“I wanted you to hear it from me. Didn’t come here to fight with you.”
“Well, that’s too fucking bad, isn’t it, Sebastian? You don’t get to decide how I feel about this. You don’t get to tell me I can’t be hurt and mad and just …” She made a frustrated, furious noise. “I just can’t believe you.”
“I’m not telling you how to feel. I just don’t want to fight. We’ve done enough of that to last us.”
“You don’t want to fight?” she scoffed. “Of course you don’t. You never do anything wrong, do you? It’s just crazy Marnie, acting like a psycho and making up problems where there aren’t any. No, you handle everything just right—it’s everybody else who’s wrong.”
“If you think there’s a right and wrong here, you’re not listening. Nothing about this is black and white. None of it’s easy. Nobody walks away from what we’ve been through feeling good about it, Marnie. And I don’t blame you for what happened with us, I blame us. Me more than you, for the record.” I raked my hand through my hair. “What you’ve been through has to be hard enough without this.”
“You have no idea,” she said, her voice shaking. “I thought I’d been through the worst of it, and now you’re telling me you have a child. If you think you even have a sliver of understanding for how I feel, think again.” Before I could speak, she stood. “You need to leave. Right now.”
I nodded. Stood. Descended the porch stairs. Stopped to look back.
“I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m sorry, Marnie.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t mean much.”
With a hard swallow, deep frustration, and an untenable amount of guilt, I walked away from her, just like I always did.
12
Catchin’ On Fast
PRESLEY
“Daddy!”
My heart stopped, just like it did every time Priscilla said that word. I looked up at the threshold of the shed that afternoon to find Sebastian smiling down at her as she charged him with Elvis—our crazy dog—on her heels. But behind his eyes was the same strange surprise and hope I felt on hearing that word out of our daughter’s mouth.
Our daughter.
That did it too.
He knelt and scooped her up. “Hey, Cilla. Whatcha doin’?”
“Making candles with Mommy.” She beamed up at him. “Want to make candles too?”
“I don’t know how. Will you teach me?”
She nodded emphatically before turning to me. “Look, Daddy’s here!”
“I can see that,” I said on a laugh.
Sebastian stepped into me before remembering himself. God, I wished he could have kissed me.
“Hey,” he said before standing Priscilla up on a stool across from me.
“Hey,” I echoed with a smile.
Once upon a time, this shed was used for canning, but had been abandoned for so long that we’d had a bit of work to do before I could work in here. But with a little elbow grease, we’d turned it into a virtual apothecary of goodies, from bottled scents to bundles of drying herbs and flowers to massive jars of raw honeycomb for wax lined up on the shelves. The windows weren’t big, but there were enough of them that the interior was well lit, and I’d opened them to encourage a cross breeze. Below the planked wooden floor was a storage cellar where I could cure candles and store wax without them melting in the heat. With the addition of a compact propane stove, I had everything I needed.
I would have promised my cousins my first born for all they’d done for us, but I was a little attached to Priscilla.
“So what’s all this?” he asked, looking over the ancient, counter-height table in the middle of the room which, at the moment, was covered in supplies.
Before I could answer, Priscilla straightened up and said, “These is the wicks and those is the scissors, and that is the pot with the waxes. Poppy brought us the beeswaxes, see?” She hinged and put her arms around one of the big jars, grunting with effort as she tried to pick it up.
Laughing, Sebastian intervened, sliding the jar closer so he could peer inside. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
She made a face at him. “I can carry it, Daddy.”
“I bet you can. You’re pretty strong. Show me your muscles.”
Her face screwed up in concentration as she made the international sign for guns out, flexing her skinny little arm.
Sebastian tested its density with his thumb and forefinger and whistled. “Do you work out?”
She giggled. “No, silly. I eat my broccoli.” The word sounded more like bwoc-o-wee than its