Page 16 of The Lucky Heart (Jamison Valley 3)
“Enough of the sadness,” Annie said as she started loading the dishwasher again. “Tonight was about spending time with you. Tell me about your life.”
Before I could answer, Mason came bounding into the kitchen. “Do you want to see my room?”
“Um, sure.” Ten minutes later, I had been given an impressively thorough tour of Mason’s room.
“All right, kid,” Jack said from Mason’s doorway. “Time to take your shower and get ready for bed.”
“Yes!” Mason cheered and ran out of the room.
“He loves baths and showers,” Jack said. “I think it’s because he rarely had them before he came here. Some days he’ll ask if he can take two.”
“It’s really something, what you’re doing with him. He’s lucky to have found you.”
“I think we’re the lucky ones.” He smiled and followed Mason toward the bathroom.
After picking up the toys that Mason had taken out to show me, I wandered down the hallway of the Drummonds’ long rambler. Next to Mason’s room was the room that had been Wes’s.
I peeked inside and was relieved to see that Jack and Annie had taken down everything from Wes’s childhood. The room was now a guest bedroom. The only thing that remained was an old dresser that Wes had covered with stickers. On its top were a handful of small framed photos.
My fingers skimmed the stickers as I inspected the pictures. One was of Wes, Silas and Jess as young boys. The three of them were playing football in the snow. A couple of the other pictures were of them as teenagers. One was a photo that I’d taken when we’d all gone swimming at the Jamison River in high school.
A larger photo at the back was of me and Wes at my senior prom. He’d given me such grief about the prom because he’d been a couple years older and hadn’t wanted to go back to a high school dance. But he’d come despite his protests, looking as handsome as ever in his black suit and an emerald-green tie that had matched my one-shouldered dress. There hadn’t been much that Wes wouldn’t have done for me back then.
That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? He’d done too much for me.
The last picture on the dresser was one taken in this very room. Wes had tackled me onto his bed and tickled me. His light-brown eyes had sparkled as he’d looked down at my laughing face. A lock of his chestnut hair had fallen across his forehead.
The moment my hand picked up the frame, a lead weight settled in my stomach. The guilt and pain were so heavy that I stumbled backward until my knees hit the bed and I sank onto the mattress.
The night that picture had been taken was the night that everything had changed.
Fall, sixteen and a half years earlier . . .
“Andrea!” I shouted. “Give me back my camera.”
&nb
sp; She giggled and tossed it on the bed, running out of Wes’s bedroom.
His parents were out of town at some fall farming convention, so he’d invited a few people over to hang out and drink. A couple of my girlfriends were here, along with some guys that had graduated but hadn’t gone away to college. Like Wes and Silas, they’d stayed in Prescott to work on their parents’ farms and ranches.
“Having fun?” I asked Wes.
“Yeah. You?”
I nodded. “So I have this crazy idea. I kind of want to try something wild.”
“I like wild.” He grinned and pressed his hips further into mine.
I giggled. “Down, boy. We can do that kind of wild later. I was talking about something else. Danny brought some meth to smoke and said it was really fun. I kinda wanted to try getting high. What do you think?”
“What?” He jerked back, all of his playfulness gone. “No, Lissy. You’re not doing drugs.”
“Oh, come on. It would just be this once, just to see what it’s like.”
“It’s too dangerous, darlin’. You’re not doing it.”
“Please? You’d be with me and could make sure I was safe. It will be like the first time I got drunk. You made sure nothing bad happened and held my hair back when I got sick.” I gave him my best pout and sad-puppy-dog eyes.
