Chapter 16

If you keep pronouncing the L in salmon, I’m going to stab you in the dick with a kah-nife.

-Dante to his brother, Travis

Dante

I arrived home to find it empty. Not just empty of life, but empty of emotion.

Not seeing her in my home was like a blow straight to the sternum.

I tried not to let it bother me that she wasn’t there. I also tried not to think about the fact that she didn’t tell me she was going. Instead, she’d waited until I was gone, and had snuck out like a thief in the night.

Not a thief.

Just a woman that I was beginning to depend on.

Goddammit.

The worst thing, though?

It was the way Mary walked through the lower level of the house and called out for ‘Obie.’

“Mary, girl,” I called to my daughter. “You hungry?”

“Obie?”

I walked toward where she was standing next to the couch, her hand on the arm as she patted it.

Yes, that was exactly where Cobie normally was when we got home.

I had a feeling that I’d made her feel somewhat unwelcome since she never seemed to move from the one spot.

The two times that she’d done it, first venturing into the kitchen and eating out of my wife’s bowl, and the second time venturing into the laundry room to clean the quilt…well, those two times hadn’t been very good for me. I’d literally overreacted, and I’d immediately felt like shit afterward.

I’d thought that we were getting over the timidity, though.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t quite overcome that obstacle seeing as she was no longer there.

She’d rather leave without a word than tell me to my face that she was leaving.

Which I couldn’t blame her for.

I hadn’t been the nicest person in the world to deal with.

“Cobie went home, baby,” I said to her as I held my hands out. “You want some dinner?”

“Nuts.”

I rolled my eyes. That was Cobie’s doing.

Over the course of the last month, Cobie had introduced Mary to quite a few things, peanuts being one of them.

After expressing that peanuts were her favorite snack, I’d gone by the store and gotten her some in a ‘party container.’

It was massive and likely had enough nuts in it to last a normal person an entire year. Mary and Cobie, though? Yeah, it lasted them a week.

And now that was all that Mary ever wanted.

Nuts.

Morning, noon, and night.

“You can have a handful, but you’re not having that for dinner,” I told her, walking into the kitchen with her in my arms. “How does chicken sound?”

I asked this as I opened up the freezer, pulling out a bag of frozen chicken nuggets.

The thought of eating them nearly made my stomach turn, but without Cobie here to eat, there was no reason to open up one of the bigger boxed dinners. I couldn’t eat it all myself.

And Mary didn’t eat enough to feed a baby bird.

“Yuck!”

Snorting as I closed the fridge, I turned around and was about to switch the oven on when I heard a knock at the door.

I hesitated with my finger over the ‘cook’ button and decided to turn it on in a minute.

My irrational heart was hoping that Cobie had come to her senses and returned.

I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

After putting Mary down on the ground to play, I walked to the door with a weird sense of hopefulness making my steps hurried.

I opened my door, surprised yet unsurprised to find Ruthie, my wife’s—dead wife’s—best friend, standing on my doorstep.

Word had gotten out that I’d been at the office. I knew it was only a matter of time until she showed. But I supposed I hadn’t expected her to come over so soon.

I’d figured she’d give me more time to get settled, though.

Behind her was her husband, Sterling.

Sterling was a professional baseball player and looked to be sporting a beard that was likely due to playoffs being around the corner.

“Hey, man.” I offered my hand. “What are y’all doing here?”

Sterling took it and dropped it. The moment he did, Ruthie threw herself at me.

“I’m so mad at you right now.”

I hugged Ruthie, and something welled in my throat.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.” She breathed out shakily. “I am, too. I’ve missed you like crazy.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

I wasn’t ready to see her.

Wasn’t ready to do anything or see anyone that had to do with my wife. Not clean out her closet. Not call her best friend to make sure she was okay. Hell, I didn’t even stop paying the car insurance.

Why?

Because doing any of those things was admitting that she was gone, and I just wasn’t there yet.

“Come on in,” I ordered, opening the door.

Mary teetered up, her eyes wide and happy, as she welcomed the newcomers into her domain.

“Oh, D,” she breathed. “She’s beautiful.”

I looked at Mary, who’d started to follow me to the door but had been distracted by a butterfly—a fake one that Cobie had given her—on the couch.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “She’s pretty stinkin’ cute.”

Sterling grunted. “Got your hair.”

She did.

All of my kids always did.

Seemed the blond hair and blue eyes were dominant in my bloodline.

“She does,” I confirmed. “And my stubbornness. Mary, come here, girl, and meet Ruthie.”

Mary looked at Ruthie, grinned, but turned back to her butterfly.

“What’s she got?”

“A friend, Cobie, bought it for her,” I murmured. “At the grocery store. It’s one of those pencil toppers, but no way in hell was I giving her a pencil to stick it on top of. So, it’s just a toy for now.”

Before Ruthie could reply to that comment, though, my phone rang.

“Give me a second?” I asked.

Ruthie waved me away and went to Mary. Sterling, on the other hand, didn’t move.

He stayed exactly where he was and waited for me to take the call. Which I did.

“Rafe.”

“You better be glad that we put eyes on him, and then had his ass kicked out of that place.”

“Why?”

Now I was curious. Though, anything that had to do with Drake made me curious.

I didn’t like the guy, and never had.

My brother, Reed, had always been best friends with the stupid joke of a human being. But Drake never showed his true colors in front of Reed—at least not totally. He only showed them behind Reed’s back, and I fucking hated the douche more than life when he was hanging around.

Now, well, now it’d only gotten worse.

“Because Drake started to burn her motherfuckin’ house down. My guess is that he has insurance on it—renter’s insurance. He’d get a good chunk of change from it. That, and he stole whatever he was storing. Loaded it up with the tractor that likely belongs to Cobie, straight into a U-Haul. Shit’s at a warehouse. I’m thinking about giving an anonymous tip that there are drugs in it. They’ll bring out a K-9, and his ass’ll get busted.”

I knew he wouldn’t do that. Not when he wanted to know where the other stolen merchandise was.

But I did see him sharing an anonymous tip with the person Drake was ‘storing’ the belongings for, just to see what they’d do.

“Is he out now, though?”

I’d helped Cobie construct an excuse for her having to kick the poor bastard out of her house. I’d even gone to drop off the certified letter that would ensure he did, in fact, know about the upcoming eviction.

According to the post office, it’d been delivered two days later.

“Yep,” he confirmed. “Though, when the cops showed, he said he was burning trash. We couldn’t share stuff on our end without tipping our hand to the poor sod, though. So we chose to let it lie. Hopefully by doing so we didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot. We really need Drake to be found by his renters. That can’t happen with him in jail.”

No, it couldn’t.

“Anything you want me to do?”

“Nope,” Rafe instantly replied. “You just stay your ass where you’re at. I don’t want you to run your mouth and fuck my chances of finding out what’s happening related to my other case.”

I rolled my eyes. “Do you actually work at all?”

Rafe chuckled. “When I feel like it.”

I shook my head. “I saw you didn’t get paid but for fifteen hours last week. At least you’re not swindling me.”

Rafe laughed as he hung up.

“Problems?”

“Kind of,” I muttered. “But I was told they’re not my problems, so I’m to stay out of it.”

Sterling grunted, sounding lazy, but I knew he’d taken in everything.

Sterling used to be a Navy SEAL, and you never stopped being a Navy SEAL. He may be a professional baseball player now, but that didn’t mean that his mind wasn’t as sharp as it’d been a few years ago when he’d been on the SEAL Team.

“You need anything, let me know, okay?”

“I’m not a slouch, Ling-Ling.”

Sterling flipped me off at my use of the name his kids called him.

I winked and pushed the phone back into my pocket, but as my eyes caught on the blanket that I’d covered Cobie up with just last night, I realized two things.

One, I wasn’t okay with Cobie leaving the way she did.

Two, I needed to talk to Ruthie, and I needed her to give me her honest advice.

***

An hour later, Ruthie and I sat on my front porch while Sterling watched TV on the couch with my daughter. He’d done it on purpose, of course, giving Ruthie and I time to discuss what she’d come here to discuss.

“It’s been years, D.”

I knew that.

I felt every single one of those years in my heart.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “It has.”

“And it’s been enough time that you’re allowed to move on,” she continued.

I knew that, too.

“It’s time to stop hiding.”

I didn’t feel like I was hiding.

“I’m not hiding,” I told her. “I’m trying to recover.”

“You’re hiding.”

“I’m not…”

“Why did it take you this long to come back here?”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

I couldn’t stand to be here without my family in it.

The only reason I was back now was because of Mary.

“Why are all those doors up there locked?” she asked. “Why aren’t you sleeping in your bed?”

“How do you…”

“I saw the spare bed in Mary’s room. I’m not dumb, and don’t act like I am.”

That was right. Ruthie had gone up earlier to change Mary’s diaper, and she must’ve seen it then.

Shit.

“Ruthie…”

“Lily wouldn’t want you to live like this.”

I opened my mouth to retort her statement when she continued.

“Lily told me once, when I got out of prison, that she would never want somebody to live such a lonely existence as I’d once been living.”

Ruthie had killed her husband. Ruthie also had a valid reason—her husband, once my best friend, had beat her so ruthlessly that he’d made her miscarry. She protected herself, but in the process, had killed her husband.

She was convicted of murder, but only served a few years as opposed to her original multiple year sentence.

Silas, Ruthie’s cell mate’s husband, had gone to pick her up the day she was released, and I remembered the very conversation Ruthie was speaking of.

“Lily loved you with all her heart,” I found myself saying. “And you’re right. She would’ve never wanted anyone to live the existence you were subjecting yourself to. But, things are different… my life… Lily was the one, Ruthie.”

She stared at me for so long that a lesser man would’ve started to squirm. She saw things differently, and always had.

“If the situations were reversed, would you want Lily to be happy?”

I blinked.

“The selfish part of me would want her to never have anyone else,” I told her honestly.

“But…”

“But, the other part, the part that was happy that Lily was happy, would’ve wanted her to find something after I was gone.”

“And why don’t you deserve the same?”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

“I’m trying, Ruthie.”

“You’re not trying,” she countered. “You’re using every excuse you can find not to move on. You have Mary, and she pulled you out of the darkness, but you have to do the rest. You have to want to live, and you can’t do that while you still cling to your dead wife. She doesn’t want you to live like this. Nobody wants you to live like this.”

I gritted my teeth.

“Ruthie…”

“It’s time.”

It wasn’t time. It’d never be time.

Would it?

***

“If I died, how long would you wait to move on?”

I looked over at my wife.

“At least six months. Maybe three if the girl was hot,” I teased.

Lily punched my arm and then burst out laughing.

“Seriously, though. If I died tomorrow, would you move on, or wallow in a vat of self-pity?” She looked at me, all seriousness in her eyes.

I shrugged. “I would move on. I would find a way to live because of the kids. Why?”

“I read a book today,” she said, shrugging. “It was a time travel romance. She traveled to his time, they fell in love, and then she was transported back. She meets his reincarnated self on the plane that she was transported back to, and they knew instantly who the other was. He, on the other hand, had to live the rest of his life by himself. He died with no kids. No nothing. Meanwhile, she’s pregnant, and meets his ghost seconds after she returns.”

Lily read. A lot. This book, though, sounded like dog shit.

“That book sounds like it sucks,” I told her.

She rolled her eyes. “I thought it was beautiful, but it made me sad for him. Why was he the one that had to make all the sacrifices? Would she have been mad had he moved on? She was actually happy, when she got back and read his ‘history,’ that he hadn’t had a wife or kids. Happy. I, on the other hand, thought that was kind of selfish.”

I pulled my wife into my side and closed my eyes.

Lily always started conversations when we were in bed. Always, right before I was seconds away from falling asleep for the night.

But for her, I’d stay awake. I loved her.

I loved her with all of my heart, and always would.

“I think every situation is different,” I told her honestly, my eyes heavy with sleep. “Say, for instance, you decided to up and croak on me. I would move on only in the sense that I’d put one foot in front of the other. I’d do just about anything for the kids. But moving on to another woman wouldn’t be one of them.”

“I would want you to move on,” she whispered.

“You can want in one hand, and shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster.”

She squealed in outrage and shoved a tiny fist straight into my ribs.

“Ouch,” I laughed, rolling over until she was pinned underneath me. “Wench.”

She giggled, then sobered. “Dante.”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Don’t live a life you think will honor my memory. If you ever found somebody, I’d want you to be happy. Just like I know you’d want me to be happy if that ever happened.”

“It’ll never happen. So this is a moot point, anyway.”

***

I woke struggling to breathe as I recalled the memory that played through my dreams.

“It’ll never happen. So this is a moot point, anyway.”

Except it had happened.

It’d happened, and I was so pissed at Lily for it happening.

So fucking pissed that she wasn’t here anymore.

But one thing she said held true. I would’ve wanted her to be happy.

And she had wanted me to be, also.

Could I take that step in Cobie’s direction?

I wasn’t really sure.

I wasn’t sure about damn near everything nowadays.

One thing I was sure about, though, and that was that I missed Cobie.

Didn’t I owe it to myself—and Lily—to find out why I missed her?