Page 52 of Love Wells Kept

“What time of day was Odessa born?” he asks out of the blue.

I tilt my head slightly to look at him, his question catching me off-guard. Typically when I bring up memories of the kids, he shuts down. “Four a.m. on the dot.”

“What did she look like?”

I watch our now eight-year-old attempt a handstand, fondly remembering where we were eight years ago. “She was so tiny—less than seven pounds—and all legs. Just this little wrinkled, leggy, alien-looking thing with a head full of thick brown hair.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Denny said I caught her…. Did I cry?”

“Even more than I did.” I squeeze my arms around his torso. “I thought you didn’t want to hear any of this stuff.”

His voice is softer than usual. “I thought I didn’t…but I think not knowing is going to end up killing me.”

The grass is pillowy under our feet, and the kids bound up the front porch steps like a herd of cattle. Odessa lets the screen door slam shut behind them, and it’s only Jackson and me out here. The golden hour glow illuminates treetops across the ranch, and our massive farmhouse casts a harsh shadow on the earth.

I take a deep breath and dive into all the things my husband ought to know. “Odessa came a week before her due date and after an excruciatingly long forty hours of labor. Denny was right about you catching her, and I’ve never seen you look prouder than you did in that moment…. You were sobbing, and you kept kissing me, holding her between us. It was so magical.”

His mouth twitches, and his swallow is audible. “What about with Rhett?”

“Rhett showed up on his due date and, besides a ton of back labor, it was over pretty quickly. You convinced me to catch him myself, and I immediately understood the look you had with Odessa. It was so special. You cried again. Honestly, when both the kids were babies you cried a lot, in general. Some nights we’d watch them sleep and tear up over how cute they were.”

His fingertips practically gouge out his eyes as he works hard to prevent inevitable tears. “Thank you for telling me that.”

“Jackson, this is your history as much as it’s mine. I’ll tell you anything and everything you want to know.”

He stops walking at the bottom of the steps, and stares toward the explosion of greenery in the garden beds.

“Were we happy?” he asks bluntly. “Before the accident?”

“Unbelievably so. We’re best friends—or…we were best friends.” My words are unpolished and ragged, as if something is stuck in my throat and I can’t quite get it out. “If we had nothing else, we had each other and that was enough. And whoever has said couples lose the ‘spark’ after years together has clearly never seen the things you and I got up to.”

That brings a healthy dose of pink to the planes of his cheeks.

Jackson clears his throat on the gradual ascent up the steps. “I’m…I’m sorry about the way I’ve been acting lately. I realized today that spending the rest of my life hidden away in bed isn’t fair to anyone in my life…least of all you. You deserve the world.”

“The whole world?” I tease.

“Mine, at least.”

Through it all, he’s still a romantic. My shy cowboy with beautiful words is still there, still stealing my heart.

“I’d really like to get back to being your best friend, Kate.”

“Well, that was a title you were never going to lose, regardless. But I’d love to be your best friend again.”

“I have a feeling you’re going to bully me into it.”

Kate

Nothing’s new about my inability to sleep in the middle of the night. Insomnia’s plagued me for most of my life. In fact, my mom still laments about all the sleepless nights when I was a child.

What is new, however, is the clunking noise coming from downstairs at two o’clock in the morning. This house was built a hundred years ago—floorboards that creak under the slightest weight, windows that whistle during storms, and pipes that rattle are part of the charm. So I’m used to hearing things while I lie awake, staring up at the white ceiling, but I’m not used to hearing this.

With a groan, I throw back the thick homemade quilt—a wedding gift from one of Jackson’s great-aunts—and roll out of bed. The wood planks are well-worn, full of divots and dents that my feet conform to with every step across the dark room. I slip into the hallway expecting to find that one of the kids has gotten out of bed, but their bedroom doors are closed.

Skipping the second, fifth, and seventh steps, I gingerly make my way downstairs, fingertips skimming the rounded wood banister. Light pours out from the kitchen, illuminating the hallway and casting shadows at harsh angles. I lick my lips, curling my sweaty palm around the newel post at the base of the stairs.

Once we had a raccoon find its way into the kitchen after one of the kids didn’t properly shut the back door, but as crafty as they are, raccoons don’t need the help of warm overhead lighting to wreak havoc on a trash can.