River's End (River's End Series, #1)(58)

It depressed her to realize what a pathetic, disappointing slacker she was in comparison to someone like Jack.

She glanced at Ben and saw tears streaming over his face. He wiped them with his knuckles, pressing hard into the sockets of his eyes. He obviously didn’t want to cry. Erin’s heart twisted for him. The poor kid. He remembered what Charlie never knew.

Erin itched to put her hand on Ben’s shoulder, but she knew that he was furiously scrubbing his tears so that she didn’t see them. The last thing she should do is acknowledge them. Jack seemed to get that too and walked over towards Ben. He raised an arm and wrapped it around his son’s shoulders. Ben’s head was within inches of Jack, but neither man said anything. Charlie didn’t join them, and only held more tightly onto Erin’s hand. She squeezed it back.

Finally, Ben hung his head as he nodded to something Jack said to him quietly. Then Ben straightened up, and smiled abashedly at her. His eyes were red-rimmed. She ached to reassure Ben not to be shy or embarrassed. She found him much sweeter, kinder, heart-wrenching, and more impressive for grieving over his mother than if he merely stood there, uncaring, and displaying raw teenage ambivalence.

Ben glanced at Charlie. “Hey. Wanna go pitch some rocks in?”

Charlie nodded eagerly and they started off together through the cemetery, skirting around the fence and down towards the river. Erin watched them leave, glad they were getting space from all this, but also intensely aware she was now all alone with Jack at his family’s cemetery. It wasn’t just odd, it was wrong.

“I should have realized you’d come here today. I… well, to be honest, I wasn’t thinking how hard this day would be on you guys too.”

Jack looked down at the grave in front of him. “Today sucks. But we’ve had a few years to practice. It’s pretty fresh for you. It’ll get easier next year.”

She didn’t expect his kind understanding. “You’re not mad I came here?”

He glanced at her. “I find it curious you came, but no; why would I be mad?”

“I wish I could visit my mother today.”

“Where is she?”

“Cremated. I spread her ashes at one of her favorite beaches along Puget Sound in Seattle.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. No one lasted very long in my mother’s life. She drove everyone away. Even Chance.”

“Except for you.”

She smiled. “Yes, well I had to have her in order to navigate my life. So I never had any choice.”

“You miss her?”

She glanced off towards the meadow to her right, which disappeared into brown, rolling mountains that rose into the pixie blue sky. “I wish it were that simple. Or that I merely loved her and missed her. I’m angry. She’s not supposed to be dead. She chose to be. How do you grieve for someone who deliberately causes you so much pain?”

“I don’t know. How do you leave your only son because you don’t like where you live?”

She jerked her head towards Jack. “What do you mean?”

He nodded towards his parents’ grave. “That isn’t my mother. My mother isn’t dead. She left me and my father when I was two years old. My dad remarried Donna when I was four. She was my mother in every sense of the word.”

Erin’s mouth opened. “I had no idea. So your brothers…”

“Are my half-brothers.”

“Holy shit,” she said before blushing at her own language. “Where is she now?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. She hated the ranch. She met my father one summer when she was staying in Pattinson. She went to the rodeo there and met my dad. They were married too quickly. It was one big adventure to her at first. She grew up in Spokane, and her family had money; and she wasn’t used to this kind of life. Eventually, reality set in and she hated it here. It was too quiet, too rural, too backwoodsy. My dad worked long hours…”

“Like you do?”

He paused and then nodded. “Yeah, like I do. Anyway, she left.”

“You never heard from her again?”

“No. In some ways, I don’t blame her. This place, and this lifestyle, isn’t something most people can marry into. You gotta be born into it, and raised in it. If not, most people can’t handle it, and eventually leave.”

“My mother was mentally ill, depressed, and half the time, stoned out on drugs or scripts. She wasn’t exactly the ideal example of motherly love and affection. But she was all I had. And now that Chance has completely deserted me, I’m really alone. All alone and it scares the shit out of me. If I died, who would even care?”

Shaking her head, she sat down. Why did she say that to Jack? He didn’t want to hear her problems or phobias. He couldn’t understand what it was like to have no home or enduring ties, since for his entire life, he’d had far too many.

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. There’s not one family member. My mom never stayed in one place long enough for there to be family friends. I know you wouldn’t be glad if I died, but really, Jack, you’d only feel sorry because you’re a decent person, and wouldn’t want anyone to die. But as for me, and who I am, there isn’t a soul alive who would miss me, grieve for me, or mourn me.”

Jack sat down next to her and she looked up at him in surprise before scooting to the left as far as she could. His knees rose up, as the bench was too low for him. Leaning an arm on one knee, he stared out over the river.