I feel Jesse tense, but I don’t stop talking. I can’t. It’s like once I opened the floodgates of this memory, there’s no closing them back up.
“When he drank, I’d usually just keep the kids away from him. It wasn’t hard, really. He’d be gone most of the time, and then, when he finally stumbled home, the kids were already in bed. But this time we were stranded out there on this damn farm. And he was with his friends, and they were drinking and being loud, acting dumb. It was late, I was exhausted, and then Jude started crying. June was sleeping curled up in a lawn chair with a blanket, so I left her, and I took Jude to the truck. I couldn’t carry them both. And Patrick wasn’t being scary. He wasn’t paying any attention to us at all, so I didn’t think...”
I give my head a jerk. I can feel myself slipping.
“It was cool enough outside,” I force out, “that I just buckled Jude into the car seat and let him sleep. I needed a breather, so I stayed at the truck with Jude for bit. I was going to go get June. I was going to set us up to just sleep in the truck. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before...”
I press my palms into my eyes and suck in a breath. “God, I was scrolling Facebook while my baby girl was fighting for her life.”
Jesse tightens his arms around me, and I continue.
“I heard an explosion. I ran toward it. All the guys were yelling. One of them was shouting about calling an ambulance, and I just started screaming out for June. She wasn’t in the chair where I’d last seen her. She was gone.”
I shake my head at the onslaught of memories. The thick, black smoke that choked me and burned my lungs. The way June’s hair smelled like it for weeks. The massive flames. The ambulance. June’s tiny little body. Her silent tears.
And Patrick, walking away with nothing but a bump on the head and a hangover. Not even a fucking citation, because him and his boys look out for each other.
“We were lucky. The paramedics said she must have already been thrown from the ATV before it hit the tree, and the helmet and denim jacket she’d been wearing protected her, but she still ended up with road rash type burns all over her back and left side. They had to do skin grafting from her thighs and butt, so she’s got scarring all over her lower half too.”
“When did this happen?”
“The accident was almost two years ago, and June spent about a year in and out of the hospital. The night of the accident, Patrick was drunk, and I wasn’t readily available for him to bully, so he took it out on June. She didn’t want to get on that ATV, but she was too afraid to tell him no. As soon as we knew for sure June would survive, I filed for divorce.”
And I’ve been treading water ever since.
“It’s not your fault, Jocelyn,” Jesse says. He sits up straight and turns me so we’re making eye contact, and then he repeats himself. “What happened is terrible, but it is not your fault.”
I lean forward and kiss him, and he brushes away my tears with his thumbs. I don’t believe him, but it’s nice to hear someone say it. Nobody, not Patrick, not his friends, not even his mom, ever told me that it wasn’t my fault. They never blamed Patrick, and he was remorseless, so it all fell on me. If I’d have just woken her up or went straight back to get her. Or been more insistent that Patrick go to the farm that night without us...
There are so many decisions I could have made that would have had a different outcome. A better outcome. One that didn’t end in June almost dying. But I didn’t make a single one of them.
Jesse and I sit together for another hour or so, cuddled under a blanket on the floor in my living room. We make small talk, lighter topics to bring my mind back from the dark spiral of guilt and what ifs. It works for a while. Jesse makes me smile in a way no man ever has, and when he tells me things, I almost believe him.
After he leaves, I head to my bedroom alone, feeling empty and full, all at once.
* * *
I pullinto Roxanne’s driveway to find that she’s waiting on the front porch for me. I don’t even have a chance to turn off the car before she’s climbing into my passenger seat.
“Freedom looks good on you,” I joke as she clips on her seatbelt. She moved out of the facility and back into her house yesterday, but she jumped all over the chance to come to my tattoo appointment with me today.
“Honey, everything looks good on me,” Roxanne says with a wink, and I laugh as I pull out of the driveway and back onto the road. “So what are ya getting?”
“There’s a picture in the glove compartment,” I tell her, and she flips open the door in front of her. She pulls out the picture I printed, studies it, and grins really big.
“I love it,” she says.
“Yeah? You don’t think I’m, like, too old for something like that? That big?”
Roxanne howls with laughter, and I realize immediately the mistake in my statement. I’m talking to a woman pushing ninety, who wears leather pants, has fire-engine red hair, and drives a classic muscle car. Of course, she’s going to laugh at my concern because my worry is dumb.
“Okay, okay,” I say with a laugh of my own. “You’re right. That was stupid.”
She wipes tears from her eyes when her giggles calm, and she catches her breath.
“Honey, unless you’re a gallon of milk, age shouldn’t be something you fear. You’re not a gallon of milk. You’re a fine wine. Remember that.”
I smile tightly, letting her words wash over me. I don’t feel like a fine wine. I don’t feel like a gallon of milk either, though. If anything, I feel like a gas station bottle of Boones Farm.
“Does this have something to do with a certain 6-foot hunk of energy and bad dad jokes?” she asks pointedly, and I whip my eyes to her with my jaw dropped. “Jocelyn, I obviously wasn’t born yesterday,” she snarks with a wry grin.
I swing my attention back to the road and bite my lip. What do I even say to that? Oh, well, actually, he babysat my kids and then I gave him a blowie to say thank you? I cringe inwardly.
“It’s none of my business,” Roxanne starts, “but I think you deserve happiness, Jocelyn, and if Jesse brings you happiness, then that should be enough.”
I sigh. “He’s twenty-three, Rox. And in college. College.”
“Phooey.” She waves her hand in the air. “Only for another two weeks, anyway.”
My head jerks back. “What? What do you mean?”