“Because Nova and Nessa asked me to.” And sometimes I need to be dragged out of the house or I’ll never leave it. I can acknowledge that about myself.
He flicks up another finger and digs his phone out of his pocket, tapping around and then reading from the screen. “January 16. We all ordered pizza and you ate the one with mushrooms even though you don’t like mushrooms.”
It was the only option and I had been hungry.
“Do you have a list on your phone?”
He ignores me and scrolls down. “December 28. You drove your sister to three separate grocery stores so she could find Nutella.”
I kick at a piece of wood. “She said she wanted it.”
He drops his phone to his lap and looks at me. “You were about to let me help you with the damned ramp when you don’t want me to.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I counter. I can see the point he’s trying to make. He’s about as subtle as a brick through a window. “There’s nothing wrong with me doing things to help other people. Mushrooms aren’t that bad.”
My dad’s face turns into a thundercloud. “They’re terrible if they’re not what you want.”
I shrug. “Not really.”
“Fine.” The word comes out of his mouth like a gunshot. “I have two more for you.”
I sigh and roll out my shoulders. “Let’s hear them, then.” It’ll likely be something about the chicken coop I made in Harper’s backyard that still doesn’t have chickens, or the time I was Nessa’s standin dance partner for a week. I lasted two days.
“You let your teenage sister put tattoos all over your arms, just to help her out.” He swallows hard. “You dropped out of high school to support this family. You worked yourself to the bone.”
And I’d do it again. All of it. No hesitation.
I love the tattoos on my arms. Each one is a piece of my family—a piece of me. It feels like armor when I need it most and comfort when I need that, too. I love looking at the leaf on my wrist and tracing the wobbly edges, remembering the way Nova’s whole face lit up when I agreed to let her try.
And the farming thing. That wasn’t even a choice. Of course I was going to step up. It was the easiest decision I have ever made, that day in the kitchen. The Parsons had come to visit my dad once he got home from the hospital and the idea came to me like lightning in a summer storm. I had been itching for something to do—some way to help—and taking my dad’s place was the best way to do it. The only way to do it.
“Because I love you,” I say, stubborn. I don’t see anything wrong with the things he’s listed. “Because I love all of you.”
“I’m starting to think I made a mistake, then,” my dad says quietly, his entire face lined with regret. He blinks quickly and clears his throat, never looking anywhere but right at me. “When I taught you how to love.”
Something in my chest fractures. Worse than when Evelyn walked out my greenhouse door. “What?”
“If you think love means having to sacrifice bits of yourself to make someone else happy,” he explains. “If you’re afraid to ask after what you want. Maybe I did something wrong.”
“I’m not—” my voice cuts out, my throat closing around the words. I look down at the ground, at the edge of my boots. Mud splattered from my time in the fields. I clench both my fists. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
It’s not. I love helping my family. Helping people is my—Christ—Nessa would say helping people is my love language. It’s how I show them I care. Actions have always been easier for me than words.
“Did you ask Evelyn to stay?”
I shake my head. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“Did you?”
I wish I had already started on the porch. It would be helpful to have a hammer in my hands. Pour all the restless energy twisting through my chest into the lift and pound of work.
“I didn’t,” I grit out. “Because she wouldn’t be happy here. Because she’d leave again.”
Because I can’t be the reason she gives anything up. She’d hate me and I’d hate myself.
“Aren’t those her decisions to make?” When I open my mouth to respond, my dad talks louder, steamrolling right overtop of me. “How the hell is she supposed to know you want her here if you never even ask her to stay?”
I close my mouth.
Blink.
Blink again.
“Sometimes love is greedy, kiddo.” My dad sets his mouth in a firm line. “Sometimes it’s a little bit selfish, too. You think it’s never crossed my mind that your mom deserves something better than the life we carved out for ourselves here? It has. A million times. A million and one. But I’m holding onto her with both hands. I’m trusting her to make her own choices. To choose me.”
He looks right at me, a smile hooking at the side of his mouth. He bends at the waist and grabs a piece of wood. He flips it over his shoulder and begins making his way to the ramp.
“Be selfish, Beckett. Just this once.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EVELYN
“What did he say?”
I glance up at Josie from my collection of folded leggings—a frankly alarming amount of comfort wear that towers next to one of my moving boxes. “When?”
“When you left.”
He hadn’t said a thing. He stood in the entrance of the greenhouse with his arm braced against the door and watched me quietly move around his house. I only allowed myself a single look back, right before I walked out the front door. He had his back to me by then, both hands anchored in his hair.
I can’t keep standing here and watching you walk away from me.
I topple the whole stack into the box. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Has he said anything since?”
I glance at my phone and then shake my head. It’s been radio silence.
Not that I expected anything different.
It’s been two days and the only update I’ve received on Beckett is a banal text from Stella. A simple he’s okay that she didn’t choose to elaborate on, along with a picture of a baby duck with a cookie by his webbed feet. Otis written in icing on top.
Though I suppose that was an update in and of itself.
“I need you two to communicate,” Josie offers from the other side of the room, holding up a shot glass from … I have no idea, honestly. She rummages around above my microwave and finds a bottle of whiskey that is so old, it’s accumulated a layer of dust. I think the cap is fused to the bottle. “The miscommunication here is—”
She trails off, grumbling under her breath.
“What?”
“It’s extremely frustrating for me, as a bystander in this relationship of yours.”
She shuffles her way back over to me around a minefield of moving boxes and … more leggings … the bottle wedged under her arm. She collapses in front of me and hands me the shot glass, working at the cap with her teeth. She spits it towards the windows when it’s off.