Everlasting - Christine Michelle Page 0,46
tight in my hand. It had to be the fiftieth time I’d read it. My woman had been gone for almost two months. We were closing in on Thanksgiving soon and Ever was refusing to celebrate with anyone. She said they weren’t doing holidays until Deck was back or they knew he was never coming back. One way or another, she was stuck in limbo. My mind kept whirling back to Lucy’s letter to me.
“…Love our children and grandchildren with all of you… Live your life and love our family and do it with all of you because you’ll be doing it for the both of us until we meet again.”
Those words, more than anything else snapped me out of my stupor. Luce was right. I needed to do more for our family. She would expect it, but more than that, they should know I was doing everything I could to make sure my grandbabies didn’t need surrogates. The girls had been trying to find men in their lives to replace the hole their father’s absence made. It was heartbreaking. One was clingier than she ever had been, the other was so withdrawn it had Ever talking about getting her into therapy. My grandbabies wouldn’t be needing the extra help much longer if I could manage it.
“I’ve mourned long enough, Luce. I’m getting my butt in gear and bringing our Deck back home where he belongs.” I could almost hear her answer back in her sassy, know-it-all way, “‘Bout time!”.
That it was. I stood and walked into my side of the closet. Lucy’s things had been cleared away by Anna one day while she set the kids to distracting me. I kept a few things, the girls kept some keepsakes, and we set aside things for the grandkids. For the most part, the rest of it was gone now. I still wanted to reach over to her side of the closet, the one that stayed empty now, and run my fingers through all of her things. At first, it had angered me. I never let it show when the girls were here, but I threw an ungodly fit the night I discovered the closet had been emptied out. Then I realized, it was for the best, because for the first time in over a month I hadn’t fallen asleep in the closet among her things. I’d used the bed.
I snapped out of my thoughts and started packing for my trip. Once I had everything I would need, I made sure anything important was left out where the girls could find it, just in case, and then I took off for Ever’s house.
She was already on the porch before I got my bike parked. “Dad?”
“Ever,” I called back.
“What’s going on?”
She no doubt noticed the packed saddlebags. “We can’t keep doing this thing we’ve been doing.”
“What thing is that?”
“The one where I’m lost in my grief and you’re losing hope.” I watched my daughter crumple before my eyes, and I made it to her in time to catch her as she drew in on herself. “I’ve got you. I’m heading out soon, Ev. I’m going to get your man and bring him back to you if it’s the last fucking thing I do. I’m not coming back without him this time, I promise you that.”
“Dad, please, don’t promise me that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“What if he’s not out there anymore and you can’t bring him back? We’ll need you here.”
I pulled her into a tight hug and held on the best I could for the both of us while we let her words simmer between us. “Okay, how about this, I’m going to do my best for the rest of this year to bring him back. If he’s not back here, or we don’t have a solid fucking lead by then, I’ll come back and we’ll regroup. Sound fair?”
“Daddy,” she whimpered into my chest.
“Yeah, baby girl?”
“Please, do your best to bring him home, but we need you back with him too.”
“I’ll do my best.”
We said our goodbyes, ‘I love you’, and I left to go repeat the same process with my youngest daughter too. I don’t know how, but it was as if she already knew what I was up to when I pulled up.
“I was wondering how long it would take,” Anna told me as I stepped into her house.
“What do you mean?”
“There was no way you were going to allow anything, mom’s passing included, keep you from letting Ever down again.”