TAUT (18 page)

She gives me directions and I find the grave a few minutes later and hang up before she starts crying. My mom misses him too and I bet she’s sorry she’s not here with me.

His headstone is not huge like you might expect for a man who was the heir to a massive manufacturing empire. It’s a medium-sized upright slab of polished black granite that is gray on the inside, so the lettering has a high contrast to it. It says
Husband, Friend, Advocate
on the top line, then
FATHER
in much bigger letters on the second.

My heart swells a little at this. Because I’m an only child so the stone was lettered this way specifically for me. Why didn’t I come for the funeral?

“Dad,” I say softly. “God, I’m so sorry.” I look up and Ash is watching me from the other side of the cemetery. She gives me a little wave and then turns away and walks back to the truck. “I’m so fucking sorry,” I say it again. These are the only words I’ve ever said to him since the accident. I used to say it a lot, but it’s been a while so it feels necessary.

“What would you say back to me, Dad? If you were here?” I try and picture him, standing in front of me. What he’d think about how it all ended. What he’d think about me not coming to say goodbye. I try to read his mind from across the vast emptiness of death and I’m not doing too well.

“Do you blame me?” I’d ask him that question first if he was here. “Because I blame me.” I stand there as the cold wind picks up and then bend down to look closely at the various things people have left at the grave. There’s a red and green wreath leftover from Christmas that says
I miss you
. The card is plastic and written in waterproof marker. It’s in my mom’s handwriting. She comes all the time, from the looks of it. How sad to lose the one person in life you loved the most. How does she get through her days?

How can she even look at me knowing that I was the one who killed him?

I let out a long breath and turn away. There are no answers in this graveyard. Just me and my guilt and my sadness. I walk slowly back to the Bronco with my hands stuffed in my jeans and my head ducked into the wind. Ashleigh is in the backseat nursing. I smile at her as I get in, trying to push down the feelings that threaten to overwhelm me. “Someone’s hungry?”

“Yeah,” Ash says softly. “Me. I feel the need for gas station food. Can you wait a few more minutes while I finish up? Then I’ll put her back in her seat and we can go.”

“Yeah, sure.” All I really want to do is get the fuck out of here, but babies have to take priority over my guilt, so I busy myself looking for music on my phone. “What bands do you like? I have no radio but I can make this hunk of shit play Spotify.”

Ashleigh laughs. “You have a cassette player, Ford.”

I reach over and open the glove box and pull out one of those contraptions you stick in the cassette deck so you can hook modern shit up to an old-ass car. “I’m an Eagle Scout, remember? I’m always prepared.”

“Play something soft then. So she’ll fall asleep.” Soft. I do a quick search on my phone and come up with a playlist of classical music for babies. When it starts playing Brahms’
Lullaby
Ashleigh lets out a little sigh. “That’s perfect.”

“Yeah. It sorta is.” I turn around and look at the baby. She’s pink and a little bit sweaty in all her clothes and blankets. Her hair is very dark, like Ashleigh’s, and I know her eyes are dark and not blue because I’ve seen them, but they are closed now as she suckles for a few seconds, then stops and just when I think she’s really asleep, she suckles again. “What’s her name? You never told me her name.”

“You never asked,” Ash says as she peeks up at me through her hair.

“I’m a dick, I know.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll cut you some slack because I get the feeling you’re used to being on your own. Her name is Katelynn, like the two names put together and not the trendy spelling. But I call her Kate. Like the Duchess.”

“Kate,” I say as I turn back to pick out my dad’s headstone in the small sea of markers popping up from the snow. “It’s perfect. Very classic.”

“Like the music,” Ashleigh replies.

“Yeah,” I say, looking back at Ash. She’s got her eyes closed now—the baby’s pushing her sleep button. I laugh a little at that and she opens her eyes for a moment, then they get heavy and drop again. “You want me to go? Or you need to put her back in the seat?”

“No,” she says with her eyes still closed. “I’ll put her back.” And then she gently removes the baby from her breast and whispers soft things in her ear so she’ll stay asleep when Ashleigh buckles her up. She climbs over the console, resting her hand on my shoulder for support, and plops down in the passenger seat. “Sorry, I forgot I can’t touch you. It won’t happen again.”

I squint my eyes at that remark, wondering if it was a dig, but she just busies herself with her seatbelt and ignores me.

“OK, I hope you’re happy. We’re officially an hour behind schedule.”

“Are we on a schedule?”

I look over at her as I start the engine. “Are
you
on a schedule?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I have meetings every day this week, but fuck it. I missed today and I’ll miss the rest most likely. But I’m not worried about it so we’ll just do our thing and we’ll get there when we get there.”

Ashleigh smiles at me. “Sounds good to me.” She turns her head to the window and tucks her legs up near her chest, like she’s trying to curl up into a ball. And before I can get back onto the highway that will take us back to I-70, she’s asleep.

I have to admit, I might like Ashleigh. She’s assertive with me, and she was pretty pissed off this morning, but she’s not a grudge-holder. She might be the opposite of me, actually. She’s almost easy-going. And that’s something considering how much stress she’s probably under. She’s small. She can’t be any more than five foot two. And she’s very blunt. She doesn’t offer much, but every time I’ve asked, she’s given me more than I’d give her. And she’s not pushy. She did try to insist I come out here to the cemetery, but I doubt she’d have been mad for long if I refused. And whenever she gets the back-off vibe from me, she does exactly that. She gives me space. It almost makes me want her more when she pulls away like that.

So what is she? She might be a Complier. With conditions. Because she’s kind of a Fighter too. But not a Grudge-holder. And she likes me, that I know for sure. She would not travel across four states with her infant baby if she didn’t at least
like
me. And she’s a Mother. I’m sorta digging that part of her. How she talks to the baby in that low whisper and the way she falls asleep when she’s nursing. I like it.

Plus she keeps my mind off Rook.

And maybe it’s wrong to use her like that, but I’m having a hard time feeling bad about it right now.

Chapter Twenty-One

The girls sleep all the way to Grand Junction. I almost want to wake Ashleigh so she can see the drive because it’s really breathtaking, but I guess if she was interested in it, she’d try to stay awake.

“I can’t believe you’re still listening to this music, Ford,” she says as she tries to pull herself out of her slumber in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

“I barely noticed it. My mother played this kind of stuff for me all growing up. Said it was calming.” I look over at her and I can tell she likes it when I talk about personal things because her mouth forms this half-smile and her eyes open a little wider. “And it is. Put the two of you to sleep.”

She stares are me with that half-smile for a moment longer, probably waiting to see if I’ll elaborate. Then decides I won’t and sits up straight. “You were messing with me earlier, right? About never being in a Wal-Mart before?”

“I grew up in Denver, Ash. Not Beverly Hills. We shopped at the Wal-Mart every week.”

“Well, sometimes you’re so serious, it’s hard to tell when you’re joking. What are we getting, anyway? Snacks or something?”

“Yes, and baby things. I’m sick of looking at her stupid footied sleepers.” I open my door and get out and Ashleigh does the same, then unbuckles and grabs the carrier from the back seat. “And what’s the deal with that thing anyway? It’s such a pain in the ass to buckle that seat in every time we get back in the truck.”

“I have two at home, but I only brought one.”

She blows out a long breath of air and looks up at the sky as we walk towards the store entrance together. It’s snowing a little but it looks like the storm’s coming from the southeast this time, which means it’ll swirl around once the tail end hits the mountains and head east again, so we should be fine heading west. “Were you in a hurry when you left?” We grab a cart and she puts the carrier in the back this time.

“Sorta.”

And that’s all I get. Just
sorta
.

She heads over to the baby clothes, doing her best to ignore me.

“Are people missing you? I mean, you have family, right?”

“What’s with all the questions? I’m not prying into your personal problems.” She sorts through some baby clothes and then gravitates to the footied sleeper and starts flipping through the rack.

I look at the stuff nearest me. Car seats. “We should get another car seat. Then we won’t need to keep taking this one in and out.”

She stops looking through the clothes and stares at me.

“What?”

“What’s with this
we
stuff all of a sudden?”

Her words are like a slap. “Just thought you could use another one to make life easier, Ashleigh. Believe me, I’m not about to start playing daddy to your kid. So relax.”

She throws some sleepers in the cart and I grab a few other articles of clothing the same size that do not have built-in socks, and follow her over to the diapers. She puts two large packages on the bottom of the cart, and then wheels us into the next aisle where she grabs a few small toys, a bib, and some baby wipes. There is like a shitload of crap you can buy for babies and if I was the one shopping, I’d be stuck in this aisle forever trying to decide what to get.

“OK, I’m done,” she says in a curt manner.

“Are you mad?”

“No, I’m just done.” She turns the cart and begins walking up towards the front to check out.

“Done with me apparently.”

I get silence. And she stays that way as we check out. I grab a handful of snacks and drinks in the line, then pay for everything and we head out to the truck.

“I’ll pay you back for all this stuff, Ford. But thanks for taking care of it right now.”

“Do you have money?”

“Not on me, which is why I’ll have to pay you back.”

“Do you normally have money?”

“Wow, that was rude. Of course I have money. Do I look like some sort of homeless trash? I’m not, OK? I just needed to figure some stuff out and I couldn’t do it from home.”

“Where’s home? Texas?”

“No, I said I came from Texas. And I did. Because I had to see someone there before I could go to LA.”

“To see your ex?” I say as I unlock the truck and start piling things in.

“Just stop.” She grabs my arm and waits for me to turn and look at her. “Stop prying. I’m not talking about it. You have your problems and I have mine. Let’s just leave it at that.”

She puts the baby in the back and I get in and wait for her to finish. It’s snowing a little more now. “Hurry, we need to move west quick before this storm catches up with us and we get stuck somewhere else.”

She climbs in the backseat and closes the door. “I’m gonna sit back here in case she wakes up and needs to nurse.”

“We’ll have to pull over for that anyway, though, right? So why sit in back?” She doesn’t answer but I don’t need one either. She’s avoiding me. “I’ll try and drive through to Vegas, then we can stop there and rest.”

“Sounds good to me.”

I get back on the freeway but I was right. We just need to pull over a half hour later so she can nurse when the baby wakes up. There’s nothing out here in the way of services, but there’s a turn-out near the sign that says
Welcome to Utah
. I mess with the music playlist on my phone and try to pretend that her ignoring me isn’t an issue. But it is.

“You know,” I say once she’s settled with the feeding, “I’m not sure why you’re mad at me, but it’s childish. All I did was ask a question about who might be missing you. Believe me, Ashleigh, I’m not into prying into the personal lives of others. So you can stop worrying that I give a shit. OK? I don’t. It was fucking small talk.” I flip through Spotify on my phone and look for some music. “Who do you like to listen to? I’ll put something on so we don’t have to sit in silence.”

“Here,” she says with her hand out. “I’ll find something.”

I unplug the phone from the wires that connect it to the cassette player and hand it back to her. “Then will you get in the front with me again? I cross my heart, I won’t be interested in you at all.”

She grunts a little at that but doesn’t say anything. Her expression is almost sad as she looks through the music. Her fingers fly around the touch screen and then she hands it back. “There, that’s a good playlist.”

I plug it back in and look over her selection as the music starts. “The Naked and Famous. Never heard of them.”

“I’m not sure you count, Ford. No offense, but you’re sorta on the outskirts of fringe as far as pop culture goes.”

“Why would I possibly be offended?” I turn back in my seat and just look outside. “We’ve wasted the whole fucking day. It’s almost dark now.” She’s still in a mood so I get the silent treatment as the music plays. “This stuff is sorta sad, don’t you think?”

More silence. More sad music. More baby slurping noses. More darkness creeps in as the sun sets to the west. I’m about to lose my mind and insist that she come up front when I hear the sniffling. Like she’s trying to cover up sobs.

Fucking girls.

I wait it out and then the baby cries a little as she’s put back into the seat and I let out a long sigh of relief when the back door opens.

“Come to your senses?” But when I turn to watch her get in the front with me all I see is her back, walking off into the wilds of fucking Utah. I lower the window on the passenger side and yell, “Ashleigh! What the fuck are you doing?”