Our Finest Hour (The Time #1)(3)

“Mommy, will you please get me yogurt-covered-raisins?” I knew she was going to the store. She’d told me ten minutes ago when she’d gone to change her clothes.

She never responded. She just kept walking.

Her elbow jutted out, bent at an angle on the side of her body, and for years I would see that in my dreams. At eight I didn’t understand why it was bent that way, but eventually I figured it out. She was covering her mouth.

My heart told me it was to keep her sob inside, because even she knew what she was doing was going to damage me forever. My brain told me it was to keep her from telling me what she was doing, knowing I would find out soon enough.

I found the piece of paper first. Only five words written.

I can’t do this anymore.

Can’t do what? I wondered.

The longer she stayed gone, the more I understood.

I can’t be a wife.

I can’t be a mother.

I can’t make myself want this life.

I can’t make myself love our daughter.

I can’t do this anymore.

My dad threw away her note, but I grabbed it from the trash when he wasn't looking. For three years I studied the familiar handwriting, the scrawl matching the loving sentiments she'd written in my birthday cards. Words penned by the same hand, but the message vastly different.





Owen and I used to see each other all the time.

Meet me for a kiss before my afternoon class?

I have a twenty-five-minute break at ten. Let’s grab coffee.

Can I come over after your last class?

But now it’s like he has vanished. I’ve been waiting to run into him, a moment I assumed inevitable, but it still hasn’t come.

One week went by. Then two. I didn’t know Owen was a magician, skilled in disappearing acts.

But I did know a person could live with a broken heart, and that’s what I was doing. Waiting for the pieces to go back together, to drift towards one another and form a makeshift semblance of what they had been before.

I thought about calling my dad, but our relationship wasn’t really prepared for phone calls about boys. He’s always provided the basics for me, the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but warm fuzzies? Not so much. He tried, I think, to give me a mom. He went on dates, and sometimes he’d go on more than a few with the same woman and bring her home to meet me. After a while, I felt like the lost baby bird in the Dr. Seuss book, Are You My Mother?

Eventually he quit trying. Then it was just us, two planets orbiting each other, not certain how to break the orbit and collide. Once I could drive, I did all the grocery shopping. Prepared meals, cleaned the house. When there’s a hole, it’s natural for whatever is left around it to slide toward the crater, to fill the space. That's what we did, slowly. Day by day, year by year, we slid into the void, until we became a fully-functioning, two person unit.

Right now Dad and I are both living on our own. I see him on Sundays, unless he’s gone hunting. And we’re not robots anymore. We’re friends. Partners. Two people felled by the same foe.

Living with Britt is the opposite of living with my dad. She’s talkative, secure, and well-adjusted. She hails from a happy home with a mom and a dad, a sister and a dog and a two-car garage. When I picture her house, I add a white picket fence around the green lawn, even though I know it doesn’t have one. I’m not jealous of Britt. I’m happy my best friend had a glorious childhood with a mother who showered her in snuggles and love. I just wish I’d had the same.

And Britt, my beyond-lucky best friend, has decreed that today is the day I stop thinking about Owen. She has just burst into my room with her freshly highlighted blond bob cocooning her face, eyes bright.

“I’m taking you somewhere tonight, and you’re not saying no. I’ll drag you bound and gagged if I have to.”

I point toward my window, where the driving rain pelts the glass and runs down in rivulets.

She crosses her arms. “It’s supposed to let up soon. Besides, you won’t melt if you get wet. Actually, you'll dry first. Can't keep Arizona heat behind the clouds for long."

I want to keep arguing with her, but I don’t have the heart. Britt is used to getting her way. And she’s never had a guy dump her. Britt dates but doesn’t get involved. It’s her thing.

Because I love her, and because her intentions are good, I get ready like she asked me to.

Under a shared umbrella, we walk to the street of bars near our apartment. It isn’t until she pulls me to the last in the row that I balk.

I point to the neon sign with the cowboy on a bull. “Rodeo Mike’s?”

Britt rolls her eyes. “There’s no way Owen will show up here. That’s why I chose it. It’s not his scene.”

She’s right. I guess tonight this is our scene. Britt invited the three girls who live in the apartment below us, and they’ve texted that they’re already here. Jasmine, Maize, and Erin never say no to a bar. Or a good time. Or a party. Or much of anything, really.

The bar is loud and bright. I take three steps inside and turn around. This was a mistake. I can’t take the band with its upbeat music, the couples on the wooden dance floor twisting and turning. Britt was wrong. What I needed tonight was something dark and brooding, like a martini bar where you could barely see a hand in front of your face.