Because I Love You (26 page)

My chin trembled, and the room blurred. I didn’t want to talk about sex, not now.

“Oh, God. Jill, what if—?” I covered my mouth with shaking fingers and grasped the locket around my neck with my other hand.

She rubbed my back. “Let’s not jump to conclusions here. Would Hermione panic until she had all the facts?
No
. Maybe all they’re doing is resetting her arm or something.”

Neil balanced on the edge of his seat, watching me, his face lined with concern. I shrank into the curve of my chair and rubbed my eyes, determined to keep any tears from falling.

Jill stuck her hand in mine.

“Thank you for calling him,” I said.

I lay my head on her shoulder, and we sat like that for at least an hour. Then Neil perked up in his seat. I turned my head. Behind me, Jill’s dad approached wearing his cop uniform. I was on my feet in seconds, Jill by my side. My pulse pounded in my ears, my chest, my knees.

“Sit down, Andie,” Mr. Anderson said.

Oh, no.
It was two years ago all over again. My knees gave out, and Jill guided me into the chair.

Mr. Anderson took a seat in front of me. His dark eyes were kind but full of sorrow and anxiety. He leaned forward, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know what to tell you, kiddo. Your mom made me promise to keep this to myself months ago, when you girls first started hanging out.”

I held my breath. I couldn’t take any more secrets. I thought back to how Mom had acted the last several months. Yes, she’d lost a lot of weight, and yes, she seemed to be sleeping a lot more, but that was just stress. Between work and me—and lately the added weight of our bankruptcy—I understood. What could she possibly have been hiding from me this whole time?

I caught Neil’s stare. His face was so white, and the crease between his eyebrows was deeper than I’d ever seen it before. His anxiety only added to the heart-wrenching panic in my gut.

“Andie.”

My attention snapped back to Mr. Anderson. His eyes had filled with tears. “Hon, your mom had been battling the late stages of cancer for months, and nothing was working. With all that was going on, she didn’t want to worry you and instead chose to enjoy the time she had left with the person she loved most.”

My heartbeat raced as Neil leapt out of his seat and stormed from the waiting room with Owen on his heels. Jill took one of my shaking hands in hers.
This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.

Jill’s dad put a hand on my right knee and pursed his lips. “When she collapsed at school earlier, they rushed her to the ER, and the doctors did everything they could to save her, but . . . she didn’t make it.”

At first, my brain shorted. Every atom in my body froze. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t breathe. But seconds later, I heard myself hyperventilate, as if I were floating above the room. Finally, as Jill’s arms flew around me, it sank in:

Mom was dead.

chapter twenty-five

People say during traumatic events, time moves slowly. In reality, time stands still, and, all of a sudden, weeks have gone by and you can’t remember how you got there.

I remembered Neil returning to the hospital’s waiting room minutes later and holding me in his arms for hours while screams and sobs ripped through me. I remembered falling asleep at the hospital and waking in Neil’s bed the next morning. Mom’s peaceful face as she slept in her casket. Her soft, cold hand beneath my fingertips. Faces I couldn’t place telling me they were sorry. My aunt telling me she’d make sure I was looked after. Neil’s futile attempts to get me to eat. Jill stopping by to check on me and bring me clothes. Owen’s voice from the cabin’s living room. Neil’s embrace as we fell asleep at night. Guitar music.

But I don’t remember crying again, or talking, or thinking. I don’t remember Christmas coming and going. I don’t remember how the rest of my belongings got to the cabin. And I don’t remember my belly growing as big as it was when I felt the baby move for the second time.

The kick awoke me from my sleep as soft piano music played from the living room. I rested my hand on my stomach, waiting for the baby to strike again. When he did, I felt him in my palm, like someone had nudged me from beneath a pile of blankets.

I raced to the living room of the cabin. After everything, Owen’s parents let us stay as long as we needed. Neil sat at his keyboard, surrounded by boxes, a pencil in his mouth. When he caught sight of me, he did a double-take, eyes wide, and jumped up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his face pale.

“Ethan. I think you can feel him now.”

Neil set the pencil on his music stand and took two giant steps toward me. He slid his hand beneath mine. Eyes wide, he looked down at my belly and waited. Then the baby kicked again, and Neil grinned.

“You feel him?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’m thinking we might want to enroll him in Irish high-stepping later. Unless that was a punch. Then maybe karate.”

I shook my head, thankful that Neil hadn’t lost his sense of humor. Then reality knocked the wind straight from my lungs. There wouldn’t be karate lessons or soccer games—because I had no money, no way to support my son.

I was
alone
.

I wept for the first time since leaving the hospital. Even at Mom’s funeral, I managed to rein in the tears. Mostly because I was so angry with her for not telling me the truth. But now, a cannonball might as well have blown a hole through my chest.

“Hey, come here.” Neil held me in his arms and led me to the couch. Sitting, he pulled me into his lap.

I clung to him, breathing in his scent and listening to his heartbeat.

“I’m all alone,” I said, my voice shaking. “They’re both gone. Mom and Dad. I can’t—oh, God, it hurts.”

Neil rubbed my back with his fingertips, slow and soothing. “I know, baby. I know. But you’re not alone. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But what about Ethan? I haven’t even finished high school yet. How am I supposed to support him by myself?”

“Who says you have to? Contrary to common belief, I am pretty good at these things called jobs. I can get one with Owen’s dad, and I’ll make good money. Between your part-time job and my full-time one, we’ll be fine.”

I shook my head against his chest. “No. Neil, this isn’t your problem. You can’t give up your life for me.”

He lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. “We’ve been over this. You are important to me, which means
he
is important to me. Blood doesn’t make a family, Andie. I will take care of you—both of you.”

Owen’s dad owned one of the most successful home building companies in Colorado. And Neil
was
like a son to Owen’s father, at least from what I’d gathered. But Neil’s dream was to run his own music studio. There was no way I’d take that from him. I shook my head as breath left my lungs again. “But what about your music? No, I can’t—”

“Hey,” Neil said, putting a finger on my lips. “Who says I’m giving that up? It will always be part of my life.”

“What about your studio? What about Harvard and your business degree?”

He put a finger on my lips. “Screw Harvard. I never ended up applying anyway. Promise me you won’t worry about this anymore. Say the words.”

I took a deep breath. Could we be okay? And after everything, shouldn’t I have learned to trust him? When he raised an eyebrow, I nodded. I was
petrified
but not yet ready to give up on Ethan. Not yet. Even if I had to take two part-time jobs to make ends meet.

“Sorry, I must be going deaf. Try again,” Neil said.

Rolling my eyes, I whispered, “I promise.”

Neil kissed my forehead, and I leaned against him again. He held me close with his strong arms. A few more minutes we sat there, arms around each other. My thoughts turned away from Ethan to my mom, my parents. The hole Dad had left behind had never truly closed, and with Mom gone too, it was miles wide and beyond repair. How had my life ended up this way? Why did I only get such a short time with them?

“I thought I told you to stop worrying,” Neil said.

I buried my face in his neck, mumbling about how that was impossible. He let out a half-chuckle and kissed the top of my head.

“How’d you do it?” I asked. “Move on, I mean. You know, when your dad died.”

Neil tensed against me, and I swallowed the urge to say never mind. But if there were some trick to how he’d kept himself from falling apart, I needed to know it.

He didn’t speak but relaxed and leaned into me. His chest filled with half-breaths. “You don’t. Not really. Eventually, the pain gets easier to handle, but there’s always a hole. You just have to find the things that make you happy and dwell on those instead.” He paused again. “I know that’s not the answer you wanted.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d finally let me in, spoken with honesty about his dad. And, yes, I would’ve loved for him to say
after a couple years, the pain goes away and they become a distant memory
, but I knew better. My dad
had
been gone a couple years, and I still missed him like he’d passed away yesterday. I was glad Neil didn’t sugarcoat it.

I wiped a few tears from my cheeks and sniffled while he rubbed my back. “Is that why you kept up with the music? ‘Cause it reminded you of him?”

He nodded. “Besides the fact that I love it, yeah. It was my way of reaching out to him, letting him know I hadn’t forgotten. For a long time, only that and visiting his grave helped.”

I looked into his eyes, and he touched my cheek, his emotions flowing into me like a supernatural ability—his love, sympathy, understanding, sadness. I tipped my chin up, and he met my lips.

“Will you take me . . . ?”
To my mom’s grave
, I couldn’t add. I bit my lip. “Today? I don’t really remember saying goodbye to her at the funeral, and I don’t want her to think—”

He put a finger on my lips, silencing me. “Whenever you’re ready.”

With a nod, I kissed him again and then left to shower. If I was going to visit my mom, I wasn’t going to do it smelling like a locker room. Even after Dad’s death, Mom always looked put together when she went out in public. I wanted to at least look like I was, for her.

I took my time, letting the hot water cascade from head to toe. Every joint in my body ached with weeks of sorrow and immobility. After braiding my wet hair, I left the bathroom. Neil still sat on the couch, but he held his guitar and played a song I didn’t know. A beautiful, sorrowful melody, like that
Time to Mend
song by Barcelona. Neil’s eyes were closed, and he rocked with each beat. His features downturned, I saw the pain on his face, felt it in each note. This was one of
his
songs.

He played the last note and paused before opening his eyes. They were red, but when he set down his guitar and spoke, I never would’ve guessed that, moments before, he’d laid his soul on his guitar strings.

“You ready?” he asked.

When I nodded, he grabbed my coat from the closet near the door and helped me into it. The jacket barely fit over my twenty-three-week belly. I followed Neil through snow to the truck. The inside was already warm. He must’ve started it while I showered. The corner of my mouth twitched as I tried to smile and failed.

I grabbed his hand as he drove away from the cabin. Neither of us let go the entire way to River Springs’s cemetery.

And I clung to Neil as soon as we hopped out of the truck. Each step we took across the snowy ground was heavy-footed and slow. My chin trembled, and, soon, each gravestone blurred. I shouldn’t be taking this walk. Not again. Neil tugged me closer to him when my steps faltered.

We stopped underneath a large oak tree. The dirt over Mom’s casket still hadn’t settled. She was buried right next to Dad, like I expected, but I couldn’t remember what dress they’d put her in or whether her lips were in a smile or a line. All I could remember was a glimpse of her peaceful face, like a reflection in a rippling lake.

Neil let go, and I knelt in front of the stone. Snow seeped through the knees of my pants. I ran my fingers across Mom’s name. The marker was ice cold. Kind of how I imagined she felt right now. How my heart—my body—felt.

I sat back on my feet and crossed my arms, holding my breath, swallowing the ache in my joints, my throat, my stomach—fighting the tears. She was gone. She was really gone. Unable to hold in the pain any longer, I slumped forward and cried.

Who was I going to go to now with baby questions, with mother questions? She was supposed to watch me graduate, to see her grandson, to give me away at my wedding some day.

I bit my trembling lip, the world around me spinning. The winter chill penetrated my bones as I rocked, holding in the scream that wanted to rip free. But I didn’t care. I wanted to lie on the ground and be as close to her as I could. Let the ice take me.

Oh, God, why did you take her, too?

I gripped the locket Mom and Dad had given me on my eighth birthday, and my resolve broke. I covered my face, weeping, each cry tearing the hole in my chest wider. I unclasped the chain from around my neck and placed it in front of her grave marker. Then, leaning so I could reach my father’s gravestone too, I placed my hands on their names.