I wash up in the pot of water and rinse my face before drying off and taking the bag Tiernan gave me over to the green tent next to us. Unzipping it, I lean down and step in, seeing Noah still passed out on his back with my son tucked in his arm.
I stand there, appreciating the view for a moment. Griffin is eighteen months, and even though it was hard for Tiernan to finish her degree as a new mom, she did it. With some help from me. We stayed in Seattle for a year after she graduated, raising him and road-tripping, but finally now, we’re home in Chapel Peak.
Noah opens his eyes, yawning. “Hey.”
I kneel down, rubbing Griff’s hair as he still lies asleep. “Thanks for watching him,” I whisper. “We needed a night alone.”
I try to pull the kid off him. He needs a diaper change, no doubt.
But Noah tightens his arm around him. “No.” He scowls at me. “The little fucker and I bonded.”
I snort, prying my kid off him anyway. “Get your own.”
I hold my son in my arms as he shifts and yawns. He has sandy blond hair and green eyes, his bare feet half the size of my hand. He’s incredible.
I kiss his cheeks a few times, trying to wake him up. Pulling out the sippy cup Tiernan gave me, I put it to his lips, his eyes finally opening and drinking the milk.
“What the fuck is that?” Noah asks, staring down at the bag.
I pull out the plastic container, opening it up and grabbing the spoon.
“Some avocado and tofu shit,” I tell him, scooping up a serving.
Tiernan is determined he’ll be as much a California kid as a Colorado one. She can keep that delusion, because this kid will be all mine the moment he tastes barbecue ribs for the first time.
“He can’t eat tofu in Chapel Peak,” Noah tells me. “He’ll get bullied.”
“Shut up.”
I feed Griff, his pouty, little lips scarfing down the food, and I laugh to myself. He’ll eat pretty much anything. I guess the longer he doesn’t know how awful this tastes compared to just about everything else, the better.
“Happy to be home?” Noah asks.
I nod, feeding the kid more and more. “Yeah.”
“You gonna stay out of trouble?”
“Nope,” I reply.
Noah chuckles as he lies next to us.
Dad is in California a lot now, Van der Berg Extreme merging with JT Racing about four years ago. Since the owners of JTR preferred to stay at their home base in Shelburne Falls, Illinois, it ended up being pretty perfect. Dad runs the California branch, and Noah races our bikes with their engines.
Tiernan and I moved into the house here, but just until construction on our own place—a little lower on the mountain—is finished. Which will take more than a year, I’m sure.
The only thing other than a house that Tiernan demanded on the new property was a place to land a helicopter. There was no way she was letting me stitch up our kid if he got injured. She wanted him airlifted to a hospital with local anesthesia.
I’ll continue customizations, she’ll design homes, décor, and furniture as the weather permits, and we’ll live for the winter and the warmth and our family with some adventures on the side.
I keep feeding Griffin, but I feel Noah’s eyes on me, like he has more to say.
“What do you want me to do with her ashes?” he finally asks.
Her ashes…
I don’t look at him, scraping the container and doling out the rest to the kid.
I shrug. “Take ’em, I guess.”
This is why he’s back. Why my father returned. Why we decided to go camping and be together and remember what we have to be grateful for as a family.
Anna Leigh is dead. My mother.
Our mother.
My throat tightens as Griff looks up at me, his big, emerald eyes watching me.
I force a smile for him.
“It’s surreal,” Noah says quietly. “I think she was really someone very different down deep. If not for the drugs.”
Why would he think that? She wasn’t on drugs in prison. She was in there fifteen years total, with some spells on the outside in between, and the only time she touched base was for money. Theft, robbery, dealing…negligence with her child. She was a bad person.
And I do remember. I still have to ride with the windows cracked in the car.
“Maybe she wanted to be different,” he goes on. “Someone who laughed with her kids. Played games with us and wanted a man to hold her with love.”
An image of her on her back as she propped me up on her feet so I could fly flashes in my head. She smiled. I laughed.
“That’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?” Noah asks. “To not be alone?”
He doesn’t have any memories of her. Only a year younger than me, but too young. Cancer crept up in March, and it worked quickly. She died in prison a couple of weeks ago.
Maybe he’s right. If she’d never had that first taste, maybe she would’ve been different.
“I just want to remember her as she should’ve been.” His voice falls to a whisper. “I’m too tired at this point to hate her anymore. When it’s over and done, maybe all she wants is to not be alone now. To know that we think of her sometimes.”
Tears fill my eyes, and I don’t want to fucking do this, but I can’t stop it. I cough to cover the emotion choking me up, because fucking Noah. Goddamn him.
She’s dead, and I’m wrapped warm every night in a family I love. Why should I hate her?
“Ah, fuck it.” I dry my eyes and gather up the food and sippy cup. “Leave me half of the ashes. I’ll spread them on the mountain.”
I don’t look at him as I leave the shit and grab my kid, getting out of the tent before I embarrass myself further.
Holding Griff close to me, I draw in some deep breaths, slowly letting it go. Fucking Noah.
My dad stands at the edge of the water, and I head over, turning the kid around, so he can see the waterfall. The first time we brought his mom here, she sat on a beach towel right about here.
Dad glances over, smiling at Griff. “I can’t tell who he looks more like.”
I look down at my son. His hair is darker than Tiernan’s, but much lighter than mine. He has my eyes, though.
“As long as he’s loved, I don’t care,” I tell him.
“That he is.” He reels the line back into the spool. “If you want to have a few more, I won’t balk,” he says. “It’s nice to have a kid running around again. I can be better with him than I was with you two.”
I gaze out at the scene, thinking about my childhood. I never once resented my father, growing up. It never crossed my mind that he wasn’t striving to do his best.
Until he had her. Then I resented him for a while.
But I drop my eyes, too happy to care anymore. We were lost and broken, each in our own way, and she needed us as much as we needed her. We’d die for her.
“We’re not robbing banks or drunks,” I finally reply. “Noah and I turned out okay.”
And then I turn to him. “You want to have a few more, I wouldn’t mind a sister.”
He chuckles, and I cast a glance at the blue tent, knowing who he has tucked inside, even though she continues to try to conceal what we all know has been going on for years now. She’s thirty-seven and has no kids. Maybe she wants one.