Page 5 of Older Cowboy

Blake had been a type one diabetic. She’d known that from the start and had become accustomed to her husband pricking his finger to check his blood sugar, then how he’d injected insulin into his stomach daily.

He’d been diagnosed with his condition extremely early on in life and had dealt with the need to monitor his diet closely and give himself shots for years by that point. Erika had understood the dangers of the disease. Or at least, she thought she had. And Blake had been so careful. He wouldn’t go out and binge on ice cream or soda. He wouldn’t even eat that many carbs. But the condition still took him away from her in the end.

Much as she sometimes wished she could, she couldn’t forget what it’d been like to come home that night. She’d had to work the late shift at the local grocery store, while he’d been working as an automotive tech at one of the fast lube oil change places. Erika had even gotten up early with him that morning to make him eggs and sausage because they hadn’t been seeing much of each other that week due to their schedules.

She’d always been appreciative of the fact that they’d shared those additional minutes together.

Still, for whatever reason, he’d apparently skipped his lunch. He passed out there on their sofa, going into a coma. Despite her transporting him to their local clinic, and the clinic having him airlifted to the hospital in Billings, he never woke up.

She knew the doctors had done all they could. But his kidneys had failed, and his heart stopped. All their attempts at resuscitation didn’t work.

He was gone.

Now, as she scrutinized the lavender clematis flowers that had draped themselves all over the shrubs lining the Cantrell’s porch, she felt that loss like a dull ache. She breathed in the sweet almost almond-like scent, recognizing their aroma like an old friend.

It’d been a long time since Blake’s death had felt like the acute bleeding wound it’d been at the beginning. But she doubted she’d ever quit mourning him altogether. And much of that was due to the two people who greeted her as soon as she knocked on their door.

“Erika, that you?” they asked in unison. It was kind of their thing.

“It’s me.”

“Come on in, sweet girl.” This came from Nikki.

Erika hugged the woman who physically resembled her son so much—or rather, her son had resembled her—that the family had joked that he’d been the male version of his mother. Blake had been the spitting image of her so much that pictures of them as children at the same age were nearly identical.

Her late husband had his mom’s sandy blond hair and blue-green eyes. Even her freckles across his nose. The main thing he’d inherited from his dad was the shape of Bruce’s mouth and his quiet, hardworking nature. That and his father’s tenor singing voice. Bruce and Blake had each been talented in that manner, both of them becoming highlights of their church’s choir and standing out during performances, especially during holidays.

Erika loved hearing Bruce speak because it was so similar to Blake’s voice.

“I made Hungarian Goulash,” Bruce said, stirring a pot on the stove.

“In this heat?” Erika asked him, fanning herself. That explained the excess humidity in the house. “You’re a brave man.”

He shrugged. “Nikki had a hankering.”

Minutes later they all sat down at the round kitchen table with its oak finish. Erika could still remember sitting here with Blake when they’d been dating then after they’d married. That stain in the center had come from spilling some cooking oil that never quite came out. And that scratch right in front of her from a wrought iron trivet when Nikki had scooted it while beneath the weight of a huge Thanksgiving turkey.

On the wall behind Bruce’s spot at the table were all the family portraits including Blake’s school pictures and various candid shots that his parents had framed. Or maybe memorialized would be a better word. As Erika took a bite of the somewhat bland goulash—it always tasted this way, but she’d never complain—she knew the picture they’d bought at the wedding chapel down in Vegas was stationed on the wall at her back.

Beneath that large ten by sixteen frame sat a collection of framed photographs across three separate shelves, all of them of her and Blake during their fleeting courtship and marriage. Nikki had made a hobby of amateur photography, so she took pictures of everything.

It was all there.

Their first date. Their first kiss—Erika hadn’t realized they were being scrutinized until after the fact. Their first meal with the Cantrells. The day they returned from their wedding and honeymoon. Them standing in front of their new cottage home.

Initially, Erika had been embarrassed and even intimidated by Nikki’s need to capture every moment for perpetuity’s sake, but after Blake died, she’d been grateful. At least once she’d been capable of looking at those images without sobbing. By taking all those photographs, her memories had been preserved in a way that her memory might eventually allow to fade.

She peered up at the wallpaper in this dining room kitchen combo and the little apples lined up throughout. She studied the silverware with its floral motif and the kitschy salt and peppers shakers in the shape of a squirrel and a rabbit. Even the wood smell of this room seemed to go back for years into her past.

Erika inhaled and felt soothed by the bevy of memories all these enmeshed aromas elicited. Being here with the Cantrells was like returning to a childhood bedroom and again sleeping on the same mattress. People said you couldn’t go home again, but she did it all the time. Nearly every Friday, in fact.

“Sweet girl,” Bruce addressed her, both he and his wife had referred to Erika like this since shortly after she’d commenced dating their son. “Do you remember that time we had to push Blake’s old Mustang into the driveway?”

“Sure do.”

“You two had only been married six months,” he went on even though this story had been told multiple times. Also, Erika remembered it because she’d been there. But that wasn’t about to stop Bruce. Retelling the same stories over and over was he and his wife’s forte. “It was lucky he was only a block away. We had you sit behind the steering wheel while the rest of us pushed as hard as we could.”

“And my white slacks got so filthy it ruined them,” Nikki added, just like she always did.

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