My lips curl at the sides. “Ready when you are.”
He pulls out of me, strutting to the nearby bathroom to clean up, and I begin gathering my clothes from various places … the back of the chair … hanging off the sink … the floor in the entryway. When the last article is crammed into my arms, my phone rings from my purse. Fishing it out from the bottom, I answer my sister’s call.
“Hey, Aubs,” I say, trying my best to sound like someone who wasn’t recently ridden hard and put away wet.
“I’m so glad you answered.” The desperation in Aubrey’s voice sends a sick swirl to my stomach. “Leighton, it’s Grandma.”
My grip loosens on my phone.
“She’s really sick,” she says. “She’s in the hospital and the doctors don’t know how much time she has. I’m getting on the next flight to Kansas City. We leave in three hours. If you want to say goodbye while you still can, I suggest you do the same.”
I steady myself against a wallpapered wall, my heart sinking slowly, painfully.
“She was healthy,” I say. “What happened?”
“Pneumonia, I think?” Aubrey says, her voice breaking. “She’s not breathing on her own, that’s what Mom says. And this is the fourth time she’s had pneumonia this year.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I say, making a promise I’m determined to keep. “I have no idea how I’ll get there, but I will.”
Ending the call, I turn to see River standing in the middle of the room, shirtless and fastening his belt buckle.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“My grandma is sick,” I say, my voice—and my heart—deflated. “They don’t know how much time she has.”
“Where is she?”
“Kansas City. I’m going to look for a flight.” I’m going to have to get one of those airline credit cards with the absurd interest rates. I officially have no choice.
“It’ll be faster if we drive,” he says, grabbing his shirt off the floor and tugging it over his head.
“What?”
“I’m going to drive you.” He checks his pockets for his keys and phone. “By the time you book a flight, drive to Pierre, and spend all that time in airports … it’ll just be quicker if we go by car. It’s a seven-hour drive. We could be there by tonight.”
“River, are you sure?”
His offer is exceedingly generous, but I’m not exactly in a position to turn it down.
“Pack a bag and meet me at the truck in an hour. I’m going to call Guy and see if he can watch the farm for a couple of days.”
“Thank you.” Rushing to him, I cup his handsome face in my hands and kiss him hard. “Thank you. So. Much.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
River
I keep to the back of the hospital room, trying not to intrude on this private family moment. I offered to stay in the waiting room, but Leighton wanted me here, with her.
Her mom, Renee, is seated next to her grandmother, who drifts in and out of sedation but isn’t capable of saying much thanks to her oxygen mask.
Renee looks up at me after a while, her dark eyes squinting as she tucks her gray-brown hair behind one ear. The whites of her eyes are tinged yellow and the tip of her nose is cherry red. She’s been crying and drinking, I presume.
“Leighton, you going to introduce us to your new boyfriend?” Renee does very little to mask the snide flavor of her tone.
“Mom, she already did,” Aubrey says, chin tucked and voice low. “His name is River, remember?”
Renee’s eyes scan the length of me. “That’s right. What kind of name is River, anyway?”
“A family name, ma’am.” I give a polite nod, opting not to elaborate. I don’t need to get into specifics about how my biological mother named me after her father, who was a Baptist preacher and one-eighth Sioux, in an attempt to try and reconnect, only he disowned her for becoming an unwed mother, and I spent the rest of my childhood being bounced from foster family to foster family, all the while getting shit for having a name that was different from everybody else’s.
Had my existence not been so shielded in secrecy, maybe I’d have wound up on a reservation somewhere with distant family. And maybe my life would’ve turned out a whole lot different.
But then I never would’ve married Allison.
I never would’ve had Emma or the promise of Cannon.
And I never would’ve met Leighton.
“Mom,” Leighton shoots her mother a look. “Let’s focus on Grandma.”
Her brother, Jackson, hasn’t said two words since he arrived with a bouquet of flowers. I don’t suppose it’s tradition to give a dying woman a bouquet of lilies, but I suppose the poor man didn’t want to show up empty handed.
He’s tall and strapping, with a body built for farming but used for line-backing. Leighton says he plays football at Notre Dame on a full scholarship, but other than that she isn’t sure what he’s up to these days. She said they don’t keep in touch like they used to.
He brought a girl with him, a skinny cheerleader type with fake breasts and bleach-blonde hair. Renee seems to like her. In fact, Renee is friendlier to Jackson’s girlfriend than her own daughters combined.
Leighton is hunched forward, her hand enveloping her grandmother’s, stroking her veiny, paper-thin skin.
“I’m going to grab a coffee,” I say. “I think that drive’s starting to get to me. Anyone else need anything?”
“I’ll come with you.” Renee rises, tugging on her Notre Dame sweatshirt. Her eyes focus on me. “I could use a walk.”
Within seconds, we’re strolling down the hall toward the vending machines. Renee moves slowly, like a woman feigning sobriety, but every so often she steadies herself on the handrail attached to the hospital walls.
“How long have you known my daughter?” she asks, peering up with a cocked eyebrow. The scent of stale beer on her breath is undeniable.
“Not long,” I say. “Couple weeks, maybe a little longer.”
“Did she leave Grant for you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It just seems odd that she had this good thing going for her and she gave it all up for—no offense—a small-town cowboy.”
My lips flatten and I exhale through my nose. I refuse to let this drunk woman get under my skin, and truth be told, I’ve been called a hell of a lot worse than a small-town cowboy in my day.
“With all due respect, I would hardly call Grant ‘a good thing.’” I say, fishing change from my pocket. The coffee vending machine is generic, but it’s all they have. I deposit seventy-five cents and make my selection.
Renee’s face scrunches. “Grant would’ve given my daughter a very comfortable life. She wouldn’t have had to want for anything. The entire world would’ve been at her fingertips. Now you tell me that’s not a good thing.”
“He didn’t love her,” I say. “He was sleeping with other women.”
It’s not my place to tell her, but I refuse to allow this woman to deify that asshat.
Renee scoffs. “He would never.”
“Leighton didn’t tell you?”