He didn’t call.
And just when the pain was welling up, threatening to bubble out in an ugly public cry, he was there.
He was wearing a navy wool coat over the usual suit, laptop bag over his shoulder, hands in his pockets.
The biting wind ruffled his hair just slightly, and even with everything else going through her mind, her brain registered the fact that he’d changed. This was not the Texas Jackson. This was the New York Jackson. For the first time, he looked like he belonged here.
And then he quietly sat beside her, and he belonged there too. Next to her.
Jackson set his bag aside, moving her shopping bag so it was no longer between them.
He pulled her to him gently, both arms cradling her on the park bench as he pressed his lips to her hair.
Mollie closed her eyes and let the tears fall. Not big racking sobs, just quiet tears of heartbreak.
They said nothing. Not for several long minutes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered gruffly, his breath warm against her hair. “I should have remembered.”
“It’s okay,” she said, sniffling. “I’m really getting too old for this.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever be too old to miss your mom.”
The mention of her mother made Mollie’s eyes squeeze shut tighter. “She wasn’t even a good one, you know? Not really.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to miss her.”
She knew he was right, and yet she also knew that she was right in thinking that Melissa Carrington (M names all around, because her mom thought it was cute) didn’t deserve to be missed.
She was a mother in the technical sense. She’d given birth to them. Had kept them fed, at least until they were able to make their own macaroni and cheese. But she’d started to check out of the whole mom routine when Mollie was eight and their father had left.
It would take many more years until Mollie realized that the trouble had started before then. That her dad had left because of her mom’s drinking and drug use. But that wasn’t the story Melissa had told the girls. No, she’d made sure they were good and poisoned against their dad, even before he got his “new family.”
Mollie turned toward Jackson slightly, tucking a hand into his big coat pocket to keep it warm. “You probably went through this with Madison every year, huh?”
At first she didn’t think he was going to respond, but then he cleared his throat. “Actually, no, not so much. There wasn’t much love lost between Madison and your mom.”
“But she must have mourned a little,” Mollie said, pulling back and looking up at his face. “I mean, if you knew what this day means…she must have told you, right?”
Jackson ran a thumb over her cheek. “I knew the date because of what it means to you. You called a couple of times. Years ago. Madison was…out. So you talked to me instead.”
“That’s right,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten.”
The memories came rushing over her. The way Jackson had always just listened. Said all the right things at the exact moment she’d needed to hear them.
“It wasn’t a couple of times that it happened, was it?” she said, her hand finding his. “Most times I called on this day, she wasn’t there.”
He glanced at their joined hands. “Madison…she hated that you mourned your mother.”
There was more he wasn’t saying. Madison had always been slightly impatient with Mollie’s need to talk about the anniversary of their mother’s death, but Mollie had never realized just how much her sister hadn’t wanted to hear it. Now she wondered if, all those years when Madison had been unavailable on this day, it had been intentional.
“Thank you,” Mollie said, a lump in her throat. “For being there.”
“You want to talk about it?” he asked.
She sighed and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “That’s the strange thing about our history. You already know everything.”
He rested his cheek on her head. “Tell me anyway. Tell me as your…”
Jackson’s words trailed off, and Mollie wanted to beg him to finish the sentence. Lover? Boyfriend? What were they exactly?
But maybe that wasn’t what was important right now. Maybe what mattered was that he was here. With her. For her.
“I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years,” she whispered. Fifteen years since she’d come home from school, an awkward, geeky-as-all-heck eighth-grader, and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, her cheek pressed to the scuffed wood.
Mollie had thought she’d merely been passed out—again. It was a common occurrence. Coaxing Mom to her bed before tackling the cleanup of vodka bottles and junk food. Putting the pill bottles back in the medicine cabinet, even though their contents were never used as medicine.
But this time had been different.
This time her mom hadn’t woken up.
Her once beautiful, once vibrant mother had been cold and stiff.