Page 44 of The Last One You Loved
Performed by Keith Urban
Written by Brown / Urban
After breakfast at the café,I’d headed to the grocery store for a few supplies and then back to the ranch because I didn’t know where else to go. I was still feeling bruised from memories I’d stirred up the day before in my search for Maddox around town—just like every encounter with Maddox himself had left me feeling. But when I got back into the apartment, it felt stifling. I didn’t even have myBuffyDVDs to keep me from dwelling on the million things in my life I could have done differently.
I needed escape. I needed air. The sunshine outside the windows was deceptive, making the day look warm when I knew it was still frigid and damp. But my heart suddenly tugged at the thought of exploring the fields and hollows that had once felt like a saving grace to me.
I put on the only pair of tennis shoes I’d brought with me and pulled on a jacket more than warm enough for California’s winters but would barely stand up to the winters in Willow Creek. Then, I headed out, walking a path I used to know like the back of my hand.
Once upon a time, I’d crossed the fields on horseback with Maddox at my side. Sweet moments of escape when Mama was too drunk to realize I’d asked to leave or when she couldn’t be found to ask. Moments that lasted until she rang the Hatley home and demanded I be returned to her.
I pushed Mama from my mind and just let myself take in the wet fields, endless skies, and the mix of oak, willow, and magnolia trees sprouting up everywhere as if they were weeds. I crossed the back pasture, finding the creek bubbling slowly before the winter rains got a chance to turn it into a rushing river. Come January, I wouldn’t be able to make my way across it without the use of a horse to jump it.
I was out of breath by the time I reached the hidden hollow Maddox and I had called our own. It had been made when part of the hill had slid away, baring the roots of the ancient oak trees surrounding the depression on three sides and making them look like a tangled warren of caves. As kids, we’d crawled over and through the roots, hiding in the dark recesses that had felt strangely safe. As if the trees’ giant-sized fingers and hands were holding us in an embrace. The quiet in the cool, damp spaces was only broken by the creek drifting along the last side of the hollow as a natural barrier.
In the early days, we’d played cops and robbers and pirates. As we’d gotten older, we’d brought picnic lunches and pretended to fish while talking about our futures?my dream of being a doctor and his dream of being in law enforcement.
Aching nostalgia filled my chest.
I sat on one of the old roots, closed my eyes, and lifted my face to the sun as it attempted to warm the earth and chase away the vestiges of the storm. The snow was all gone, but the trees and grass were still dripping, and the rocks were still slick. Every inhale brought the dampness of the earth into my lungs.
My phone buzzed, and when I reached inside to pull it out, dread filled me as yet another unknown number popped up. A new one seemed to arrive almost as quickly as I blocked the last.
1-530-555-8215: You little bitch. Where are you? Come back and fix this.
At the hospital, layered in my white coat with my stethoscope, I’d finally felt like I was something. Someone. An actual valid human being. One who could make a difference. One who wasn’t a burden but who could lighten other people’s loads by healing their loved ones.
Now, I might have to start over completely—as nothing again.
I tightened my jaw and forced back the tears.
I didn’t want to cry. Mama may have been wrong about a lot of things, but she’d been right when she said tears wouldn’t change anything. They wouldn’t miraculously make everything better.
I turned to look deeper into the web of roots, wondering if my jar was still there. The last year, before I’d left for college, I’d read an article about how if you wrote all your nightmares down and then buried them, they’d leave you. So, I’d done just that. Now, I searched between the snarled wood and found the place where I’d buried it. I didn’t have anything to dig it up with, and I didn’t really want to. It was better to keep those nightmares in the ground. Instead, I put my hand on the dirt and whispered to my teenage self, “We almost made it, kid.”
Then, I turned and headed back the way I’d come.
I was wet and cold by the time I got back to the apartment. I cleaned up, put on a warm sweater and jeans, and was staring at the little fridge, eyeing the food I’d bought, when the phone on the wall rang. The bright-yellow phone with its push buttons brought a smile to my lips. When was the last time I’d seen a landline?
I wasn’t sure I should answer it because it wasn’t my home, but when it stopped and then started again, I finally picked it up.
“Hello?”
“McKenna! It’s Eva.”
“Hey.”
“So…sweetheart, we have a little problem.”
Of course there was. I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of my life, but I couldn’t. I really was the bad omen Mama had called me.
“Come up to the house for linner, and we’ll talk.”
I chuckled, memories assaulting me of the first time I’d heard Maddox’s family talk about linner. A late lunch or early dinner that often occurred on the Hatley ranch on Sundays when the days were more relaxed, and everyone was determined to enjoy the last few hours of the weekend before it faded away.
“You don’t need to feed me, Eva,” I said.
“The entire gang is here. One more person won’t make any difference. Besides, I’m used to cooking for a mess of people these days when the ranch is full-up,” she insisted.
