“Okay. Be careful on that foot.”
And before I could find another reason to stay, I was out of her cabin, down the porch stairs, and walking down the drive. I rounded it at the end to make my way back to my cabin, shaking my head the entire way. She didn’t need my help, and I was stupid to even offer it in the first place. What did I expect? I didn’t know anything about her, and I knew everything about me.
So she was attractive. I’d seen plenty of attractive women in my life, both before and after Dani’s death. It didn’t change the fact that everything good inside me had died along with my cousin more than six years ago.
I had nothing to give Wren, but still I was stuck.
Because no two days had been the same since I met her.
My Aunt Rose was born and raised in Gold Bar. She lived in the same cabin that my grandparents did, even after they passed, even after my mom left and didn’t take me with her. But after Dani died, Aunt Rose left Gold Bar for the first time in her life, and she hadn’t been back since.
She would never say it, but she blamed me for Dani’s death, too. It didn’t stop her from checking in on me every now and then, short phone calls with a flat voice that served no other purpose other than to confirm I still had a pulse. Later that day when I was at old man Ron’s, she called me and it was over in three minutes.
Ron didn’t say anything when I returned to the garage, tossed my old flip phone into my toolbox, and went right back to cleaning the battery terminals.
A lot of people misunderstood Ron, saying he was an old, grumpy man with a bad attitude. But I knew better. Ron was smart, and unlike so many people who talked but never said anything of merit, every word that left his mouth had a purpose. He was the closest thing I’d ever had to a father, and since his wife and unborn child had been killed in a car accident while he was serving in his third tour, I was the closest thing he’d ever had to a son. We never talked about that, about what the other meant to us, but we both knew.
“Almost seven years,” he said from under the truck. My hand froze over the battery for a split second, but then autopilot kicked back on, and I nodded.
“Yep.”
Ron crawled out, wincing a little as he used the bumper to help him stand. “You going to see her?”
My eyes didn’t leave my hands, but I nodded again.
He pulled the old rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands on it, watching me work for a minute before tucking it back in place. “Let me know if you want any company.”
Ron didn’t wait for me to respond, just walked inside the house and gave me unspoken permission to quit for the day. And so I did, but my head was heavy with thoughts of Dani as I walked back to my cabin, and I veered off toward Momma Von’s without making the conscience choice to do so.
“Hey, grease monkey,” she greeted from where she sat on the porch. I plopped down in the seat next to her, the mountains already shaded as the sun disappeared for the night. “Want a beer?”
I shook my head, and because she knew I didn’t want to talk, she filled me in on her day.
Where Ron and I had an understanding in silence, Momma Von was always there when I needed to talk. Sometimes I only said a few words, and sometimes I talked for hours. She was about the only person I still talked to like that, but it was because she knew—she knew Aunt Rose, she knew Dani, she knew me, she knew the past and the present and why I would never be the same man I was in one in the other.
I wanted to tell her Aunt Rose called, that I was feeling some sort of way about the anniversary of Dani’s death, but I wasn’t there yet. So I listened to her tell me about her day working in her garden and helping Yvette with Benjamin. I was staring out at the mountains, eyes adjusting to the darkness, half-listening and half-thinking about my own shit when she said Wren’s name.
“Poor girl didn’t know what to do with that baby in her arms,” Momma Von said with a chuckle. “She was holding him out at arm’s length, his legs dangling and diaper sagging. I’ve never seen a pair of eyes so big before, thought they were going to pop out of her head before Yvette got back with the changing bag.”
“What’s her story, anyway?” I asked, aiming for nonchalant, landing somewhere right around desperate for information.
“She’s a sweet girl, staying out here for the summer. I think she’s a little lost, trying to find out who she is and how she fits in the world.”
“Mm,” I said in response.
Momma Von had her eyes on me, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth.
“She’s not running from a crazy ex or something, is she? That’s the last thing we need out here, some lunatic showing up and then we all have to get involved.”
“I don’t think that’s my story to tell,” she answered with a cluck of her tongue. “But maybe you could ask her.”
I just shrugged, but more questions burned their way to the surface. Where was she from? What did she want to find out here? Did she really have a crazy ex? Shit, did she have a boyfriend?
“Aunt Rose called me today,” I said instead of asking any of them.
“You okay?”
I nodded. “Seven years next month.” I shook my head, fingers folding together from where they hung between my knees. I kept my eyes there, in that safe space, and asked the question I’d been thinking all day out loud. “How is that possible?”
Momma Von was silent a moment, rocking in her chair and pulling the blanket around her shoulders a little tighter. “Time has a way of doing that, Anderson—sneaking up on us. Sometimes I look back and can remember one day of my life more than I can remember an entire decade. I look at myself in the mirror every morning and wonder when those wrinkles appeared, when my hair started to gray, where my bright porcelain skin went.”
“I can still hear her laugh,” I said. “Like I heard it just this morning.”
“And you probably always will. Nothing wrong with that.”
My eyes stayed focused on my hands. “She could be here right now. If I wouldn’t have pushed her, if I would have—”
“Stop, Anderson.” She cut me off, but I was still shaking my head, rolling over the words I’d said to Dani the night before she died. “You have to let go of the blame you feel. It’s been seven years. She wouldn’t have wanted you to live like this.”
Her words might as well have been a hammer when I needed a drill, they were so useless. How did Momma Von know what Dani would have wanted, or anyone else for that matter? She didn’t survive long enough to tell anyone how she felt about the things I’d said to her, and so the comfort Momma Von tried to bring with her assumption fell flat.