Page 141 of Tides That Bind

I grow too scared to keep talking when Claire breaks the holdof our hands and stands. For a minute, I’m certain she’ll march out of the house and this will be the last time I see her. But instead, she moves across the kitchen to the refrigerator and stares at the photos lining the door. I’m too scared to move, each breath I take is packed with anxiety as I anticipate a tongue lashing, something along the lines ofhow could you, Harper?

I bounce in my seat until she turns around. But Claire doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t come to me. She goes to the window above the sink and looks out at the backyard, at Riley and Lucas for a solid minute before she turns to me with tears in her eyes.

“He loved that boy,” she repeats her earlier statement, and I squeeze my eyes shut as tears hit me too.

It’s a futile effort, because I push the chair away from the table where I place my elbows, dropping my face into my hands to catch my sobs. I’m crying so hard, I don’t even realize Claire comes over to me until she’s freeing my face from my palms.

“Harper.” She says my name the way I always imagined a mother should. “I want you to listen to me. I told you Nate would want you to be happy. I meant that. And he would want you to be looked after, to be cared for. He’d want someone to look after Lucas like he’s their own.”

I sob harder when Claire strokes my hair, “I don’t think there is someone in this world Nate trusted to do that more than Riley, sweetheart.”

These words I know are true in my heart.

“You’re the most amazing mother to my grandson, Harper,” Claire whispers. “Nothing in this world will ever change that. Nothing you do will change how I look at you, how I’ve always looked at you. You don’t need my blessing to do the one thing I know in my son’s heart he’d want for you.”

Claire gives me one more squeeze and pulls back.

“I’m sorry,” I blubber, wiping my face with the back of my hand, not bothering to reach for another tissue. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Do you hear them? After Nate and you, there’s no one else who can love Lucas like that. OnlyRiley.”

Claire places a photo in front of me on the table, one I didn’t see her remove from the fridge earlier. It’s the three of us on the happiest day of my life—me, Lucas, and Riley.

We’re younger, neither of us more than Lucas, of course, who is no more than eight pounds and red faced, his head donning a tiny, cotton hospital hat. I’m puffy and red, strapped to the hospital bed with the curtain draped over it as doctors sewed me up. And Riley? It’s only now—investigating the picture this closely—I realize he’scryingthrough his smile.

“Just promise me.” Claire clears her throat, pulling me from my memory. “That there will always be room for me even if your family looks different now.”

I wrap my arms around her. “Youarefamily, Claire. Nothing will ever change that.”

We continue hugging and crying. With my head leaning against Claire’s shoulder, I keep staring at the photo and replaying her words.

…Even if your family looks different now.

It looks different, of course, far from the family I dreamed of as a little girl who never felt like she had her own. But while we lost Nate, we never lost the love he had for us.

Claire and I spend another few minutes together before she readies herself to leave, pulling me in for one last hug. It’s strong in the way only a mother’s hug can be—unwavering no matter what.

When I return to the kitchen, I pick up the photo from the table and take it into the living room, pulling a frame off one of the bookshelves that holds a shot of me and Lucas fishing many summers ago. I remove it with no remorse or sadness because it’s one of many memories I have I don’t need to see framed.

But the photo in my hand, it’s important, and not because it might be the only photo I have of the three of us—Lucas, Riley, and me.

It just happens to be the one where the story of us as a family began long before we ever knew it.

“Stay here. I’ll find something.”

I leave Lucas in the backyard and run into the house, opening the cabinets of the mudroom, scanning the neatly packed, labeled plastic containers. I see one markedValentine’s Day, but all that’s in there is sheets of red and pink card stock, some sort of stamp set, and a bunch of stickers.

“Hey, Harper.” I shut the box and put it back in place, sandwiched betweenSt. Patrick’s Day, which is filled with a bunch of green shit, andWinter, which seems to have snow gloves even though we live in Southern California. “Do you have string?”

“What did you say?”

I shut the cabinet and head into the empty kitchen before I duck my head through the doorway, seeing her on the couch.

“I need some…”

My words trail off when I catch sight of Harper’s face. As obvious as it is that she’s been crying, it’s more obvious that she’s trying to hide it.

I walk over as she’s rising from the couch with a smile on her face.

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