Mom comes up behind me, draping her arms over my shoulders when she kisses the top of my head. “You’re going to have to talk to him sometime, honey. He’s been calling and texting my phone for two days straight.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why do I have to talk to him after what he did to me?”
She pulls up a kitchen chair and sits next to me. “I’ve talked to him, Murphy. And I understand what he did. He wants to keep you safe. He didn’t want you to worry about it. He was taking care of you.”
I try to rub the tension from my neck. “Is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time?”
“Absolutely,” she says, taking my hand in hers. “For years after he died, I hated your father. I hated him for leaving us. I know it wasn’t his fault, but when you’re grieving, you need someone to blame. You are grieving, Murph. What happened to you was horrible. But we tend to blame those who are closest to us. Tony is not around for you to hate, so maybe you’ve projected that hate onto Caden—the very man who would do anything for you.”
“But he lied to me, Mom. And it’s not the first time.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve told me all about his so-called lies and to be honest, honey, I don’t see any wrong-doing on his part.”
“Mo-om,” I pout.
“I’m on your side, Murph. I’m always on your side. That’s why I am pushing for this. Caden makes you happy. I would give anything to have one more day with your father. You have the chance at a lifetime of days with the man you love. I don’t want to see you throw that away.”
I stand up and grab my jacket. “I’m going for a walk.”
She follows me out the front door. “Don’t forget the flowers,” she says, nodding to the roses in her garden.
I look back and nod sadly at her before she retreats into the house. She knows where I’m going. She always knows where I’m going when I take a walk. I crouch down and break off a few stems at the base, careful not to prick myself. Then I make my way down the road to the cemetery.
“Murphy Cavenaugh, is that you?” I hear when I turn the corner.
I look over to see a familiar face from high school. “Hi, Matt.”
Matthew Jenner was the star quarterback. The homecoming king. The most popular kid in school. Right up until he broke his leg in three places, ruining his chances at a college scholarship and landing him a management position at The Pit Stop—the local high school hangout.
“I didn’t know you were back in town,” he says, blatantly staring at the scar on my face. “Are you here for good?”
I shrug, not wanting to get into it if he hasn’t seen my predicament pasted all over the news and social media. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Where’s your phone?” he asks. “I’ll give you my number so you can hit me up while you’re back. We can hang out like old times.”
I nod at a friend of my mother’s who walks into a coffee shop. Then I stare at Matt and wonder if he’s lost his mind. “Matt, there were no ‘old times.’ In case you’ve forgotten, you wouldn’t give me or my friends the time of day back in high school. Or even last year.”
“That’s not true,” he lies. “Hey, why don’t you and, what’s your hot friend’s name—Kelly? She still lives here, doesn’t she? Why don’t you and Kelly come over to my place this week? I’ll get Davis to join us. You remember Davis? We can party.”
Davis is another has-been football player who couldn’t make it out of Okoboji.
“You’re kidding, right? You want me to bring my dead friend to your house so we can party?”
He cringes. “Oh, shit. Was she the one who died in the bee attack?”
I shake my head and start walking away. “It wasn’t a bee attack, it was one bee. She was allergic. And how did you not remember that—there’s only eight hundred people in this town?”
Because apparently, even diner managers can be narcissistic pigs.
“Well, you can still come over yourself,” he calls after me.
I wave my hand backwards, ending the conversation.
“You sure looked like a girl who likes to party when you were riding that dude’s cock!” he yells.
My throat tightens as I look around to see who might have heard. A few ladies look at me in sympathy. Some teenagers don’t even try to hide their laughter. Then Matt falls to the pavement after being punched in the face.
“Leave her the hell alone,” Austin Helmsley says to him. “And go back to your grease pit.”
“Douchebag,” Matt says, rubbing his jaw as he walks away.
“Are you okay?” I ask Austin, looking at his injured hand.
“I should be asking you that, Murphy.”
“I’m fine. Uh, thanks for that, I guess. But I can take care of myself.”
I stare at him, trying to reconcile the person before me with the scrawny band geek I sometimes hung out with in high school. I haven’t seen the guy in five years. He’s almost unrecognizable now with his longer hair, his straight teeth and his … wow, all his muscles.
“I’m sure you can, but he was out of line.” He laughs. “Plus, I’ve wanted to do that since middle school when he stuck my head in the toilet. So, I guess you could say that punch was as much for me as it was for you.”
“Okay, well, I’d better go. I have somewhere to be.”
“Murphy?” he calls after me.
I turn around and raise my eyebrows.
He nods to the coffee shop on the corner. “Can we get coffee one day this week? I’m only here until Friday and I’d love to catch up.”
I think about the last few days being holed up in my mom’s house. Then I look at the coffee shop and my mouth waters thinking about the epic pastries they make there. I glance down the street of this sleepy little town before looking back at Austin.
Coffee, Austin, Okoboji—they all seem so … wonderfully normal.
“Sure,” I tell him. “Coffee would be nice. How about tomorrow morning at ten?”
He smiles. “I’ll be here. Nice to see you again, Murphy.”
~ ~ ~
“Hi, Daddy,” I say, placing a rose into the vase attached to his headstone. I sit on the cold earth over his grave. “I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?
“I know what you would tell me. You would remind me of the time I was in eighth grade and I tried out for the cheerleading squad. I thought anyone could be a cheerleader. I could do a cartwheel, so why not? I think you and Mom knew what I was in for, but you still didn’t stand in my way. And then at try-outs, when I couldn’t even do the splits or a jump-kick, I became the laughing-stock of the school. Girls mocked me for weeks. Every time I passed one of them in the hallway, they would mimic the kick I tried to do and everyone would laugh. They told me I was developmentally challenged and that I should be in a special class.”
I pick at the grass that is just now starting to turn green. “You told me it was character-building. You said I could let it break me or make me stronger.” I sigh, looking up at the cloudless sky. “But this is different, Daddy. Back then, I only had to deal with a few dozen middle-school students. Everyone has seen this.” I shake my head and look back towards town. “Even people here know about it. Here, in nowhere, Iowa, where I was sure I’d be able to hide from it. The whole world knows about it, Daddy.
“Okay, fine. I know you would tell me that when I was thirteen, this town was my world and what happened to me back then seemed as horrible to me as this does now.”
I look over at an older woman visiting her late-husband’s grave. “Mom misses you,” I tell him. “She told me this morning that she’d do anything for one more day with you.” I rub my hand across the base of his headstone. “Would you be mad if she found someone else? I don’t think you should be mad. The guy she’s been seeing is nice, Daddy. But maybe you already know that. Do you know that? Do you know everything? Do you know what’s going to happen to me?”
I kiss my fingers and touch them to his grave. Then I stand up and brush off the seat of my pants. “Bye, Daddy. I’ll come back soon.”
I walk to the other side of the cemetery and put my other rose into another headstone vase. “I could really use you right now, Kel. I need my best friend.”
He’s your best friend, Cavenaugh. Tears trickle down my cheek when I hear Kelly’s words in my head.
“Is he?” I ask her. “Wouldn’t a best friend have told me everything? Wouldn’t a best friend have given me the choice of how to handle things?”
Johnny Davidson, I hear in my head.
“What? No, that’s different. Johnny was a short little turd who dug your stained underwear out of the trash at school that day you got your first period. He was going to humiliate you, Kel. I couldn’t let that happen. So, I offered to give him my lunch money for a month if he’d give them to me. So not the same thing. Wait—did you even know about that? I don’t think I ever told you. I didn’t even want you to think about what could have happened if he’d shown the entire school.”
I look at her headstone and roll my eyes.
“Oh, shut up.”
I spend the next half hour telling her about my run-in with Matt and Austin. I tell her about my job—the one I’m not sure I’m going back to. I tell her about my mom’s new boyfriend. I tell her about everything except the one thing I really want to talk to her about. Caden.
Because I can’t talk about him. I can’t think about him. Not without hating him as much as I love him.