Page 106 of Love Wells Kept

Maybe a better parent would insist on consequences for whatever it is she’s about to tell me, but every memory I have of my mom is filled with nothing but light, love, and acceptance. I think she knew what she was doing.

“Okay…deal.”

Odessa taps the toes of her boots together a few times, stalling like this whole thing wasn’t her idea.

“Well so…I’m not supposed to climb up to see Banana.”

“Right.” I can assume the reason for that rule, based on how quickly my heart raced watching her gingerly climb down. One slip and…she could be like me, or worse. “Because you could fall.”

“I know-uh,” she whines, rolling her eyes. “You always tell me that.”

“If your secret is that you climbed up there today, I already know about that.”

“It’s my fault you broke your brain.”

I blink at her, swallowing hard, and swipe the pads of my fingers over the dampness on my cheeks. “Odessa, that’s not…it’s not your fault.”

Her eyes drop to the floor, where her boots are shuffling a piece of hay around. “It was. You always told me not to climb up there, but you didn’t get mad at me…so I thought—you said the horse in here wasn’t nice, but I wanted to say goodbye to Banana before we left, and I slipped.”

“No.” I grab either side of her face, squishing her cheeks between the heels of my hands, and pull her to look me in the eye. “It was an accident. Nobody is to blame, least of all you.”

She shrugs, and her wet brown eyes are impossibly wide and so damn heartbreaking staring up at me. I wish I knew what to say to make her realize none of this is her fault.

“And it doesn’t matter, anyway. We still have each other, and we have plenty of time to make new memories.”

She looks up at me again, eyes searching, like she’s trying to figure out if she can believe that. “I don’t want you to forget me again.”

Fuck. That does it. That’s the sentence that splits my heart clean down the middle.

I wrap her up in my arms, resting my chin on her head, and smooth a rough hand over her curly, tangled hair.

Maybe if I hold her tight enough, love her hard enough, the world won’t take anything else from us. Maybe my kids will turn out okay in spite of everything. Maybe I won’t completely fail them, or Kate, or myself.

“Even if I forget everything else, I’ll always come back to you, okay? That’s what hearts do when they love someone—they remember.”

She presses her cheek into my shoulder, small arms winding around my neck in a hug that nearly suffocates. But I’m loving every second of it too much to tell her to stop, even if my ability to breathe is severely limited.

We stay like that for a while, in the quiet hum of the barn, the only sound the soft exhale of horses and the occasional meow from Banana, still perched in the rafters.

Then I hear somebody yelling Odessa’s name, and I’m reminded of the fact that everyone else on the ranch still thinks she’s missing. Kate’s probably worrying herself sick, while doing her best to keep a straight face and calm demeanor.

Before I can tell her we need to let the search party know she’s okay, Odessa blurts, “Can we go tell Mom I’m not dead now?”

That pulls a laugh straight from my gut, rough and surprised and desperately needed. I stand and take her hand, holding it tight, not ready to let go quite yet.

“Yeah, Princess,” I say. “Let’s go give your mom her heart back.”

Kate

Standing on the sidewalk outside the local florist, I check my phone for the second time since we left the ranch.

It’s not that I don’t trust Jackson, but this is his first time taking care of the kids since his accident. And sure, the other guys and his dad are all there, if he needs a hand with anything, but Odessa and Rhett are total agents of chaos at the best of times.

When the girls started planning Cecily’s baby shower a couple months ago, I assumed I wouldn’t be in attendance. I think they did, too. Jackson was in such rough shape, the only time I dared to leave the house was for Odessa’s therapy sessions, and that was out of sheer maternal guilt because the last thing I want is for her to grow up blaming herself.

But today, I’m here. I’m here with my closest friends, about to spend the next two hours gossiping and creating bouquets. Everything feels so normal, it’s almost as if the past three months were a dream.

Instead of the typical baby shower with silly games and pastel cupcakes, Cecily simply wanted us all to hang out somewhere other than my kitchen, for once. And when Blair mentioned that the florist down the street from her clinic was offering DIY floral arrangement parties, it was the obvious choice for our girls’ day.