Page 62 of Peaches

But the sound of my phone ringing again distracts me. It’s Kasey,again, and I frown. I know he’s working at the bar tonight . . . I wonder if something’s wrong. “Sorry, I need to take this.”

She dips her chin. “No worries. I’ll be right back.”

I watch her disappear into the kitchen as I swipe to answer the call, lifting the phone to my ear. “Kasey?”

There’s shouting on the other end of the line. A mix of voices that surge together in a chaotic frenzy that’s impossible to understand. “Rhett,” Kasey breathes. I’ve never heard him sound like that—so lost and defeated.

And then I hear it.

Brooks, in the background. Screaming.

My heart stops, eyes squeezing shut with an uncomfortable pressure.

No no no no . . .

“I’ll be right there,” I say.

* * *

I’ve never givenmuch thought to my own mortality, despite knowing I’ve definitely kissed death a time or two. Between the drinking and fighting and speed of my bike, there’s no doubt I’ve come way too close to meeting whatever comes on the other side of this human existence.

Sometimes I’ve even scared myself. Once, back when I spent most Saturday nights selling pills with Colt to knuckleheads at the fairgrounds, we got swindled by our dealer after he decided to take our money and run without giving us any new product. Colt was prepared to accept the loss, but I got so worked up over the injustice that I jumped on my bike to chase the fucker down the highway. But he’d known I was behind him, and he’d gotten fucking close to running me right off the road.

Or there’s the time I picked a fight with the meanest cowboy I could find at the rodeo because I needed to burn off some pent-up anger—I don’t even remember why I’d been so bent out of shape. But that mean cowboy shattered my nose before I even saw him swing. In the span of seconds, I went from the wild frenzy of rearing my own fist toward him to waking up in a hospital bed with no recollection of what happened. Thank god Kasey had been there to get me some help.

Despite flirting with it over the years, the idea of death and dying isn’t something I’ve feared or obsessed over. We all live, and then we die—it’s one of the simplest promises that life can offer us. But I’ve also been relatively lucky enough that I haven’t had to experience the way death cuts into you, the way it breaks and shatters and shreds all traces of light, leaving you starved and empty and numb.

I’ve never known the true pain it causes for those left behind with a hole shaped like the one they’ve lost.

Until now.

I can hear the crying inside the house from out on the front steps: the high-pitched sobs of the boys, the deep and desperate moaning of their father. Pushing open the door, I find Kasey on the other side. He’s leaning against the wall, his hat clutched in his hand. When he looks at me, he shakes his head, and the panic in my chest grips tighter. Both Wells and Layla sit at the table in the kitchen.

“Where are they?” I ask, watching tears stream down Layla’s face as Wells stares hard at his hands.

“Her room,” Kasey answers.

I force myself to take the steps that lead me down the hall. Mom is hovering in the doorway of the bedroom Melody’s been housed in for weeks, her hand over her heart and her face utterly stricken. On impulse, I reach for her and pull her in close, wrapping my arms tight around her.

She lets out a quiet sob that presses against my sternum. “She’s gone, Rhett,” she cries, her shoulders shaking. “She just . . . she justdied.”

With Mom tucked against my chest, I can see into the room, where Brooks and the boys are somehow all on the narrow hospital bed. All curled around her.

All of them crying, lost in the devastation.

I force myself to shut down the emotion that rises violently in my throat. “What can I do?” I ask, voice rough.

But Mom doesn’t answer me. Instead, she shudders out another sob, and I have to disentangle myself from her. Have to back away from what feels like my heart ripping open.

I turn back and march toward Kasey. “What can I do?” I ask him instead.

His eyes are shining from the light in the kitchen. “Ambulance is on its way. We just have to wait for it.” Saddlebrook Falls is too small of a town to have its own hospital—Williamson County Memorial is the closest one to us, and it’s a good half hour away. Under normal circumstances, we’d be doing what we can to meet an ambulance halfway for an emergency situation. But both Kasey and I know that won’t help Melody.

So, I just nod and try like hell not to put a hole through the wall.

“What happened?” I ask. I mean,fuck, she’d looked so much better today.

He scratches a thumb against his brow, a single tear cresting and falling onto his cheek. “She said she was tired and cold after the clouds rolled in, so Brooks got her back to bed for a nap. He went to pick up the boys from school and then horsed around with them out front for a little while before he came back inside to check on her and . . . she was already gone.”

---