Page 86 of The Love Losers

But the thought of marrying anyone other than Rosie, platonic or not, is reprehensible. And it seems unlikely that the problems she shared with me can be sorted out in one week. If she’d still consider marrying me after that spectacle…

So there probably won’t be a wedding. There won’t be any money. There won’t be any deal. None of it will happen.

I’m surprised by the relief that rides that thought.

Maybe that’s what needs to happen for Rosie and me to be together—for me to let the past go, entirely.

Antsy and in need of movement, I leave the rose garden and circle around to the tree, taking in the gnarled branches, full of my father’s sickness. I reach up and grab a branch, cracking it, and the violence of the action rumbles through me even more then the pain that radiates through my arm.

I want the tree to come down—something deep inside of me needs it to—but I’m in no condition to make that happen today. So I stand beside it, thinking of Gene and another item on my bucket list.

Tell him how you really feel.

He’s dead and gone, but his ghost is in this place, like Rosie said. It’s always been here, because we’ve let him seep into everything we do, who we are.

“You said you were making me stronger,” I say, feeling like an idiot, talking to a tree. But that doesn’t stop me. “You weretrying to ruin me, though. I think you wanted to. It made you feel stronger to make us feel weak. Me especially. You wanted to break me as if I were one of your horses.”

There’s no rustle of leaves. No branches fall on my head. There’s not even a dramatic wind. It’s…anticlimactic, but something inside of me is being fed. I reach up and snap another branch. Then another. The wood groans and splinters my hands, and the wrapped wound aches, and at least it’s not nothing. At least the numbness of the past years hasn’t fully set back in.

I have Rosie to thank for that.

I didn’t even realize how deeply I’d fallen asleep until she’d woken me.

And now she’s gone…

I sink down at the bottom of the tree and cradle my head in my hands. I’m still there, the napkin wrapped around my injured right hand, when I hear footsteps from the front of the house.

For a second, I think Rosie is back, and the only person who’s capable of making me believe in magic has returned with some, but then my mother and sister step into view.

They look like they’ve been arguing, but as soon as my mother sees me, she drops her purse and yells, “What in God’s name did they do to you?”

She rushes toward me while Emma watches us with a troubled look on her face.

I must look ghastly. My hand has been bleeding for who knows how long, and my coat’s open and not thick enough for the weather. As if the thought was enough to activate my body’s cold sensors, I start shivering.

My mother gives me a stiff hug that’s probably going to get blood on her jacket, because I realize now that it’s smeared across my shirt. My face. “Anthony, talk to me.Did that good-for-nothing guard let the stalker back here, or did the proposal go poorly?”

“The latter,” Emma says, studying me as she removes her scarf and wraps it around my neck. There’s no surprise on her face, so apparently Mother filled her in on the details, not that I’m surprised. “Did she stab you?”

I laugh bitterly. “I broke a plate and punched a wall.”

My sister glances at my mother. “I guess he actually likes this one.”

Likes.

“I’m falling in love with her,” I say. “But there won’t be a wedding, because Nina knows something that could destroy Rosie and her family. She made it clear that she’ll pull the trigger if we get married next weekend.”

My mother’s expression hardens. “Iknewthat odious little strumpet gave up too easily.”

I watch blankly as Emma stoops to gather Mother’s bag. She notices the snapped branches of the apple tree before she shifts her attention back to me. One of the corners of her mouth lifts. “Had a fight with Dad, too?”

“Something like that,” I say, studying the ripped branches and the slivers they left in my hands. Then I glance up at my family. “Have you noticed that the tree got sick after we spread his ashes under it?”

“Oh, that’s no mystery,” my mother says, fussing with my hair. “I pour whiskey at its roots twice a week to keep the old bastard’s spirit satiated.”

Surprised laughter escapes me. All this time, I’d carried the knowledge of the tree’s waste with me, seeing it as a symbol of what was happening to me—the rot that was spreading each year—when really it was as simple as my mother slowly poisoning it.

Maybe we’d all do better with more of the truth. So I find myself saying: “Rosie and I have been working on a list of things we want to do before the end of the year. I…Mother, I have to cut this tree down.”

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