The breeze sharpened, lifting Lily’s hair, slipping cool fingers beneath her collar. It ruffled the lawn that, since the rain last Thursday, was thickly patched with a wave of late-blooming bluebonnets, a sprinkling of Indian paintbrushes. Later there would be monarda, fire wheels, milkweed, and Blackfoot daisies, mixed with the grass. When Lily was small, five or six years old, she had helped her mother seed the lawn, making it into a meadow of native wildflowers. They had stood on the porch one day when the seed had begun to sprout, and her mama had held Lily’s hand. “They’ll come back every year,” she’d said, “like hope.”
Lily looked over at AJ. “I have something to tell you. It’s—it’s upsetting, and I’ve been waiting for the right time. I wanted to be sure you were okay.”
AJ’s gaze on Lily’s was intent and gave her the odd sense that he knew, or at least suspected what she was going to say, but when she said it, “Your dad and I are getting a divorce,” he looked blank.
“Should I leave?” Shea asked.
“Absolutely not,” Lily said. “You’re a member of the family, or you will be.”
“I’m not that surprised.” Now that he’d grasped her meaning, AJ seemed reconciled. “I’ve never thought you and Dad were very happy together.”
“Really?” Lily was dismayed. She hadn’t realized he’d noticed. “He’s found someone else,” she said, and then she looked away, because somehow it shamed her, although why she should be ashamed when it was Paul who’d been unfaithful, she didn’t know.
“Who?” AJ asked.
“Jerry Dix’s wife—or ex-wife, I should say—Pilar.”
“Are you kidding me? Isn’t she, like, thirty? Didn’t she just have a kid?”
“Twins. She has three-year-old twins.”
AJ snorted. “Dad doesn’t even like kids.”
Lily toed the porch floor again, setting the swing in motion.
“Are they getting married?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“I never felt that close to him.” AJ found her gaze. “To either of you, really. It was always, like, every man for himself in our family.”
For a moment, Lily felt only the sting of regret, but as it dawned on her, the depth of AJ’s isolation growing up, she became furious. This was Paul’s fault. He was the one who had caused their son to feel abandoned when, in the days following AJ’s near-drowning, he had taken the care of her baby out of her hands.
But she had let him.
God forgive her, she had let go of her own child, let the string of nannies Paul had hired stand in for her. How could she have done that? It sickened her now to think she had been so easily convinced of her own ineptitude as a mother. Before she could reconsider, she went to AJ, and, kneeling before him, she took his hands in hers. “I know how you feel, and I know why, and I have no excuse. There’s nothing I can say to change it, but if you can forgive me, I’d like a chance to start over. I’d like for us to know each other, if it’s not too late.”
He looked away.
She couldn’t see his expression. She sensed disdain, perhaps, or disgust. Certainly he would have doubts. Maybe he suspected her of attempting to manipulate his emotions, the very thing she was trying so hard to avoid. Of course it was too late. He was a grown man, not a child. She couldn’t woo him with promises, cajole him with treats. She started to rise but sank back to her knees when she saw that his eyes were glazed with tears. Reaching up, tentative, gentle, she thumbed them away, unsure of what to say, how to begin. “There are things I should—that I have wanted to tell you—” She paused, thinking, No. This wasn’t the right time to talk of the past—Jesse, and the ordeal at Monarch Lake—and all that those events had cost her and, ultimately, AJ as well. “I love you so much,” she said instead. “From the day I knew you were conceived . . .” Her throat narrowed, closing off further speech.
He slumped toward her, balancing his forehead on her shoulder. His breath warmed the hollow beneath her chin, and when he spoke to her, when he said, “Mom?” his voice was low and broken.
She closed her eyes. “I’m right here, honey.”
“I really need your help,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff I have to work through, not just what happened with Erik, but you know, when I was overseas, Afghanistan—going through all of that—it kind of screwed me up.”
“Oh, AJ.” For a moment, her grief for him, for his pain, was so overwhelming; it was all she could say. She fumbled her arms around him. “I’m here, right here,” she repeated, and she held him as best she could. He was so much bigger than the last time she’d embraced him. It was clumsy, and she was struggling, too, with the weight of her sorrow and her regret. But inexplicably now, joy came in a rush that opened her heart, and somehow it was as if the years of misunderstanding—all those years she’d kept herself apart from AJ—were falling away.
A light settling of fingertips on her shoulder caused her to look up, and she saw that Shea was touching AJ’s shoulder, too, a benediction, a blessing. They smiled at each other, blinking through their tears, and Lily loved Shea instantly and without reservation in that moment.
AJ lifted his head, wiping his eyes, under his nose. He looked around at them. “What a bunch of saps,” he said.
“A family of saps,” Shea said, and they laughed.
It was after midnight when Lily, seeing a light on, went downstairs and found her dad sitting at the old marble-topped island. She slid onto the stool next to him.
“You can’t sleep, either?”
She shook her head. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to stay on here until I can figure out what I’m going to do with myself.”
“You don’t need permission, Sissy.”
“Dad?” Lily set her elbows on the island.
“Hmm?”
“I’ve been wondering—do you think I’m too old to go back to school? Veterinary school?”
He looked sidelong at her. “AJ and Shea are going to need somebody to doctor their livestock when they get their business running.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Hasn’t been a good large-animal vet in the area since old Doc Forsythe died.”
“Oh, Dad.”
He patted her hand. “Maybe we’ll both end up working for AJ.”
Lily laughed.
Her dad didn’t. “I’m lucky he doesn’t hate me.”
Lily felt lucky in that regard, too.
“He wants to understand, wants me to explain,” her dad said. “I don’t know if I can. Not in a way that’ll make sense.”
Lily met his glance.
“I don’t want it to come between us,” he said.
“Then you’ll have to find a way to talk to him about Winona and Erik—the same as I have to find a way to talk to him about Jesse and Phoenix.”
“It’s a lot to pile on the kid, especially after all the shit he’s been through.”
“He—we talked earlier—about Afghanistan. He kind of opened up to me.” Lily looked at her dad. “I’m just so glad, you know? Not about the war. I hate it, how it’s affected him, but if I can help him—if he’ll only let me—” She broke off. Then, picking up after a moment, she said, “I want so badly to have a relationship with him, to have his forgiveness, his—his respect.”
“Most anything worthwhile in this world takes time, Sissy.”
“I told him about the divorce.”