Despite my chest tightening, the sound of her heavy pants shockingly soothes me. Turning to her, I smile. “Are you my landscaping assistant?”
She sits, trying to perform her shake trick but on my leg.
My brows jump a mile high before I shake my head. “Too damn smart,” I mutter before taking the clippers, weed puller, and black bin with me out of the shed, Bambi following close on my heels.
I don’t look toward the deck, not because I don’t want to see her but right now, for the first time since I found Bella in my living room, my mind is entirely focused on the way panic is settling in my veins, spreading like a plague.
As I move to the right-side fence, that day begins to come back in clipped snapshots of images. How Drew came out, shouting about being bored and wanting to leave for the party we planned to go to that night.
The sun was setting.
My hands were covered in dirt.
Drew had finished cooking for the night and had a beer in his hand.
My vision swims.
Black spots suddenly appear.
I drop to my hands and knees, enflamed by panic. I can’t see anything. My fingers clutch the grass, my chest heaving wildly, and even I can hear the short wheezes coming from me.
A tongue darts out across my face, accompanied by a whine from Bambi.
She bops me, her nose pushing and probing my chest. I keep trying to push her away but suddenly she’s headbutting me, making me fall backward. Her paws cover my chest and then she lays her entire body on me.
Something about the pressure and the feel of her tongue licking my hand over and over has the black spots receding—the memory fading.
I can’t see Drew’s stricken, horrified face as lights backlit his head from the passenger window. Instead, I find Bambi, panting down at me with the setting sun in the background.
My hands are shaking, my chest still heaving, but the wheezing has subsided.
Wrapping my arms around Bambi, I blow out a breath. “Whoever gave you up was a jackass.”
Bambi moves off me only to lie down beside me, her eyes on me as I move to a sitting position. I gingerly wrap my hands around the weed puller, relieved that I’m not pelted with the memory ofthatday.
Patting Bambi behind the ear, I say, “What would I do without you, hmm?”
Trying to shake off out the rest of the jitters and buzzing nervous energy, I force myself to keep going, surprised to find that after that initial shock and surface of the memory, the pain takes a back seat to the memories from every other Sunday.
The sound of Drew’s music as it floated to me while I worked. The sound of the sliding glass door as he came out to rile me up between cooking.
It stuns me speechless. I move along the property line, pulling weeds. I don’t feel suffocated—anxious, yes—but I don’t feel buried beneath my grief.
In fact, I’ve never felt closer to Drew since he passed.
I never had those moments everyone talks about feeling close to a loved one when they pass. I never understood the saying that they’re next to you in spirit because I just never felt it. But today, with the setting sun behind the mountains, Bambi beside me, and my hands covered in dirt, a part of me feels like Drew is right beside me, throwing verbal jabs at me and pissed that I can’t hear him.
Chapter 43
Bella
LAYLA
taking off
I can’t stop crying
BELLA
