“That’s terrible,” Margot murmured her understatement, the timbre of it sharing just how terrible she thought it was.
“Thank God for you,” he whispered.
“Pardon?”
He turned his head and looked her direct in the eyes.
“Thank God for you. Dave and you. Thank God Dad had you so he could give you to us. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have a lot of things, Margot. Too many to name. It’d take a week just to get through table manners. But there’s a new one now. And that would be, if I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t know how to love her like she needs me to do it.”
Tears brightened her eyes and she tried to slip her hand away, because Margot was the kind of woman who left the room to have her emotion in private, probably because she’d spent most of her life around men and she thought they had no clue how to deal with it.
Except those men had her too so she was wrong about that.
In other words, Johnny’s hold only got tighter so she wouldn’t slip away.
“She lost her mom and mourns her like that happened yesterday. She blossoms when she’s anywhere near you. You try to act the diva, sweetheart, but you can’t help but just give and give. Thank you for giving that back to Izzy.”
“Stop,” she whispered.
He didn’t stop.
“Mother-son dance,” he said softly.
Her eyes got brighter.
“You’ve already done it three times, you up for a fourth?” he asked.
She swallowed.
She sniffed.
She squared her shoulders.
Then she declared on a tight squeeze of his hand, “Most certainly.”
She gave him that and it was not the first time she gave him something for which he’d be forever grateful.
But she was Margot.
So she wasn’t done.
“However, as I also intend to stand in for another important role, you best prepare Eliza. Because everyone knows, a girl’s wedding is not her own. It’s the dream wedding her mother always wanted, and if not that, it’s the wedding her mother determines she should have. And I birthed three boys and helped raise two more. The first three’s women had mothers. Now, it’s my turn.”
To that, Johnny busted out laughing.
The sun was down.
The Christmas lights in the tree were on.
The infused vodka had again been unearthed.
Blankets had been brought out and spread in the grass.
So they sat under moonlight, Christmas lights and crystals, one couple each to their own blanket, sucking back vodka, talking and laughing, both quietly because Addie was giving her son his nighttime bottle.
Johnny was frowning at his brother who was stretched out on Addie’s blanket with her, watching her feed her son like he’d never seen anything more beautiful.
“Johnny, honey, can you pass me the ginger and peach bottle?” Izzy asked softly.
He reached to the bottle of vodka he guessed was ginger and peach because it had peaches in it as well as something that looked like cut up garlic cloves (a bottle he had, until she just said that, avoided because he wasn’t thinking he’d be a big fan of peach and garlic).
He turned and handed it to her.
She took it with a, “Thanks, h?schen.”
He said nothing.
He just stared at Izzy’s face in the moonlight and Christmas lights, seeing right then, next to him on a blanket, with their people around them, she was not happy.
She was what she thought her mother wanted to be.
She was in her place.
She was where she’d always wanted to be.
She was serene.
He’d thought he’d never seen a more beautiful woman than the woman he’d seen with her daughters in those pictures in Izzy’s stables.
But that changed right then.
Eliza set the bottle in the grass by their blanket and lifted her eyes to his.
She tipped her head to the side. “You okay?”
“Best ever, baby.”
She smiled.
And there was the happy.
So Johnny forgot his brother on Addie’s blanket.
Izzy was happy.
Therefore so was Johnny.
And they’d ride that the next day, Sunday, when he loaded up Izzy and his dog in the morning and he spent the entire day with her in bed at the mill.
And they’d keep riding it, falling asleep together and waking up together the next morning.
It wouldn’t be until Monday afternoon when Izzy’s serenity was shattered, when her world of moonlight and crystals and fruit-infused vodka and good people all around that Johnny knew she’d worked her entire life to find her way to fell apart.
And when it did, everyone on those blankets plummeted straight into hell.
Can You Go Faster?
Johnny
MONDAY AFTERNOON, JOHNNY was washing grease off his hands when his phone in his coveralls rang.
Normally he would ignore it.
Izzy in his life, he did not.
He grabbed some paper towel, did a quick swipe, and with still mostly wet hands, he pulled out his phone.
It was Iz.
He took the call, put the phone to his ear and answered, “Hey, sp?tzchen.”
“Johnny.”
A red-hot iron spike rammed down his back and his head jerked around until his eyes found Toby, who was bent over a car.
As if he felt it, felt what Johnny heard in Izzy’s voice, his brother’s head came up and they locked eyes.
“Iz, what’s going on?” he growled.
“Johnny,” she repeated in that awful voice.
“Talk to me,” he demanded as Toby pulled out from under the hood.
“I . . . I—” She was losing it.
“Give it to me, baby girl,” he heard Deanna say.
Deanna.
Deanna was with her.
They worked together.
But he did and did not like knowing Deanna was with her when she sounded like that.
The good part was that Deanna was with her.
The bad part was she sounded like that.
Johnny thought his head would explode as he waited and listened to the phone jostle while watching Toby move quickly toward him.
“Johnny?” Deanna asked.
“Deanna, what’s happening?” he bit out.
“Okay, now, okay, damn,” she replied, sounding freaked and tortured at the same time.
“Deanna,” he said warningly.
“Okay, no way to say this easy so I’ll say it fast. Someone took Brooks from the daycare center.”
Johnny tore the shoulder on his coveralls down his arm, ripping the buttons at the front clean off.
“It was naptime,” she continued. “The lady minding them got called out of the baby room. When she got back, she didn’t notice at first. Then she did. They looked around for him, but the lady that runs the place right away called the cops because all the babies are in cribs so they shouldn’t be able to get out. They called Addie at the grocery store. She came straight away. He’s . . . he’s . . . Johnny.” Her voice dropped. “No one knows where he is.”
He heard Izzy’s sob in the background as he stepped out of his coveralls, kicking them away. “Where’s Addie now?”
“Fuck,” Toby hissed.
“That’s why we’re calling ’cause we’re trying to get there fast but you can get there faster and she’s lost it, Johnny. She’s a mess. You gotta get to the daycare.”
“On my way,” he said, sprinting toward the door of the bay, feeling Toby on his heels. “Tell Izzy I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes. Yeah?”
“I’ll tell her, Johnny.”
“See you soon,” he said.
“Soon,” she said back, her voice cracking.