The Bodyguard (79)

The lady next to him went then. “I’m thankful for my new grandbaby.”

The next guy was thankful for Doc Stapleton’s moonshine.

And we went on down the line. Amadi was thankful for his wife and kids. Doc Stapleton was thankful for Connie Stapleton, and Connie was thankful for him right back. Glenn was thankful to have found an empty seat next to Kennedy Monroe, Kennedy Monroe was thankful to have reached twenty-four million followers on Instagram, and Doghouse and Kelly were nowhere to be seen—and I’ll bet they were both very thankful for that.

I always feel a little shy in situations like these. Every time I heard a new answer, I changed mine in my head.

At my turn, I just … hesitated.

Everybody watched me, and waited, while I tried to decide what to say.

Finally, Connie leaned forward. “Can’t you think of something you’re thankful for, Hannah?”

I met her eyes. “I can think of too much.”

The whole table laughed in relief at that.

“Just do them all, sweetheart,” Connie said.

So I did. I blame the moonshine. “I’m thankful to be here,” I said. “I’m thankful for the tire swing. I’m thankful for the Brazos River. I’m thankful for that turkey bow tie Doc’s wearing. I’m thankful for the time I’ve spent in this garden. I’m thankful for the honeybees. For the Stapleton record collection. For Clipper. I’m thankful for all the bougainvillea everywhere. I’m thankful to have seen what a real, loving family actually looks like. And I think…” I suddenly realized my voice was trembling a bit. I tried to cover by making it louder. “I think just because you can’t keep something doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. Nothing lasts forever. What matters is what we take with us. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to escape. I’ve spent too much time on the run from hard things. But now I wonder if escape is overrated. I think, now, I’m going to try thinking about what I can carry forward. What I can hold onto. Not just only always what I have to leave behind.”

The table was quiet for a few seconds after I stopped talking, and I felt a little squeeze of panic that maybe I had overshot “thoughtful” and landed, instead, on “crazytown.”

But just as I started to give up on myself, the whole table broke into applause.

And then Doc lifted his jar of moonshine and said, “To everything we’ve lost. And to what we hold onto.”

And the whole table raised their glasses, too.



* * *



AFTER DINNER, JACK and Hank built a fire in the firepit.

I was watching the flames when I noticed Jack, on the other side, sitting on one of the garden chairs, looking straight at me through the firelight.

I looked away. But when I looked back, he was patting the seat next to him, like an invitation.

And so I made my way around the fire, unsure what anything meant anymore, and I was just about to sit down beside him, when Kennedy Monroe slid in and took the seat first.

I stopped short.

“Is this the girl?” she asked Jack, as if I weren’t right there. “The one you made out with in the hospital?”

“We didn’t make out,” Jack said.

“Sure.”

“For real,” Jack said. “It was the angle. You know how that works.”

“I do,” Kennedy said, looking me over. “And, anyway,” she added, “now that I get a good look at her, I can see she’s very…” Kennedy Monroe drew the pause out so long that other people started to listen. She finally settled on, “Ordinary.”

I got it. No girlfriend would want to see suspicious photos like that all over the internet. No girlfriend would want another woman cradling her boyfriend’s head to her shoulder the way I had that night—even if it was for a good reason. Of course she would be none too pleased to see me here.

The same way I was not particularly thrilled to see her.

All to say, I jumped in to reassure her. “We definitely weren’t kissing in those photos.”

She honked out a really loud laugh—loud enough to get the attention of the whole crowd. Then she stood up—kind of unfurled herself—took a step closer to me, and said, “Yeah. Duh.”

“I was just on his security team,” I said. “We were just trying to keep him from being photographed.”

“Oh my God,” Kennedy said, her voice falsely friendly. “You’re hilarious. You really don’t need to tell me the two of you weren’t kissing.” At first her voice had a high, sweet tone that conveyed a vibe, like I trust my boyfriend. But then she dropped it like an octave and added, “That’s a given.”

Jack stood up. “Kennedy—”

“I mean…” She leaned toward Jack. “Just look at her.”

With that, she looked me over, from head to toe and back again—at a glacial pace that invited everybody else in the crowd to do the same.

I went positively stiff under the scrutiny. I found myself wondering if this was what rigor mortis felt like.

“I mean, come on,” she said. “Right?”

“Don’t get competitive, Kennedy,” Jack said, in a voice like We’ve talked about this.

“I’m not getting competitive,” Kennedy said. “The internet got competitive. Have you seen all the posts? All the comments?”