“Good boy,” I murmured and rubbed him behind the ears. He finished the cheese, then bounded off when Justin whistled.
With a sigh, I stopped, turned, and headed for the lake. I needed to work through this frustration before I saw Mark again. Mark and I had been working together for years now. This sort of annoying back-and-forth wasn't new to either of us. Why I'd expected him to go through a cost-analysis report with me before he'd even had coffee, I had no idea.
It likely meant something else was bothering me, and if I didn't sort it out, I'd keep being annoyed with Mark and that wasn't fair. Mark was Mark. I accepted that.
Because heaven help us all, we lived together now.
The lake rippled quietly at my feet as I sat on the edge of the pier and let my toes dangle in the water. The cool water was a soft kiss on the tips of my skin. A bright blue sky unfurled overhead, and the gentle whisper of a breeze wafted by. It smelled like the gentle decay of leaves, and crisp air, and it made me think of pumpkins.
While my toes played with the water, my mind jumped back to the conversation at the restaurant when I'd panicked about my parents. I hadn't been in the car with them when they died. They were on their way home from a weekend together, celebrating their tenth anniversary.
It was the happiest they'd ever been, Grandma had always said.
Then tragedy struck—and wasn't that just like life? You finally find a happy spot, but forget that black ice always lingers beneath happy spots. So the moment you focus too much on feeling good—BAM.
Happy feeling over.
The chill that wrapped around my heart told me something lay there. I put a hand on my chest, as if I could warm my heart back up. Unable to bear the lurking question a moment longer, I grabbed my new phone, dialed grandma, and pressed the speaker to my ear. She answered two rings later.
“Hello?”
Her bright voice brought tears to my eyes. “Hey! It's me. Sorry, I had to buy a new phone with a new number.”
“You're crying.”
I laughed, but it was thick. “I said like fifteen words!”
“And I know you better than anyone on this planet. What's wrong?”
A big, fat tear plopped down my cheek and splashed my jeans. My throat tied together, unable to work for a moment. So much! I wanted to say. Everything has fallen apart. I'm in a world I don't understand anymore and I'm afraid for my life. I think I feel something for a guy that's only supposed to be a friend, but I don't know what that feeling is.
She waited patiently until I was finally able to croak out, “Did my parents struggle before they died?”
If the question startled her, she gave no sign. “What do you mean?”
“You told me that before they died they were so happy. That it was the best their life together had ever been. I just . . . I was thinking about them today and remembered what you said. I guess I just wanted to know what it meant.”
Two empty mom-and-dad-sized holes had always existed in my heart. Over time, they ached less. I didn't think about my parents much, except at the big moments. Getting my period. Prom. High school graduation. College graduation. The moments when I wanted them to be proud of me or comfort me or explain the world to me. While I missed what they would have brought to my life, I didn't actively mourn them anymore. I'd been so young, time had forced me to move on.
But fear lingered within me still.
“Of course they struggled. Your Mom had a hard time getting pregnant before and after having you, so that put a lot of pressure on the marriage. But it seemed like a few months before their death, she had come to terms with it more. Had accepted that they wouldn't have more kids and threw herself into loving you. It was the brightest I'd seen them together.”
The momentary storm of tears passed. I wiped them off my cheeks. Grandma had said the same things before years ago, which was probably the last time we'd really spoken about them. But such a truth hadn't affected me the way it did now. Hadn't tied me up in knots.
“Why?” she asked softly.
I blinked, my gaze on the far side of the lake where a thick band of brushes and trees occluded the bank. Gentle ripples moved across the top of the water. My toes had turned cold, so I dragged them out and pulled my knees to my chest, then wrapped my free arm around them.
“I had a moment today.”
“A moment?”
Robotically, I relayed what happened with Mark, careful not to tell her where I was. I played Mark off as a friend, but felt as if she could still hear the truth in my words. The slowly dawning realization that I kept mentally pushing aside to deal with later. Repeating what I felt in that storm helped pull the thoughts out of my head so I could make sense of them again.
“I can't help but think I've been living quietly because I'm afraid to be happy.” I sighed, my breath heavy. “Like . . . if I allow myself to be happy, I'll die, just like them.”
The words sounded ridiculous outside my brain but were terrifying inside it. Grandma didn't laugh, and I didn't pull them back.
Nonsensical or not, they were exactly how I felt.
Happiness meant misery.
“Oh.” She breathed the word, as if it were delicate glass. With it came a new tone of understanding. “You are afraid to be happy. You're right. I can see it.”
I nodded, then realized that was absurd because she couldn't see it. Tears streamed down my cheeks again and I wiped
