Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
To say I was obsessed with her would be an understatement.
But this Nettie—the carefree wild child that she’d once been—was the one who did things to my soul.
I loved all the sides of Antoinette Reilley Wheeler. But this one—her smiling, happy, carefree self—this was the one that I missed in my darkest of nights. The happy that I’d so cruelly ripped away when I refused to believe my mother was torturing her.
Suddenly, her eyes went wide, and she whipped her head toward me.
My stomach twisted. “What is it?”
So attuned to her that I was, I caught her hand moving down to her belly.
Fear roared through my veins like a silent reaper, ready to steal away all the happy I’d soaked in over the last couple of hours.
She reached for my hand instead of answering and placed it on her belly.
She pressed it hard, much harder than I ever would have, and waited, her eyes on me.
Then I felt it.
The smallest of bumps.
Something that I wouldn’t have thought twice about feeling forty-eight hours ago.
We’d never gotten to this point with our Julep.
She’d never been big enough to feel before her life had been stolen from her.
No one at the table paid enough attention to us to notice the life-changing moment we were sharing, all too busy on a conversation about snowmobiles, riding motorcycles, and the summer months coming up to notice our awe.
She leaned forward and whispered into my ear, “I’ve been feeling those little gas bubble sensations for a while, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt her move from the outside.”
I was irrationally angry all of a sudden, pissed beyond all belief that this had been stolen from us once before by my own mother.
She saw it in my eyes, too. The shame. The regret.
“We can’t ever make it right,” she whispered. “But we can move on. Build a life with our new little girl.” She bit her lip, whispering quietly, “I have a name.”
My brows rose. “What is it?”
“Margery.”
The breath left my lungs.
The blow was oh so sweet. Well placed and sweet.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“Do you think she’ll like it?”
I knew she would.
“She will love it,” I croaked, my heart aching in both agony and happiness. “Nettie…”
She looked more seriously at me. “What?”
“Grams isn’t going to make it much longer,” I admitted. “I…”
I didn’t want to finish my sentence.
But she finished it for me.
“I know,” she whispered. “You don’t know if she’ll live to see her namesake.”
Grams, also known as Margery Anderson Windsor, was my stepfather’s mother. She was the sweetest, sassiest, most hardass lady I’d ever met in my life. She loved fiercely, never let go of something that was hers to take care of, and had been lying to my face for years.
I loved the hell out of her for it.
I had never wanted Nettie to lose her.
And apparently, she hadn’t.
Apparently she and Nettie had a relationship that neither one of them had shared with me.
I was okay with that, though.
I would’ve never wanted to take Nettie away from Grams, and neither would I have wanted to take Grams away from Nettie.
I just wished we hadn’t wasted so much time.
That Grams had Nettie the way she should have—as her granddaughter when I married her.
A thought took place in my head.
Another bump against my hand, as if the baby inside of Nettie, my own flesh and blood, agreed with my subconscious’s plan.
Why not marry Nettie for real? Why not give this baby legitimacy? Why not give my grams everything that she ever wanted for me—Nettie and a baby, happy.
“What are y’all over there whispering about?” Denver asked, causing the entire table to focus on us.
Luckily my hand was shielded by the table.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want my club to know about the baby.
I wouldn’t mind it.
But I wanted to keep it to myself for a while.
I wanted to just focus on us before I brought the rest of the world into it.
Nettie seemed to be of the same frame of mind because she said, “Grams.”
Denver’s face fell.
Eleven
It’s not my fault you thought I was normal. That’s on you.
—Nettie to Boone
Nettie
Grams.
The woman who’d literally been the only positive female role model for me.
When I’d met her when I was fourteen, we’d been walking down the sidewalk in front of the grocery store together.
The day I’d met her had also been the first time that I’d met Boone.
“What is your hurry, young man?”
I looked up to find an old woman staring at me.
I’d had my hoodie up over my head, and I was walking like the hounds of hell were on my heels.
Why?
Because I’d skipped church.
My father was going to beat the shit out of me.
I just knew it.
But I couldn’t be in that place with those people and pretend that everything was okay.
Here was the thing.
Some of them probably were—my father’s congregation.