Page 40 of Hearts to Mend

“Shh.” I coax him to lower his voice. “Let’s not wake her and abuela up, okay?”

“Dee’s my friend.” He tries to whisper, but he’s bad at whispering.

I stare at Dee a moment, reminiscing as I tell him, “She’s my friend too. Did you know she’s been my best friend since I was about your age?”

His eyes go wide with shock. “Really?”

“Really.” This is magical news to him, and I love seeing that brightness in his eyes. So I elaborate. “I met her on the playground after I broke my arm. She signed my cast and signed her name so big, she covered up most of the other names. Considering her name just has three letters, I was pretty impressed. That’s when I knew she was going to be my best friend for life.”

“Is Dee still your best friend?” he asks in that poor attempt at whispering.

“Definitely. Some things never change.”

Matty considers for a moment. I always wonder what’s going on in his head when he gets quiet like this. I don’t remember ever being this thoughtful as a child, but my brilliant little boy’s mind is always working.

Finally, he says, “I don’t have a best friend for life.”

“Well, maybe you just haven’t met them yet. Or maybe you have, and you just don’t know they’re your best friend yet. Maybe your best friend for life signed your cast. Who signed their name the biggest?”

“Cassie, but she’s loud.”

“Loud?” I have to keep from laughing as my son says this far louder than necessary. “Is that a bad thing?”

He shrugs. “She talks a lot. I don’t ever get to talk.”

“Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret…”

He gives me those big owl eyes again. Matty loves secrets.

“Sometimes, it’s better to listen.”

He seems bored by that nugget of wisdom, so I give him another. “Also, Dee is the loudest person I’ve ever known, and she never stops talking.”

“I’ll have you know that I talk the perfect amount at the perfect volume,” Dee announces from her chair in the corner, jolting my mom awake. Narrowing those moody green eyes at me, Dee asserts, “And I will hear no arguments to the contrary.”

I grin at the room as mamá tries to blink her eyes open, and Dee stretches and yawns.

Excited to see his new best friend is awake—and has been listening to us for a while, apparently—Matty clamors down from my bed and hurries over to Dee.

She scoops him into a hug and sets him on her leg. “Hey, my man, how are you doing?” she asks with a big grin.

“I had a slumber party with the cats!” His words lisp through the gap where another tooth came out last week. It nearly cracks me up, and I wish I had recorded it. I‘m going to have to make sure he says it again before his grown-up tooth comes in.

“Well, that sounds super fun. What did you and the cats do?”

“Drew put up a tent in the living room, and he gave me a flashlight so I could tell scary stories to them.”

“Oh, yeah, were they scaredy cats?” Dee asks and tickles Matty.

He laughs. Mamá laughs. I laugh. And I fall in love with her again. How many times is this, that I’ve fallen in love with her in my life? A lot.

I can’t believe I was so stupid to leave her. To leave this. This small town had me feeling claustrophobic as a teen, and I’d wanted to get out and see the world. Turns out “the world” is made up of a lot of towns just like this one and a lot of towns that are a whole lot worse. But by the time I learned that, it was too late; the damage was done between Dee and me, and my life had taken a new path. Now, to see those paths intersect in that chair across the room gives me a sense of peace I haven’t known in a long time. And peace always makes me nervous.

CHAPTER 17

DEE

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