Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
“No, you’re right. I just had to tear myself away because it was such a great night.”
He pulls the car into the drive of the contemporary house in the heart of Skyland I bought for Mama, Aunt Geneva, She-she, and me. It’s more space than we need, but I love the extra room so we aren’t always on top of each other. There are also enough bedrooms that the nurse who comes in a few times a week has her own.
“Where’s She-she?” Maverick asks, glancing around the empty foyer.
“Probably upstairs asleep at the foot of my bed. Prissy self.”
He chuckles and slips his arms around my waist. “I don’t mind having you to myself for a few minutes without her yapping at our heels and demanding all your attention.”
“Jealous?” I whisper, linking my arms behind his neck.
“Always.” He bends and drops a kiss on my lips. “Let’s go out back.”
He walks us to the kitchen and toward the door leading to Mama’s garden.
“You want to go out here?” I frown, but don’t stop his progress. “At midnight?”
“I want to see how all our hard work in the garden is paying off.”
He slants a grin over one shoulder, and I melt. Not just under the heat of his smile, but from the warmth of memory. Him out back helping my mother plant her “prize” ranunculus in the backyard where I grew up and then again here when Mama moved to Skyland. The transition hasn’t been perfect or without its setbacks, but Mama has adjusted surprisingly well. I know this garden Maverick helped her plant gets some of the credit for that.
I may have questioned the rationale of coming out here this late, but I can’t deny this place’s serenity. In the blossoms that are a legacy of my grandmother, whose flowers won my mother’s heart. Of the star-studded sky and the gentle breeze whispering through the trees surrounding the garden. All the tension of the night, the excitement and anticipation, dissolves.
We sit on the bench that Maverick had delivered the day we moved into the house. It bears my parents’ initials. A testament to their love. Some days I look through the back window and see Mama lost in her own thoughts; in the labyrinth of her own mind, just tracing their initials with her fingers.
Only now I’ve come to realize that maybe she’s not lost out here, but this is where she feels most found.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I say, my voice cracking the smallest bit. “Because we didn’t live in this house, didn’t grow up in Atlanta, but sometimes when I sit on this bench, I can feel him. Daddy, I mean.”
“Doesn’t sound crazy to me. I never met him, but I imagine that he’s here surrounded by ranunculus and this bench memorializing their love.”
I lay my head on his shoulder. “That’s sweet, Mav.”
“Matter of fact, the last time I was out here,” Maverick goes on, “I had a talk with him.”
I lift my head to peer at him in the shadows of the garden.
“Are you serious?” I ask, laughing a little.
“Yeah.” He nods in that decisive way he has that dares you to question even his most outrageous investment, his riskiest move. “For a while actually.”
“What’d you… Well, what’d you say?”
“I said I was sorry we never got the chance to meet.” Maverick clears his throat, his voice sounding tight with something close to uncharacteristic nervousness. “I thanked him for making someone so perfect for me. For raising you to be authentic and confident and kind.”
I swallow the heat gathering in my throat.
“I told him that I love you.” Maverick’s voice barely lifts above a whisper now. I have to lean in, to strain a little to catch the heartfelt words. “I promised him I’d be good to you. That I would take care of you and of your mother.”
A hot tear slides down my cheek at that. I don’t even bother to wipe it away. Maverick never complains when I have to cancel plans at the last minute because Mama’s having a bad day. He’s not freaked out when she melts down or loses the thread of this world and spirals into another. Fate or God or the universe—whatever formed us to fit—knew what, who, I needed.
“I told him that one day, I’d ask you, with his blessing, to be mine forever,” Maverick says, steadily running his thumb over the back of my hand like he didn’t just say something that caused an axial tilt. Everything goes still, and it feels like my blood stops flowing, my breath gets hung up in my chest and even the night around us suspends, awaiting his next words.
“And he couldn’t answer, of course,” Maverick says, studying the tangle of our fingers resting on his thigh. “But I felt like he was pleased. I felt like I had his blessing. And, of course, I asked your mother for hers. She said yes.”