Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Fuck. Me.
21
LOFTON
“I can’t find it,” Zoey announced as she dropped to her knees in the middle of the blanket and unzipped her little backpack.
“I know that face,” Brooke said, watching me over the rim of her coffee mug.
“What face?” Avoiding her scrutiny, I kept my eyes on Zoey as she began excavating the contents of her bag.
“Here,” she said, extending a crumpled juice box straw to her mother.
Brooke opened her hand, palm up, and kept right on staring at me. “You know the face.”
“I really don’t.”
Zoey passed me a single googly eye.
“The freshly fu—” She glanced at Zoey and then rephrased. “The freshly goodnight face.”
My cheeks flushed warm. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” A graham cracker corner emerged from the backpack. Zoey examined it, deemed it worth keeping, and then placed it in Brooke’s hand.
“You’ve had it since breakfast. Devon’s got it too, though his is more of a twitchy jaw situation.”
“Nah, he always looks like that.” A small plastic dinosaur missing one leg landed in my hand next.
“Lofton.”
“Brooke.”
“Oh, look!” Zoey giggled. She unfolded a piece of paper and then lifted it in the air for our viewing pleasure. It was a crayon drawing of what I could only assume was supposed to be a horse, though the four legs were coming out of the top. Which either said something profound about Zoey’s artistic vision or suggested she’d been holding the paper upside down.
“Is that Snickers?” I guessed.
She curled her lip. “It’s a jellyfish.”
“Duh, Tofton,” Brooke teased before sucking in her lips to stifle a laugh.
I placed a hand over my heart. “Obviously. It’s stunning!”
Zoey handed it to me. “You can have it.”
“Hey, thanks.” I took the paper, folded it back up, and slid it into the back of my denim shorts. “We should start looking into art schools now. I see a future for this one.”
Zoey went right back to digging through her bag. And without missing a beat, Brooke’s eyes came back to me. “Don’t think you can change the subject. He looked like he was afraid for his life yesterday. Clearly you did something to change his tune.”
A smile split my mouth. “Button-down. Louboutins.”
Her mouth fell open. “Lofton Beck, you are terrible. That man didn’t stand a chance.”
Zoey perked her head up. “What man?” With great seriousness, she handed me a seven of clubs, torn at the edge.
“Mr. Devon,” Brooke answered.
“He smells good,” Zoey announced, going right back to her bag.
“See? She gets it.”
Brooke rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue at me.
“Awww,” Zoey drawled as she pulled out a slightly wrinkled photograph. She looked at it for a moment and then held it up toward us.
Marty’s face filled one side of it, his arm around Zoey at her last birthday party, both of them mid-laugh at something off-camera.
Zoey hugged it to her chest before passing it my way. “I miss Marty.”
Brooke pressed her lips together and gave her daughter a squeeze. “I know, baby. We all do.”
I took the picture and looked at it for a long moment. The grief was still sharp, but the day-to-day pain had softened into a sort of denial where I could just pretend he was on vacation and not gone completely.
“He loved you. You know that right?” I said quietly.
Zoey nodded.
Brooke looked at me. “He loved you too.”
I smiled because he had. One hundred percent absolute love.
I had no doubt that Marty was going to be a gaping wound in my heart for a long time. But as I sat there, holding the photograph in one hand and the torn playing card in the other as we watched Zoey dig to the bottom of the bag for whatever she was actually looking for, I thought that maybe this was what healing felt like. Not the absence of grief, but finding Marty’s face in a four-year-old’s backpack and actually being able to smile about it.
“There it is!” Zoey exclaimed, suddenly producing a tube of chapstick. It had no cap and as she rolled it up, it was flattened on one side as if it had melted at some point. She applied it with surgical precision, assuming the surgeon was blind. And then rubbed her lips together with a satisfied grin.
She quickly began repacking everything. Straw. Googly eye. Dinosaur. Playing card, and last but not least, the picture. She kissed it before dropping it back inside so unceremoniously that it made me laugh.
“You know we have to clean that out soon. You’re going to end up with ants,” Brooke told her.
I assumed it was a threat Brooke made often because Zoey gave no reaction. She zipped the bag, slung it on her back, and then ran off toward the fence where Beans was standing, desperately hoping she was bringing him a treat.
“She hasn’t taken that backpack off since he died,” Brooke said, as we watched her run away. “Marty gave it to her for her birthday. She loved it then, but now? She thinks it’s magic.” She shook her head.