But all he does is nod, looking at me strangely. “Okay, Blake. Okay.”
Sighing, he steps off the porch, brushing past me, shoulder to shoulder. Then, just a step past me, he stops and turns.
“I’m sorry,” drifts back, so quiet and strangled I barely hear it. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Not tonight or…ever.”
I don’t know what to do with that.
I just don’t.
So I don’t say anything.
I just listen as his footsteps crunch across the gravel, before his fancy-schmancy car door slams and the engine cranks up.
And finally, I’m alone again, one flash of his headlights washing over me in a blinding rush before he drives away.
* * *
Guess Holt’s not the only one failing at making big dramatic peace offerings tonight.
I just want to talk to Andrea. Without making my own daughter want to jab a knife through my guts.
I’m not too proud to admit I’m nervous.
Scared, even.
Fuck, if I can’t reach my daughter now, this rift’s only gonna widen.
Suddenly, it won’t just be the anniversary of her ma’s death when she’s too angry to look at me.
It’ll be every day.
And somehow we’ll end up like me and my own ma, like me and Holt.
So far apart we’re barely even blood, nothing but poison resentment between us.
I wasn’t there when Ma died. I had my reasons. But I know one thing.
When Andrea’s grown up and has kids of her own, I don’t want history repeating itself.
Don’t want them knowing me as nothing but a funeral announcement showing up by mail, and them not even knowing I existed till I was weeks cold in the ground.
Hell.
I feel sick. It doesn’t stop me from knocking on Andrea’s bedroom door with a quiet impact.
“Violet?” I call softly. “You awake?”
Usually that nickname’s enough to get her yelling at me to fucking stop it, it’s embarrassing, but this time there’s nothing. Deafening silence.
Sighing, I rest my hand on the door and press my brow against the wood.
“C’mon, kiddo. I just want to talk. At least let me in to say goodnight. I ain’t gonna fight with you no more. I just want a hug for your big dumb dad.”
Nothing again.
Goddammit.
Okay. Whatever.
I ain’t gonna push it here.
I know Andrea’s temper full well.
Pushing her right now will just make it worse and hurt her even deeper.
So I’ll give her time to spool down, and then maybe tomorrow, we can talk like normal people.
If I even know what the hell to say. It’s a funny thing, me being Mr. Radio Man and all, making people’s day and helping ’em tidy up their own lives. Meanwhile, I can’t even put out the dumpster fire of my own.
When people call in every night to talk to me, I always find something to say.
But when it comes to my own kid, my own past, I’m empty.
There’s nothing worse for a dude than running out of words when he needs them most.
3
Winter Symphony (Peace)
I should be asleep.
It’s almost midnight, and I’m exhausted.
I’ve been putting my stuff in the second bedroom that I use as a workroom, rearranging my supplies so they’re not piled up in the living room. But if I’m being honest?
I’m feeling real shaky after tonight.
Sure, it was just a minor breakdown. Something that could’ve happened to anybody rattling around in a van older than Moses.
I’m just so used to being self-sufficient.
It’s always been me, myself, and I, moving from pillar to post, port to port. I’m not used to asking for help.
But if I hadn’t been able to get anyone on the horn tonight, if lazy old Sheriff Langley hadn’t picked up the phone in this sleepy little town, I’d have probably had to try to hoof it back.
In the snow.
Alone.
In a place I don’t know.
Anything could’ve happened to me then. Not something I like to think about. It brings up bad memories.
My mother tried to smother me when I was a kid. After Dad went away on deployment and never came home, she had this horrible fear that if she let me out of her sight, I’d disappear, too. I think it’s what made me so rebellious, like my dad’s free spirit was trying to live again through me.
But sometimes I get these awful reminders that it really would be too easy for me to up and vanish. Totally.
Stop thinking about it, Peace, I tell myself. Just finish organizing and go to bed.
I distract myself with thoughts of a lovely baritone voice and the scent of cologne mingled with testosterone and gruff mountain man.
That’s a more pleasant thought, and I focus on it intently as I finish organizing bottles of scented aromatherapy oils, then dust my hands off and head into the kitchen to brew a cup of chamomile tea.
But something catches my eye. I stop.
Through the windows over the kitchen sink, there’s a fire flickering through the trees.