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I remember my mom being really upset once. So upset that even my dad couldn’t lift her mood by putting on her favorite Elvis record. My dad turned to me and said, “It’s time to bring out the big guns.” He’d taken Mom’s hand, sat her down in his study and told me to go play outside for a bit. After an hour of tossing the ball to Elvis, I’d come back inside to see my mom laughing, dancing with my dad to “Jailhouse Rock.” That night I asked him how he made Momma happy again and he said, “Sometimes before a person can open up, you need to show them how.”
I didn’t really understand my dad then, but I think I might now.
I take a deep breath, mentally preparing to open a door I’ve had locked for a long time. “Chase?”
“Hmmm.” His eyes are still on the stopped car ahead.
“My parents died in a car crash.”
His head whips to mine, hands easing on the steering wheel. “What?”
“My parents,” I say again, slower. “They died in a car crash.”
“I thought because you said how they were older…”
“No.” I brace my hands on my knees. “I mean yeah, they were older, but they didn’t die of old age.”
He takes one hand off the wheel to rest on mine. “That must have been hard.”
Usually, at this point, I shrug and brush it off. Pretend that it was so long ago the grief is inconsequential to my life. But I remember Dad’s words, and I try to show Chase how to open up by doing it myself.
“Yes. It was,” I force out. “Where I grew up, it was a small town about an hour west of Houston. I told you my mom was the local librarian, but after I was born, she stayed at home with me. I was homeschooled.” I smile, remembering how Dad turning the unused formal dining room into my classroom. “It was usually just the three of us. And Elvis, of course.”
Chase smiles. “The singer. Or the dog?”
“Both, I guess.” I was glad to be able to laugh. “So when I told you before, at the museum, that it was a big deal for them to let me go to New York, it was a big deal for me. They were my best friends as well as my parents. But at eighteen I could only think of a fast-paced life in the city with crowds and skyscrapers and classrooms full of students. Things I never had.”
Traffic eases, and Chase puts the car in gear, moving forward slowly.
“And when I graduated, my parents thought I might come home. But I didn’t.” The twinge of guilt in my heart is still as strong as ever. “I got a job. A good job at a big, fancy office in the middle of it all. It didn’t matter that I sat at a cubicle and had to do grunt work for a year before getting to work on an actual marketing campaign. I had a job and a life in New York, and that was all I’d ever wanted.”
“I’m sure your parents were proud.” His tone is placating, but it doesn’t need to be.
“Oh, I know they were.” I smile thinking of the calls, emails, and Skype sessions. “They told me every day.” My smile falls, knowing what comes next. “Until they didn’t. One day I got a call from the sheriff instead, telling me a deer had dashed out onto the road. Dad swerved, but he still hit the deer, and their car slammed into a tree. They died on impact.”
“Oh, Bell.”
We’re silent for a while, me lost in my thoughts and Chase leaving me to them. His hand only leaves mine to shift gears.
Remembering why I started this, I clear my throat and pick up where I left off. “When I left to go to the funeral, I trusted the wrong person with my work. I came back to being fired and humiliated.”
His fingers squeeze almost painfully around mine. “Denise.”
My laugh sounds a bit hollow. “Yeah. I guess we didn’t do a good job of hiding our animosity, huh?”
The look he throws me has me laughing.
“Yeah, well if you were grieving for your parents while she was busy logging on to your computer, stealing all your work, then sending inappropriate emails to all your clients under your name, you wouldn’t like her either.”
“Are you kidding me? She did all that?”
“Yeah.”
“If you hadn’t already fired her, I’d be tempted to do something much worse.”
His protectiveness makes me feel cared for, makes the sadness fade away.
“That explains why you’re fanatical about computer security.”
