It's Never too Late

She shook her head. “I can’t, Mark. I can’t sit here and wait for you while you go off across the country and get even smarter on me. I can’t take the chance that you won’t be back. Besides, I want a family now. Another two years and I’ll be thirty years old, Mark. And you ain’t ready. Even without the scholarship. You’ve said so often enough. You want to save first. And if you go get this degree—that would be another four years at least.”

“We’ve got time, Ella. Heck, people have kids into their forties nowadays.”

“I don’t want to be an older mother. I want kids now, while I’m still young enough for them to think I’m cool.”

That was so Ella, wanting her kids to think she was cool. Ella’s mother had been sixteen when she’d had her and the two had been more like friends than mother and daughter.

“Even if I went and got the degree, you’d only be thirty-two when I get back. That’s plenty young enough.”

Her gaze narrowed and he was pretty sure he saw the beginnings of tears there. But Ella wasn’t a crier.

“So you’re thinking about going?”

“No! I keep telling you, I’m not going.” He’d never make it in college. And had nothing to learn there, either. He was a working man. And he was climbing the ladder just fine. He’d just been talking about the age thing. There was no need to rush kids.

“Even if you came back, you’d be different. I’d bore you in no time.”

“You don’t bore me, Ella.” His boredom was a product of an overactive mind. One that had to be kept busy. He’d never been good at sitting around.

“Maybe I just don’t want to live my life with someone who’s smarter than me, you ever think of that?”

She had him there. Because he did think of that—about himself being the stupid one. Or he used to. Before Ella. A high school dropout, Mark had dropped out of the dating scene, too. He hadn’t liked how he’d felt hanging out with girls who were more educated than he was.

“Do you love me, Ella?”

She lifted her chin, in spite of the tears on her cheeks. “You know I do.”

“And you need to know that even if I went, I’d be back for you.”

“I’m going to the pig roast, Mark.”

* * *

IT MIGHT BE SUMMER, but in the mountains of Colorado the evenings were still chilly.

Addy had a cup of tea. Dressed in her favorite jeans, the short ones that she could wear with flip-flops rather than two-inch heels, she hugged the warm rose-embossed china with both hands, legs curled beneath her, and stared at the photo on the living room wall.

The woman in the picture was beautiful. With long dark hair falling softly around high cheekbones and a rounded chin, Ann Keller had always had a kind word for everyone. In most of Addy’s memories, Ann was smiling, her brown eyes glistening with love like they were in that picture.

Except for the times when she hadn’t been. Those had mostly involved Addy’s father. And only toward the end.

Shuddering, she looked away, toward the backyard oasis she’d built behind her small, one-bedroom, one-bath house. The landscaping and yard art, all carefully chosen in greens and blues and yellows, surrounded a pond with a waterfall that ran 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Rock, paper, scissors. She used to play the game with Ely. Paper covered rock, scissors cut paper, rock pounded scissors.

And water killed fire.

No, that wasn’t part of the game. Fire had come later.

She listened for the water, a sound that soothed, and glanced back at the photo. Addy was there, too—a pixieish five-year-old with a big gummy grin and missing front teeth. Her straight blond hair was up in a ponytail. She’d loved that red polka-dot sundress. Maybe because of the red patent leather shoes she’d had to go with it—Dorothy’s shoes, she’d told her mother the day they’d bought them. Maybe she’d loved them so much because her mother had had a dress and sandals that matched. Or maybe because she could still remember the shopping trip, the day that they’d picked out the attire. It had just been her and Mom that day and they’d played Princess and Queen while they’d tried on lots of different outfits. Addy and her brother, Elijah, were going to be in a publicity photo with their mother, who’d just been signed to her own cooking show. Two years older than she was, Elijah had been gung ho about the photo—but not about tagging along to buy clothes. He’d opted out of the shopping excursion.

But her big brother had been just as excited as Addy had been the morning the three of them had gotten ready—she and Mom in their dresses and Ely in his new suit and red tie—and then piled into the car and taken off for the studio in Phoenix, ready to embark on a great adventure.

After the pictures, Mom had taken them to a nice restaurant and eaten hamburgers and French fries with them—even though she much preferred the fancier foods she’d become known for. And then they’d changed clothes in the lush bathroom just off the dining room, and headed to the zoo.

It had been a great day. Perfect. The best ever.

It had also been the last day Ann and Ely spent on earth.