Don't Let Go(8)

“Not now,” she said. “That was a fast lunch. Becca already headed back?”
I lifted my head and focused on the cupcake, trying to unpeel the paper with fingers that had forgotten how to function.
“No,” I said, the word coming out raspy. I cleared my throat and tried to push his face from my vision.
“Jules? Is everything okay,” I heard Ruthie say.
I set the cupcake down and closed my eyes, shaking my head just slightly. The air felt thick and quiet around me, the ticking of a nearby clock being the only sound. He was back.
“Jules?” she asked again, her voice coming closer as the curiosity beckoned her.
With my eyes shut and my other senses heightened, I heard the wariness and concern in her words. I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead, blowing out a breath slowly. A tiny laugh bubbled up my throat that had nothing to do with anything being funny.
“Noah’s home.”



Chapter 3

Noah Ryan was my first love. He was my first everything. He was my first boyfriend, daring me to climb to the top of the monkey bars in the second grade and then kissing me square on the mouth when I did. He brought me special rocks he picked out and held my hand in the lunch line.
In later years, Noah would give me my first beer, first cigarette, and first real kiss during Truth or Dare. He was the first one to break my heart, then steal it again. He was the first boy to ever tell me he loved me, the first one I ever loved back, and the one I gave my first time to. We both did. Fumbling and awkward and passionate in the pouring rain one late April night, driven by young love and raging hormones, we learned what making love was.
And what making life was.
He wanted to marry me. In all his teenaged wisdom, he was ready to give up his lifelong dream of being a soldier and just stay there and be a family. My mother said no. My parents were devastated and mortified, of course. All the things you would rightly feel upon finding out your pure-as-the-driven-snow angel has given up the goods and gotten herself knocked up. They had loved Noah up until that point, but all that went out the window. My dad went lunatic crazy, his Cajun blood sending him to angry places he didn’t need to go, but the thought of his baby being violated sent him past reason. It didn’t matter how many times I used the words “consensual” and “in love”—I never got further than that. As soon as he’d hear the L word, he’d go off wanting to kill the boy that ruined his daughter.
That child would have been twenty-one years old when my dad died, and another year older when my mother followed him. In all those years they never spoke of it to me—the grandchild they passed up, arranging for the adoption to happen the second it was born, with the records sealed. Not even nine years later when Hayden and I finally had Becca. It was easier for them that way, I supposed, pretending it never happened. I couldn’t pretend that well. I had the memory of a son I’d never hold, and never know. And the image of Noah’s tortured expression as he let go of my hand to see his son and they wouldn’t let him. The sound of his pleading and the tears soaking his face.
I lost it for a while as well, but it was too late. The baby was gone. And then so was Noah.
And now here he was. Back in a town that had mostly forgotten. At a time I’d never forget. Stirring everything up again.
That was unfair, I thought, to think that. He wasn’t to blame for what his presence stirred up in me. And I wasn’t my parents. I did think about my baby boy on every holiday, every Mother’s Day, and every time I’d see a young man resembling Noah. Every first that Becca had, I’d wonder about his. I wondered about his life, if he was nearby or far away, and if he loved dark chocolate like I did or licorice like Becca. If he had an artist’s hand or a sniper’s eye. But I especially devoted January 29 to him in my heart. His birthday.
Why would Noah pick now to make his grand entrance? Was he even aware of it? Was summertime not good enough? Or any of the other eleven months?
I sat in the dark after Ruthie left for the evening, soaking up the quiet and thinking way too damn much. I knew I needed to go home, but even though it had been mine and Becca’s home for four years since I inherited it, today nothing felt like mine. Like I was going back to my mother’s house to be judged again. The logical part of me knew that was silly, but logic wasn’t playing a big part in my process.
The bookstore had been hers, too, but it was a business. The house just never felt like ours. I never felt it settle into our skin the way a home should. Growing up there, it had been structured and perfect and run with strict guidelines. Nana Mae always said her neck went stiff every time she walked in that house, and while she said it to be funny I knew what she meant.
The bookstore was the opposite, and maybe that was my mother’s way of releasing all her pent-up creativity. It was magical there. Free and flowing and musical. She always had delicious smelling candles burning, something baking in the back kitchen to put out for customers, and happy music playing. She’d leave the counter to go read a storybook to a child if they looked interested in one. She talked to customers and within minutes knew exactly the book they would like or needed. She was Miss Mary Dee to the world of Copper Falls. The store breathed through her, and I used to love to watch her work. My friends were always envious of me for having such an amazing mom. But they didn’t understand.
Miss Mary Dee was left at the store each night, and the mother I knew at home was someone else entirely. It was like she exhausted all her creativeness during the day and only had the rules of life left in her once she got home.