The Resurrection of Wildflowers (Wildflower #2)(58)

I flick through the movies I have saved on my account, settling on a rom-com. If he’s truly about to fall asleep then I’d like to watch Matthew McConaughey’s Benjamin Barry get tortured by Kate Hudson’s Andy Anderson in How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Thayer doesn’t protest when it starts. I rub at his scalp with one hand, popping bites of popcorn into my mouth with the other. On the other end of the couch Winnie snoozes with Binx curled up against her.

It’s only fifteen minutes into the movie when I look down and find Thayer fast asleep. He works a lot of long days. He might be the owner and therefore the boss, but when it comes to his business he likes being as hands on as possible.

Not to mention he’s spent the past couple of days painting the room that’s now Seda’s, as well as putting together her furniture.

When she comes back in a few days she’ll have her very own princess room.

Thayer even went back to the store and got the bean bag chair I had previously convinced him to leave behind.

There are a total of three spare rooms upstairs, one is Seda’s now, and I guess, if Thayer manages his goal of getting me pregnant, another will be turned into a nursery.

The idea of watching Thayer rock a precious newborn in his arms at night has me feeling all kinds of warm and gooey.

Then almost immediately another feeling overcomes me, one of sadness and pain when I think about Forrest’s old room that Thayer did away with a long time ago. I asked him about it and he said he left it for a while but seeing it just became too painful so he packed most things away, sold the furniture, and moved some of Forrest’s more prized possessions like his favorite dinosaur and a toy car to different spots around the house. It says it makes him smile seeing those little pops of Forrest but that the whole room was just too much.

I look down at him, his face calm in his sleep.

The pain he’s had to live through must be unbearable.

He told me his therapist described grief as a ball in a box. When the pain is fresh that ball is large, constantly hitting the sides of the box, but then the ball grows smaller over time and hits the box less.

Right now, for me, that ball is pretty large. It’s why I’m avoiding going back over to my mom’s house.

I don’t want to touch her stuff. I don’t want to pack it away in storage or donate it or—

I wipe away my tears with the back of my hand.

When I do that, it’ll finally feel real.

Right now, I’m in this state of pretending she’s still in that house baking cupcakes or watching a movie or just sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal.

Grief is strange that way—how it tries to defy logic.

I saw her die. I went to the funeral. The grave.

I did all those things, and yet my mind is still holding onto the illogical hope that she’s in that house.

The movie continues to play, but I’m not paying attention anymore. When the end credits roll, I turn the TV off and gently wake Thayer. He takes one look at me and knows that the grief is consuming me. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He just wraps me in his arms, letting me grab onto him in a koala hold, and carries me upstairs to bed. He doesn’t let me go even then and I wonder if he thinks he can hold me tight enough that I don’t fall apart.





CHAPTER 38





SALEM





Two weeks pass before I’m ready to start clearing out the house. Georgia insisted on helping when I let her know I was finally taking on the job, but I was more persistent in getting her to let it go since she could go into labor at any time. With this being her third she’s more likely to come before her due date and she definitely doesn’t need to be doing anything strenuous despite her stubborn behavior.

“Where do you want to start?” Thayer asks, hands on his hips.

We stand on the front lawn since I haven’t made the first move to step inside yet. Thayer’s been keeping the lawn immaculate so at least we don’t have that worry.

I open and close my mouth, no words willing to come out.

Thayer doesn’t let my silence deter him.

“Maybe we should go around and mark the bigger furniture items with different colored tape. What you want to keep, donate, and trash. That might make it easier with those things.”

I nod steadily, willing my tears not to fall. It’s just a house. It’s just things. So why is this so emotional?

“That’s a good idea.”

“All right.” He nods to himself. “You wait here, and I’ll grab tape from my truck.”

I wrinkle my nose. “You keep tape in your truck?”

“I keep lots of things in my truck.”

While he gets the tape, I wander closer to the side door. It feels easier to go through there than the front door. That puts me too close to the living room and I’m not ready to tackle that.

Thayer returns, finding me fumbling with my keys by the door.

He swipes them from me, juggling three different rolls of tape in colors of yellow, blue, and green. “Which is it?”

“That one.” I point to the one with the white daisy rubber holder on the end.

He slips it easily into the lock and turns it. The door squeaks loudly, in desperate need of some WD-40 on the hinges—another thing to add to the to-do list—and steps inside first.