Page 68 of The Voices are Back

“Cool.” Folsom nodded. “Goodbye, Aodhan. Be gentle with her.”

I tilted my head and watched as a mirthful gleam entered her eyes.

I wasn’t quite sure that she meant “be gentle with her” in the “take care of her soul, it’s gentle” kind of way. More like a “if you decide to fuck her brains out, be gentle with her because she was just strangled” kind of way.

“I’ll do that,” I said as I watched her walk away to a moped that I hadn’t seen parked down the street until now.

It was old, too.

So old, in fact, that there wasn’t a single speck of paint on it that wasn’t flecked off and showing primer beneath.

Only when she was successfully on her way did I turn to face Danyetta.

“I didn’t mean to go blurting all that out today,” she admitted to me. “But when I got started, I just felt like she needed to know it all.” She grimaced. “I lay there in bed last night, thinking about all the things. And I decided that as a woman, I would want to know the guy that I’ve been in love with half my life didn’t actually, in fact, sleep with another woman during the middle of him supposedly being in love with me.”

I grimaced.

When she put it that way, it did sound bad.

I wouldn’t have been very happy to think that, either.

Just now, it was absolutely killing me to think that she’d moved on.

If she had, I wouldn’t have blamed her. I mean, my God. I’d pushed her away, supposedly moved on, and had a kid with someone else. Then, I’d gone to prison. If that didn’t have bad news written all over it, I didn’t know what did.

“Move on with your life, Aodhan,” she said as she started moving toward her own car. The one that I’d seen and immediately had an apoplectic fit to see when I’d arrived. Yeti always moved to the beat of her own drum. There’d been no telling what I’d walk in on. “Allow yourself to be happy. If she offers you the chance, I want you to hold on and never let go.”

Her words made me remember what Bowie said as I’d dropped him off today.

“Wait,” I called as she was almost to her car.

She turned around.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Bowie about Morrigan last night?” I asked.

She nodded. “I wanted him to know that I was okay with the move. That, even though we weren’t together anymore, we’d still be a family. I showed him and Lolo a picture of you and Morrigan when y’all were young.”

I swallowed hard. “He’s really unhappy about it.”

“Funny thing, Aodhan,” she called out as she opened her car door. “Kids don’t have a requirement to be happy. The law states we have to take care of them. Such as feed them, give them a roof over their head, and make sure they’re safe. It says nothing at all about happiness.”

Then she got into her car, closed the door, and backed out of my driveway.

I waited until she was gone, too. Then realized what I was doing.

Stalling.

I walked into my house, closed and locked the door behind me, then found Morrigan watching me from the stool she’d started occupying when Sunny had walked into the house.

“I told myself it didn’t matter,” she said softly, her eyes full of vulnerability. “But it did. It does. Knowing that you didn’t move on…that matters to me. It matters so much that I’m having a hard time breathing right now.”

I swallowed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I ever unintentionally made you think that about me.”

I was going to tell her if I ever saw her again. But she hadn’t called.

Goddammit, she hadn’t called!

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