I closed one eye, answering hesitantly. “American Tailby Lady Jane.”
Polly groaned, rolling to her back and covering her face with her hands. Gently, I pulled her hands away and made her look at me.
“All it did was make me want to get to know you more. Each week brought something new and different. Each week, it was like a new splash of color. What shoes you wore, what books you listened to, what you ordered. The more I learned about you, the more I liked you. But my favorite things about you, the ones you seemingly keep to yourself, the ones that you think are imperfect, have the most vivid colors.”
Her eyes were filling with tears as I spoke, so I cupped her cheek so I could wipe them away.
“This time I’ve spent with you have been the best weeks of my life. I know growing up you were expected to be perfect. But perfect is boring. It’s fake. Give me the real deal, any day of the week. I want to tell you, that everything you are and everything you want to be, all of your different colors, each one is beautiful.”
CHAPTERFORTY-NINE
POLLY
Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
Lauren Oliver,Delirium
On the way home from the birthday party, Jace and I asked the kids if they wanted to go on an adventure hike in the mountains the next day. Ryla was all for it, no surprise there, and Max agreed with only a few conditions: he didn’t have to try any new foods and if there were a lot of bees, we could go home.
The next morning, we spent an hour driving to the hiking trail Jace knew well, singing funny songs and taking time to stop and appreciate the beautiful mountain views along the way. Once we’d arrived, Max started to balk. Then, Jace produced two bug jackets, one for Max, and one for Jace. I knew that Jace had never worn, nor needed, a bug jacket. He’d only brought it along to make Max feel less alone.
My two children were glued to Jace’s side during the first half of the hike, which meant I followed behind them, marveling at how lucky I was to have found a man that fit so seamlessly into our family. As we walked, Jace told us stories about how he’d come hiking here with his friend who was now a park ranger and how eventually he’d come to hike here by himself when he got older. We spread out a blanket at a picnic area for lunch, eating from a basket that Jace’s mom had sent home with him this week.
It was there that I placed my hand in Jace’s, and we told the kids we were dating.
Ryla had no less than one hundred questions whereas Max only asked a few. I stressed that it was to be kept private, just between the four of us, as Grandfather Alberton couldn’t know. It was a risk, especially with Miss Ryla, but as she’d never liked her grandfather, I actually felt decently safe that she’d relish the opportunity to keep a secret from him. Max, my sweet boy, smiled and nodded when Jace explained that this didn’t change anything between them, and they could both talk to him about anything. Ryla’s last question, bless her heart, was if she could have a baby sister. After side-stepping that last question, the rest of lunch went on without any catastrophes. All in all, I dare say it’d been a pretty perfect morning.
It was after lunch that things started to go a little . . . less perfectly.
When Jace and I were packing up after lunch, Max and Ryla went to throw stones in a stream. Not five minutes later, Ryla ran back screaming bloody murder from a mosquito bite on her leg and proceeded to spend the next five minutes limping around, howling at us to cut off her leg. Jace finally convinced Ryla to let him carry her on his shoulders, or at least until her leg stopped “burning with mosquito death fire.”
Ten minutes into the hike back, Max had to go to the bathroom. Max was uninterested when Jace told him he’d teach him to pee against a tree. Ryla, on the other hand, was very interested and aggrieved when I wouldn’t let her try. Our debate on that did seem to cure her from the pain of her mortal mosquito wound, however. We spent the next twenty minutes hightailing it back to the trailhead, where the only flushable toilets were located.
When Max and I returned from the bathroom (in all honesty, I didn’t want to pop a squat either. I’d seen too much poison ivy in my practice) we found Ryla and Jace at a picnic table, huddled over a map.
“Momma!” Ryla shouted when she spotted us. My heart stirred; my throat tight with emotion. Having grown up in Chicago, Ryla always called me mom—or mama when she was a toddler—but nevermomma. It brought a picture into focus: our future life here. Over time, I expected the kid’s accents would get progressively more dipped. Jace and I would sit hand in hand as we watched Ryla’s theatrical performances or quietly root for Max with each big step he took along his own path. Looking at Jace, seeing the love and affection in his eyes, I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
Ryla tugged at my shirt and pointed at the map. “We found a new trail! There’s a lake at the end of it with fish and a waterfall!”
“Hold on there, Ryla,” Jace said. “I said if there’s a lake, there’sprobablyfish, and even though that symbol means there’s a waterfall, it might not be the right season to see it. Your momma and brother have to agree to walk with us, too. It looks easy enough, but it’s about a mile just to get there which is a lot of walking for everyone.”
“I can do it! Please? Please! I wanna see the waterfall!”
I looked at Max who just shrugged, then shifted my gaze to the sky, which had gray clouds in the distance. “Jace? I know you said the weather forecast was clear all day, but do you see those clouds?”
“There are always little showers here and there, but I ’reckon those clouds are a good twenty miles from here. My only concern is the length of the trail. It’s two miles round trip. It should take about twenty minutes to hike one way, so if any one of us gets tired, speak up and remember, it’s the same distance coming back as it is to walk there.”
Twenty minutes and two unmarked forks in the trail later, there was no lake and no waterfall in sight. At the first fork, Jace gave a confident smile, telling us he knew exactly where we were. It was at the second fork that Jace started to look uncertain. He was looking down furtively at the map, then off into the distance more and more.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Ryla shouted, pausing from drawing in the dirt with a stick.
I fought a laugh. Leave it to Ryla to ask what we were all thinking.
“Of course I know where I’m going. I just need to find a landmark.” Jace continued looking between the map and the distance. I walked over to him and glanced down at the map, but it might as well have been in hieroglyphics; cartography was never my strong suit.
“You know exactly where you are, huh, Ranger Vargas?” I teased Jace out of the earshot of the kids. He pursed his lips, unamused. Hiding my smile, I went over to check on Max, who had been glancing nervously at the clouds, which admittedly were getting a deeper gray.
I held out my hand, which he took. “Ok Max. Give me one squeeze if you want to keep going and two squeezes if you want to head home.”
