Page 65 of Ebbing Tides
“See, my problem is that the thought of you kicking someone’s ass kinda turns me on.” She rolled her eyes as she brought both hands to my chest. “Okay, a little more than kinda. A lot.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “The thought of me kicking the shit out of someone turns you on?”
“I can’t help it, okay? I have a thing for toxic, protective men.” There was a glint of humor in her sparkling eyes as she tipped her head back and stood on her toes. “Or do I have to remind you again about the wholelate husband in prison for murderthing?”
Her ability to joke around about things so heartbreaking and terrible was incredible. My sisters, Ricky, and Sid were so cautious around me, even a decade later. Afraid to bring up the past. Afraid they’d pick at that old, crusted scab and send me hurtling over the side of the bridge. But this woman … God, this rare, hurt, extraordinary woman …
She was everything I never knew I needed. A breath of air after being suffocated. A ray of sun after living in the dark. She was a feast of terrific joy after being famished, living on nothing but sadness for years. And all those things and everything else was what brought my lips down to hers, tethered by an invisible string until they met. Two broken, jagged pieces fitting together to create something smoothed out and perfect.Whole.
“Mommy’s kissing Max,” CJ whispered from behind us.
“Because Mommy loves Max,” Luke muttered, unimpressed.
I thought she’d pull away after being found by her kids. I thought she’d pretend like nothing had happened. But Melanie’s lips smiled against mine, and she clenched my shirt between tight fists.
It made me wonder if there was truth to what the kid had said, and I scolded myself for wondering at all.
***
Dad was still asleep when I was getting ready to leave. I’d expected as much; the morphine usually knocked him out. It wasn’t unlike Dad to go a night without eating—the cancer did that sometimes—but it didn’t stop me from feeling guilty as I pulled on my coat, about to head out the door.
I had texted my sisters to let them know, and Grace said she’d stop by in a bit to see if he was hungry.
“Maybe if he hadn’t been so upset,” I muttered to Melanie as we walked through the front door together, “he would’ve been willing to eat something.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” she said, keeping an eye on her kids as they ran down the porch steps toward the car. “You did ask—hey, Luke! Hands off your brother!”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I grumbled, locking the door behind me. “But if he doesn’t eat …”
Her hand was on the railing when she looked up at me for the briefest moment. The look in her eyes stopped the thought from finishing.
“You’ve been doing this with him for a long time, so I know I don’t have to tell you this. But I’ll say it anyway. Your job is to make himcomfortable, not to perform miracles.”
She was right; she didn’t need to tell me that. Still, hearing the words come from her mouth instead of listening to them run laps around my mind hit differently.
It made my reality hurt a little more. It made me feel a little more helpless.
I sighed and thought about every loss I’d suffered in my life. There were many. Friends at war. My wife and unborn son. My mother. But they’d all been sudden, unexpected tragedies nobody could’ve seen coming … with maybe the exception of my mother, I supposed.
The woman had been depressed for as long as I’d been alive, and I guessed maybe we all collectively should’ve been more worried about the possibility of her taking her own life, but … well, you sort of got used to someone else’s degree of misery when that was all you’d known from them. She hadn’t killed herself in all that time, so why would any of us have believed she would do it on a random Sunday in the middle of April?
But my point was, my father’s slow dance with death was the first I’d ever experienced. And, God, I had hated him with a terrible ferocity at different points in my life. Better men would’ve walked away and never turned back. But my desperation for his approval and pride had led me here, and now … no, I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want to watch him suffer as cancer ate away at his body at an excruciating pace. And although it was a much slower demise than any other I’d witnessed in my life, it was in ways more horrible, as I sat by on the sidelines and held his hand—metaphorically—as ithappened. In ways, I was leading him to it when my heart, my nature, longed to wrench him back.
Maybe then we could start over.
“I’m terrified of the day my parents die,” Melanie said quietly before opening the door for her boys to climb into her SUV. “But I have a great relationship with them. My mom … she’s like my best friend. I don’t even know what I would do if it wasn’t for her. Things with my dad are a little more complicated. He never understood what drew me to Luke or why I decided to marry him or have his kids when he was incarcerated. But he didn’t need to understand to support me. He just did. It’s going to kill me to lose them one day, and I think half the time, I live in a place of denial, like if I don’t acknowledge it, it won’t happen. But … to not have a good relationship with them, wishing that I did and knowing they were dying … I don’t even know how you deal with that.”
A humorless, forced chuckle tore through my throat as I nodded. “I don’t either.”
She leaned against the car door and furrowed her brow. “What was he talking about? When he said you’re not the only one who can’t tell the truth? Something along those lines.”
I shrugged, brushing it off. “Oh, that was probably nothing. He was already high on painkillers at that point. He didn’t know what he was saying.”
“Hmm,” she muttered, nodding softly, but not looking at all convinced.
She buckled the boys in and pressed a lingering kiss to my lips before climbing behind the wheel. Then, with a strange longing to remain frozen to the spot to watch as she drove away, I retreated to my truck reluctantly, getting in behind Lido.
We drove behind Melanie all the way to the cemetery, and something about knowing she was right there with her incredible kids—a whole carload of people I was growing to care a great deal about—flooded my chest with comforting warmth. I recalled times when I’d felt similarly with Laura and her girls. In the beginning of our rekindled relationship, during the short time we’d been married … I would watch the three of them as a feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on swept over me like a tidal wave, over and over, until the tumultuous storm in my heart was calmed.
