CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” rang out from a nearby slot machine as coins splashed into the metal bucket. A guy in a Hawaiian shirt working the one-armed bandit shouted a triumphant yes!

Brent and Mindy walked through the slot machines while she made her afternoon rounds through the casino

“I get that you’re pissed—” Mindy began.

Brent held up a finger. “Correction. Was pissed. I was pissed last night.”

Mindy nodded, and pressed the Bluetooth in her ear, listening for a few seconds, then returned to the conversation. They strolled past a machine crooning “Pure Imagination” as a cartoonish Willy Wonka presided over the slots. “Fine. You were pissed last night. And now you’re resentful and kind of catatonic. Am I right?”

He huffed, but nodded.

“Then get ready for some tough love, my friend.” She stopped at an empty Cleopatra machine, parking her hand on the queen’s golden headband. “This is what you need to realize—and none of this is to belittle what you’re feeling. But sweetie, you don’t get to be angry. You don’t get to own this feeling of resentment.”

He narrowed his eyes and shot her a look. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not denying your role in this loss. I’m not saying it isn’t painful, or shocking, or sad. I get that you lost something you didn’t even know you had lost,” she said, speaking in a thoughtful, teacherly tone. “But I’m giving you a couple hours, maybe a day, to feel all those things on your own. And then your job is to be there for her. You don’t get to own this hurt. It is hers. She went through it.”

Mindy’s words were iced water splashed onto him. They were the stark reminder that he couldn’t co-opt Shannon’s grief or pain. His was a fraction of hers.

“So what do I do?”

“Be the man she needed you to be ten years ago. The man who doesn’t walk away when you hear that shit didn’t go in your direction.”

“I didn’t walk away,” he said, trying to defend his actions. “I told her I needed time to deal with it.”

Mindy nodded a few times, acknowledging him. “Fine, you needed time. You needed space. I understand. It was a shock. Well, you had your time and you had your space. Now man up, and be who she needs. That’s all you’ve wanted,” she said, slugging his arm. “You have wanted her to need you. You’ve wanted her to want you back in her life. Now she does, and you walk away at the first bit of bad news?”

“I didn’t—”

She held up her palm. “Talk to the hand. You can say you didn’t walk away, and maybe you didn’t, but I bet it feels like that to her. Think back to Boston. Rewind to ten years ago. You hated it when she wouldn’t give up her career for you,” she said, her voice rising as she sent him back in time. “And what did you do in response then? You walked away from her. Now, you hear another thing you don’t like, that she lost a baby, and you do the same. You walked away again. You can finesse it all you want, and say you needed space, but the net effect is the same.”

Her words shamed him. They knocked him out of his stupor of self-loathing. He had wanted so badly to be everything she needed, but when push came to shove, he’d let pride, and fear, and a million other things stand in the way last night.

“Shit,” he said, heavily. “I’ve fucked up.”

“No. You haven’t fucked up,” she said, pressing her fingers to his cheeks and turning his frown upside-down. “You just took a step back. Now, take some steps forward. This time, instead of walking away, walk back to her. Be there for her, and for yourself. I know it’s hard and I know you’re feeling this loss too in a new fresh way. But feel it with her, not against her. Talk to her about it. Don’t run away. Don’t hide. Face your fears with her, and tell her how you feel,” she said, squeezing his shoulder. “And move through it together.”

“I need to see her right away.”

“You do.”

Brent cycled back to their last few conversations, trying to figure out where she might be. “I think she’s on her way back from L.A. Should I, you know, do that thing where I show up at the airport with a sign that says ‘I love you?’”

Mindy clutched her belly and laughed deeply. “God no. That only works in the movies. Besides, you know she’s a private person. She wouldn’t like that. All she wants is you. Not a sign. Not a gift. Not some cheesy love song dedicated to her. Strange as it may be, she wants you. So give her you.”

“Can I borrow your phone for a second?”

Mindy dug into her pocket, and handed it to him. He dialed Shannon’s number. It went straight to voice mail.

* * *

Her grandmother slid a mug of tea across the counter. “Have some.”

“I don’t even like tea, and you know that. But you always try to give me tea,” Shannon said, but she said it with a smile. She knew why her grandmother was offering tea. It was Victoria’s comfort beverage.

“It cures all troubles,” she said in an over-the-top wise woman’s voice as she picked up her mug of green tea and knocked some back. Shannon was parked next to her on a stool. She’d stopped by on her way home from the airport, grateful that she was always welcome and didn’t have to call first. Besides, her phone had chirped its last breath in Burbank. She was snagging some juice for it at her grandmother’s in an outlet on the wall.

“Then I better drink some after all,” Shannon said, and took a hearty gulp. “Because I have a lot of trouble.”

“Tell me what brings you here.”

Shannon didn’t mince words. She was straightforward, revealing the key details of her epic argument with Brent, laying it out for the woman who had been her parent for the last eighteen years. “I guess I never thought it would unfold like that. I imagined a million other scenarios but not that one. And I know I should have told him sooner, or tried harder to find him. And I understand why he’d be upset,” she said, running her finger absently along the mug. “I just wish there was something I could do. I left him a message, but I haven’t heard a word from him all day.” She took a beat then asked the hardest question of all. “Is it over?”

“Is he dead?”

Shannon flinched, taken aback by the question. “Grandma!”

“Well? Is he? Answer the question,” she said sternly.

“No. Of course not.”

She shrugged happily. “Then find him. Talk to him. Say you’re sorry for not telling him sooner, say you love him, say you want to be with him. As long as he’s not gone, you can keep making up with each other. We live and we love and we hurt each other. We don’t always say the right thing, or do the right thing at the right moment. Sometimes we need space, and distance, and sometimes words fall from our lips that shouldn’t have been said. Sometimes they seem untenable, and sometimes they are,” she said, then reached across the counter to take Shannon’s hand. “And we always hurt the ones we love most. If we didn’t love so much, it wouldn’t hurt so much. But you keep going. You keep loving. You keep working on that love every day. The only time you won’t have a chance at making up is when one of you is gone. Since he’s still here, it’s not over. Not in the least. So love him. Show him that you love him.”

“I do. I do love him.”

Victoria parked her palms on the counter, and gave Shannon a steely-eyed glare. “Then go get your man back.”

“I will,” she said, and a small grin formed on her face as the words show him echoed in her head. She didn’t have enough time to show him what she’d started working on for him yesterday in San Francisco, but she could line up the pieces. As her phone lit up again, she opened the list she’d made.

Then she saw a notification for a voicemail.