Page 112 of Between Never and Forever
“She died.”
“When?”
“Two years, five months, two weeks and three days.”
She rattles it off, right down to the day, and everything in my chest hurts for her. For Levi. This poor girl lost her mother, and she was only, what, five?
The first time she got sick, she’d said. I glance back at the wedding portrait.
Brynn was five years old when her mother died of cancer, and she’d lived every year before that with the stress of the disease. I can’t even imagine how something like that would color a childhood. How it could affect development. The way Brynn carries herself, so grown-up and serious, no longer amuses me. It pains me. Even her spark of mischievous humor makes me feel like crying.
This girl had to grow up way too quickly.
Not for the first time, I feel a connection to Brynnlee so powerful that it makes me flinch. My hands clench to fight off the desire to reach for her and pull her in for a hug. To brush her hair back and look into her eyes—eyes just like her mother’s—and tell her,I get it. I understand.
I make up my mind to end the conversation here, to stop putting her through this, when she continues.
“Mom had osteosarcoma. That’s a type of bone cancer. It’s supposed to have a 74% survival rate, but when it came back, it was already everywhere. It was fast.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry for your loss? That really sucks? Nothing feels like enough. I’m watching her, trying to pull something worth saying out of my head, when footsteps sound in the hall just outside the dining room, and I know who I will see even before his body graces the doorway.
“Brynnlee, you were told to stay out of the house during filming.”
Brynn and I turn to face him at the same time. He’s speaking to her, but his eyes are hard and set on me.
“Sorry, Daddy. Sav and I did guitar lessons in the music room.”
I watch Levi’s jaw tense and his eyes flare just slightly. To anyone else, he’d appear still as stone, but even after all these years, I can still read him.
He doesn’t want me in that room.
He doesn’t want me in this part of the house at all.
He probably doesn’t want me to even know it belonged to him, and he definitely doesn’t want me gawking awkwardly at his wedding portrait.
Any other day, in any other moment, I’d toe the line. Test the boundaries. I’d nudge and nudge just to see how far I could push him. But right now, with how off balance I feel, I just can’t do it. I still need to do a half day of filming, and right now, I feel like I might throw up.
I want answers. Iwillget them.
But right now, I need to leave it alone.
I tear my eyes off Levi and bring them back to Brynn with a smile.
“Thanks for showing me around, Boss. Don’t forget to practice, and I will see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” she says quietly, just a small hint of a secret smile. She’s definitely expecting to get in trouble when I leave, but she’s not worried. I turn to Levi.
“Let’s just plan on lunchtime lessons for the next week.”
He jerks a single nod, but says nothing, so I wave awkwardly with the hand not holding my Yamaha, then turn and see myself out the front door.
This time, when I step off the porch, I head straight for the large tree with the rope swing.I peer up into the canopy of leaves, noting the thick, sturdy branch where the rope is tied. I turn to study the seat of the swing. It’s just a plain, worn piece of wood. The ropes attached on either side have plastic guards the size of an adult hand right where you’d expect someone to grip when swinging. I reach out and run my fingers over one of them.
I imagine Brynn and Julianna on this swing together, like in the photo, but in action, like a home video. They’re laughing and smiling with Levi watching happily from the porch. I have the strangest urge to sit on the swing, but I resist.
Instead, I take a step backward. Then another. I take one last look up into the canopy, then I turn around and walk back to my trailer.
27
