed my brother. I missed my parents. I missed this little city where I was born and did so much living before my future and all my plans so wildly derailed.
“Ray,” I call out to him, setting Penny on the ground so she can rush over. She’s never been an overly shy child, which has given me parental heart attacks more than once in the past.
I drop my hand and let out a harsh gasp at the broad figure. A little too broad to be my brother, a few inches taller, dirty ash hair shot through with burnished copper flowing well over his shoulders. My heart thrashes like an animal caught in a leg trap, immediate pain searing through me.
Penny stops short when she realizes it’s not her uncle standing there, so fierce and intimidating. She looks at him, then immediately reverses direction and rushes back to me. She grabs onto my leg, and I pick her up, turning her face to me, eager to shield her.
Protect her. Hide her. Oh god, please no.
I’d recognize Gray anywhere, but it takes me one delayed heartbeat to reconcile this new version of him. Gone is the striated and easy athleticism, the charm and charisma he used to ooze. Even though he was a biker, he was never scary.
His eyes are still the same vivid, slightly alarming green, but his face is older and harder. His beard is longer now, braided into one thick plait, darker than his hair, but still mixed with lovely gold and copper. There are scars, one on his temple and one above his right eye, that I don’t recognize, along with a new bump in the bridge of his nose. It’s his lips that give his face all that new hardness. A jagged white line cuts through them at the corner of his mouth, giving a horrible sneer.
There’s no longer anything boyish about him. He’s a feral, beast of a man, so broad across the chest and shoulders that his white t-shirt and the black leather vest with all the patches on the front strain against his muscles. He still prefers old, faded jeans with a wallet chain hanging from the waist to the back pocket, and his worn leather boots, but he wears them now likean added snarl. With his tattoos fully on display and that new perma-scowl of his, he’s utterly fearsome.
