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Chapter 10
Alexander
I sit in the canvas chair with my arms crossed over my chest and my legs stretched out in front of me. I’m positioned in the middle of my front yard. It’s freezing out, but I don’t feel the blistering cold. My attention is completely consumed by the half-built house in front of me.
I’ve been out here hours, just staring at it, contemplating how and when I want to tear the structure down. Half of the reason I’ve kept it was because it was a link to Clara and Rayne. A link I wasn’t ready to destroy yet. While I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to let them go, I know I need to stop standing in place and try to start moving forward.
The building’s walls are discolored, swelling, and becoming dilapidated from lack of protection from the weather. It’s become an eyesore. I always knew I would eventually tear it down, it was just finding the motivation and courage to do it.
I look down at the picture in my lap. The edges are slightly wrinkled and there are several creases. One of the nurses took it right after Rayne was born. I’m sitting on the side of the bed with my arm on the pillow behind Clara’s head. Baby Rayne is snuggled up in a blanket, lying in Clara’s arms. We’re both looking down at her, and our smiles are so big it’s a wonder our faces didn’t split in two. The nurse that snapped the picture was a good friend of ours, so she took it upon herself to use my phone to capture the scene without us knowing. It’s one of my favorites of the three of us together.
Immediately after that photo, the nurses rushed Rayne away to the neonatal intensive care unit. She was eight weeks early, weighing only three pounds two ounces, and needed more time to develop her lungs and continue to grow. Clara was in the hospital for five days after that. Technically, she could have left earlier, but with Rayne still there, she stayed as long as they allowed her. Once she was released, both Clara and I stayed in a nearby hotel, since the drive from home to the hospital was a good forty-five minutes. We wanted to be as close to Rayne as possible. For the first two weeks, we visited every day and stayed from morning until night. Logan, a friend of ours, came out to the cabin every day and fed and watered the horses for us, but eventually I had to start making trips out myself. Every single day though, I was at the hospital with my wife, talking to our daughter, watching her slowly get stronger. Those days were scary, but were also the best of my life. I wore a permanent smile for seven weeks.
The crunch of tires pulls me from my memories. I turn my head and watch as a black Dodge truck comes down my driveway. I stand and put the picture in my jacket pocket. It’ll go in my bedside drawer when I go back inside, along with the other two I have in there. The first year after they died, the picture was in a frame that sat on my nightstand. It was a constant reminder of what I had and then lost. A reminder of how I failed the two most important people in my life.
The truck stops and a man I haven’t seen in weeks steps out. I turn back and face the half-built house, knowing he’ll approach without my prompt.
James and I have been friends since grade school. After Clara and Rayne died, I pulled away from everyone, including him. He gave me my space to grieve for a while, but then started forcing his way back in, no matter how much I tried pushing him away. Besides my family and clients, he’s one of only two people that ever come out here. Travis, another friend, who moved to Cat’s Valley his senior year of high school, is the other.
He stops beside me and we both look at once was supposed to be Clara’s dream home.
“How was your trip?” I ask after several minutes of silence.
He blows out a breath, then grumbles, “Stressful as hell. I’m damn glad to be back and away from my crazy-ass sister. God love her, but fuck, I can only take so much.”
I grunt. “How was your mother?”
“Cool as a fucking cucumber. If not for her I probably would have bashed Lena’s head with one of the vases used for the centerpieces. She had a bitch fit over the fuckers because they didn’t match the flowers she picked for them. She picked the damn things out herself and knew from the get-go what flowers she was using.”
James has been out of town for the last week for his sister, Lena’s, wedding. His sister lives only two hours away, but she wanted the whole family down for the entire week. The thing with Lena is, she’s a spoiled brat. She’s the baby of James’s five siblings and believes the entire world revolves around her. She’s the only one of the bunch to turn out like that. James and I used to joke that she was switched at birth, that his sweet baby sister was out there somewhere probably with stick-up-their-ass parents.
“God help the poor bastard that married her,” I comment, only half joking.
Being the oldest of his siblings, there’s a seven-year gap between James and Lena. That still didn’t stop her from following us and their other siblings around and trying to boss us all into doing what she wanted. We all put up with her because Cassandra, James’s mom, would have had our hides if we didn’t.
“Believe it or not, she doesn’t treat him that way. To her, he’s her holy grail and she seems to worship the ground he walks on. They both do. He still sees her bitchy side because everyone else around her gets the you’re-beneath-me treatment. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “It’s interesting to watch a softer side of Lena.”
A soft Lena. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
“You still planning to tear it down?” he asks after several quiet moments.
I look over and find him watching me curiously, arms crossed over his massive chest. I turn back.
“Yeah. Wood’s rotten, so it’s only a matter of time before it starts falling apart anyway.”
“Let me know if you want help when you do,” he offers.
“Thanks, but I think this is something I need to do on my own.”
He slaps my back. “Gotcha.”
“You want a beer?” I ask, ready to get out of the cold and away from the unstable structure before me. Every time I look at it, memories I’ve tried to forget resurface. That’s why I normally avoid looking at it like the plague. I don’t need any reminders. I’m reminded of it every time I look in the mirror or close my eyes. But with Christmas coming up and the anniversary of their deaths, I was drawn to it. I failed them by not saving them, and this is my punishment.
“Sure,” James says, knocking me out of my thoughts.
I turn and lead us to the house. Gigi meets us at the door, tail wagging when she sees James is with me. She’s been in a slump the last several days, and I know it has to do with a certain little boy not being here. I clench my jaw and push away the unwanted emotions over not having Gwen and her kids here anymore. The house has felt too damn empty, and I wonder if it’ll ever feel normal again. Empty isn’t anything new to me, but now that I remember what it feels like to be filled with more than empty blackness, I don’t think I want to go back to it.