Page 61 of Tides That Bind

It’s everything my childhood was not.

But the truth is, with Nate gone and me in the last stages of pregnancy, my life is nothing like I wish it was. Because if that were the case, Nate never would’ve been deployed. He’d be home for dinner every night. He’d be the one building this crib. Not Riley.

And he’d be the one gently saying my name, telling medon’t worry, you’re okaywhen I suck in a deep breath as another contraction rips through me, wrapping around my entire middle.

But right now, all I have is Riley.

Lucas stirswhen I lean over, unclipping his seatbelt. I gently hush him. “Shh.”

“I got him.”

Looking over my shoulder, I find Riley approaching his Jeep I’ve been driving all day. I don’t know if it’s the mental exhaustion of everything that happened with Silas earlier, or the adrenaline that followed when I picked up Lucas, surprising him with dinner at the diner and a trip to the arcade, but I don’t have the energy to say no to Riley like I did this morning.

I let him lift Lucas. “You can just put him in bed,” I tell Riley. It’s well after nine and after a jam-packed day, I don’t even want to wake him to change into pajamas or brush his teeth.

Beyond the sound of Riley’s footsteps on the stairs, the house is quiet—eerily quiet. There’s no sliding of paws on the hardwood floors, or the scraping of Tides’s water bowl across the tile in the kitchen.

“He’s a dog, Harper. A dog,” I whisper harshly to myself. “Who am I even talking to?”

Where is the Harper who didn’t even like animals? The one who went out and bought an insanely expensive robotic vacuum to keep up with the soft tufts of shed hair, the dirt Tides trackedin? The one who nagged Nate to wipe Tides’s paws every time he came into the house?

“You alright?”

Who is this Harper, I wonder,cryingover a dog I never wanted but now cannot imagine living a day without?

I wipe my face angrily, not interested in taking one step forward with Riley only to jog all the way back to where we started. And I’m tired, tired of crying, tired of all the yearning for what I’ve lost.

“I’m fine.”

Out of the corner of my eye I watch Riley pull his lip between his teeth before he sighs and moves to the fridge. He opens two beers and hands me one.

“Come out back.” Riley’s loose knot capturing his hair drops when he brings the bottle to his lips, tilting his head back.

With shuffling feet, I follow Riley out to the porch where he sits on the swing.

In the dark of the night, the weather has cooled off. But between us, the air is just as thick as it was this morning.

And while I don’t have it in me to thin it out, Riley does.

“It was me. During Nate’s deployment, I sent the flowers.”

I think about the way my heart skipped a beat one day a week each day for all of Nate’s deployment and how hard that skip hiccuped in my chest when I found the bouquets on the very table before me two months after he died. For a second I found it ironic that Nate had some contingency plan all along. After all, I was always the planner in the marriage.

I could never plan for something like this. I couldn’t even dream of it.

But Riley could.

“And yeah, obviously I’ve been bringing them to the house now.”

The condensation from the beer makes the glass slide in my hand, but I grip it tighter. “Did he ask you to do that?” My heart aches and my voice cracks. “In the car?”

There’s so much I wonder about the accident. Was Nate awake? Did he try to get out with Riley? I’m limited to the police report and autopsy, which only tells me so much. But those details? The nearly amputated leg, the death by drowning. The idea of Nate in such pain, in agony, is too much for me to get past to think about anything else.

Like if he said something to Riley.

If he called out for me.

My heart tightens and I brush another tear from my face.

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