Page 39 of Melody

“How old were you when that picture was taken?”

She tried not to think about it too much, because her father’s death was the first of many losses. Her grandparents—all of them—had passed when she’d been much younger, too little to really understand what any of it meant. Before she’d come along, her parents had been married for a long time and had tried for over a decade to have a child. Her mother had had a series of miscarriages and they’d finally given up, deciding a child wasn’t in the cards for them. Each failed pregnancy was more painful than the last, and then they actively prevented conception. It wasn’t until her mother was going through perimenopause and her periods had stopped coming regularly that her father quit using condoms—and then her mother got pregnant. But she didn’tknowshe was pregnant at first because of irregular periods that came farther and farther apart. Due tothe symptoms of perimenopause, she didn’t recognize any of the pregnancy symptoms. She’d had a couple of weeks of nausea and simply thought she was coming down with something. The breast tenderness and lack of periods she attributed to the change of life.

It wasn’t until her belly started pooching that she wondered…and she took a test to confirm it. But she didn’t say a word to her husband for weeks, because she was sure the child would eventually miscarry.

When her belly grew even more, Scarlett’s father couldn’t help but notice—and that was when her mother finally went to the doctor and discovered that Scarlett had made it past the point any of her other pregnancies had.

Her parents had always called her theirmiracle child.

And here she was, thinking about the good times again…but eventually they always reminded her of how much she’d lost. She blinked away the tears before she spoke.

“It was right after my thirteenth birthday. We were on a road trip, camping and sightseeing in Colorado. We were getting ready to ride the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and my dad asked someone to take a picture of us.” It was the last picture of the three of them they’d ever had taken.

“You said you lost both your parents, right?”

Scarlett’s emotions and the thoughts she held to keep her rational and aloof warred with each other inside her—but she was tired of the fight, tired of the superficial relationships she had here in Silver City. Sure, she had Marin in Pueblo, but it wasn’t the same as someone who could hug you, someone you could connect to face-to-face.

And that someone had become Kyle over the past few months.

“Do you want to sit down?” she asked.

“Uh, sure.”

As they moved toward the couch, Scarlett said, “To answer your question, yeah. Different times but both my parents are gone.”

Kyle didn’t sit. “I’m sorry.” His eyes said far more than his words, indicating he was hesitant about prying.

“No, it’s okay.” Kyle’s expression was full of sorrow and regret but he said nothing. When she sat on the couch, it had the effect she’d been hoping it would, because he didn’t hesitate to join her. Already, she could feel comforting, protective waves coming off him, urging her to continue. “My dad died a couple of months after that picture was taken. He was a long-haul truck driver and he died on the road. It was like the perfect storm.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to.” Scarlett could feel her brow wrinkle as she dropped her eyes to her hands—because, even though she wanted to tell Kyle about it, she didn’t think she’d be able to do it without crying. “He was driving over Red Mountain Pass. Oddly enough, that’s really close to where we’d been camping that summer. But he was driving over it in the fall and it was raining, so the roads were a little icy. Another semi was going down one side and my dad was driving up, and the other semi slid into his lane, probably driving too fast. They said they believed my dad was trying to avoid hitting the other truck by braking. Have you ever been over that pass?”

“No.”

“My mom and I went there to see where he died. On one side, there’s a sheer drop off and no guard rails. On the other side, there’s a rock wall. The other driver not only slid into dad’s lane but his trailer fell on its side and kept sliding, causing my dad’s truck to go over the edge. His truck caught on fire too. Just—” Scarlett’s throat constricted as the tears started dropping into her lap, and she placed her cocoa on the tiny coffee table to avoid crying into it.

Kyle didn’t say a word. Instead, he just wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight. Instinctively, he’d known what she needed. After her tears slowed and she was able to speak again, she said, “It wasn’t until the year before that my dad had switched from being a short-haul trucker to long-haul. Short hauls let him be closer to home all the time, and he wanted to not be gone as much, especially when I was little. But when I got older, my mom and dad wanted to buy a nicer home and be able to support my activities—like sports and music and stuff. So he switched back to driving long-haul. He made lots better money, but he’d be gone for weeks at a time. That’s why we took that vacation in August, so we could have some good family time.”

Again, Kyle was silent, but he rubbed her back with his hand, comforting her more than he could possibly know.

When Scarlett spoke again, her voice was steadier. “I’m really glad we did that, though. We had the best time.”

“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”

“No. It was just me.” She could see the question in his eyes…the one about her mother. “My mom died when I was nineteen. Colon cancer.” Sitting up, Scarlett wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, noticing the mascara and eyeliner smudges, grateful that Kyle’s t-shirt was black so none of the evidence she’s surely left would show. As hard as her father’s death had been, her mother’s was more recent and, thus, less scarred over. And she’d often wondered if she wouldn’t have wound up with Tommy if not for it.

“She’d finally emerged from the heavy cloud that she’d been living under after my dad died. Don’t get me wrong. She was still a wonderful mother, but I could tell how lonely and sad she was, and I don’t know how much comfort I was to her. ShesaidI was, but once I was a senior in high school, I was interested in activities and friends and boys. Anyway, thanks to my dad, my mom didn’t have to worry about getting a different job. Hehad enough life insurance to pay for all the funeral stuff and she paid off her car. The rest she put into savings to cover months when we were short…which was pretty often. But she was a cashier at King Soopers, so she made enough money to pay the bills and have health insurance, all that stuff. But she didn’t go to the doctor like she should have. She started losing weight and wasn’t feeling well—and she didn’tlookvery well, either. After graduation, I worked part-time, but I was home more—and I finally begged her to go to the doctor. There was no denying something was seriously wrong.”

Scarlett’s throat was dry, so she reached over for her cocoa and took a sip. The warmth felt good going down and, as a montage of her mother’s last year of life flashed in the projection screen in her mind, she fought back tears. Closing her eyes, she let out a long slow breath between pursed lips before forcing out the rest of the words. “Even that was an ordeal. She hadn’t had a doctor for so long that she had to find one who was taking new patients—and, when she finally found one, she had to wait two months for an appointment. By that point, seeing how miserable she felt, I asked her to go to urgent care. Every time, she’d tell me, ‘I’ll be fine.’ I don’t know what she and her doctor discussed, but I do know he ordered some tests, including a colonoscopy—which my mother refused to do at first. When she did…that’s when they told her she had cancer.”

Again, Scarlett couldn’t hold the tears back anymore, reliving that painful time in her life. The problem wasn’t necessarily the cancer in her colon but that it had metastasized, spreading to various other parts of her body—so surgery wasn’t an option, but they threw everything else at her that they could: chemotherapy, radiation, and other treatments Scarlett couldn’t remember the names of. She hoped against hope that her mother would survive, but now she could look back with clarity: part of hermother had died years earlier with her dad—and she’d stuck around long enough for Scarlett to reach adulthood.

“They treated it, of course. It wasn’t long before she couldn’t work anymore. She just didn’t have the energy or health for it. I started taking her to a lot of her appointments for chemo and radiation—which is why I ended up in food service. I could take her home, make sure she was as comfortable as possible, and then go into work, make decent tips and then come home, ready to do it again.” But her mother hadn’t fought to live. And she found herself telling Kyle about it.

“One morning, I brought her some coffee and toast, about the only thing she’d eat by that point. And she flat-out told me she wasn’t afraid to die.” That was when she knew her mother had given up. “It wasn’t long after that that she started sleeping more and more, only waking when I got her up to go to her appointments or to eat. And then she’d get confused about things—like one time, she asked where my dad was. And as much as I loved her and missed her,” Scarlett spat out, her voice breaking again, “it was almost a relief when she passed…because those last few months, she wasn’t herself anymore.”

The tears began falling like rain again, and Kyle once more pulled her close. This time, the torrent couldn’t be stopped, and his warmth told her it was okay. When, after some time, she stopped sobbing and silence fell like a blanket over her apartment, Kyle simply continued holding her, and hearing his heart against her ear and his steady breathing comforted her more than he could have imagined.

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