Page 60 of Broken Cedar

“Oh, sweetheart.” Mom puts her arms around me. She smells like soap and coffee and the vanilla scent she’s worn since I was little. She hugs me for a long time.

“Don’t stay away so long this time,” she murmurs into my hair. “Eight years is excessive, Hallie.”

I laugh. The sound comes out wet, halfway to a sob. I press my face into her shoulder and breathe, and she holds me. “I love you,” I say against her shoulder.

“I know,” she says. “I’ve always known.” She pulls back, brushing a tear from my cheek with a thumb. “You should go soon,” she says. “Before traffic.”

I nod, my throat too thick to speak. She squeezes my shoulder, then we both head for the front door, grabbing my suitcase along the way.

Mom walks beside me, her arm looped through mine as we head toward my car. My eyes scan the ranch, cataloging every detail. The horses quietly grazing in the east pasture, the cottonwoods blowing gently in the breeze.

I pop the trunk when we reach my car and lift the suitcase, setting it inside. Mom hugs me again. She says nothing, but she doesn’t need to. Her body says everything her mouth won’t—I love you, I’ll miss you, don’t stay away so long this time, come home when you’re ready, I’ll be here, I’ve always been here.

I glance up over her shoulder at the sound of crunching gravel, and see Colt coming around the corner of the barn.

Mom feels me stiffen and pulls back, following my gaze. “I’m going to head inside,” she says, squeezing my hand once. “Let you say goodbye properly this time.” She doesn’t wait for a response as she turns and heads up the porch steps.

Colt stops about three feet from the driver’s door but doesn’t come closer. His hands are at his sides. His hat shades his eyes and I can’t read his expression, which is probably deliberate.

“Drive safe, I guess,” Colt says.

“I will,” I say. Then we’re both silent again.

“Let me know when you get there,” His voice doesn’t change, it just comes out flat, direct.

“Okay,” I say. It’s nowhere near enough.

He nods, his jaw set. I reach for the door handle and slide into the driver’s seat. Colt steps back from the car, giving me room. Always giving me room. It’s who he is. The man who makes space even when the space hurts him, because watching me leave is apparently less painful than watching me struggle, and I have never loved him more than I do in this moment when he is standing three feet from my car with his hands at his sides and his heart somewhere I can’t reach, and all he’s asking me to do is text him when I land.

I close the door and start the engine. Colt steps back another foot. I put the car in reverse and the transmission groans as I back the car out of the drive. I shift into drive and don’t turn around. My foot finds the gas, and the car moves forward. I pass the barn. Copper is dozing in his paddock, his head lowered. He doesn’t look up as I pass him. The yearlings are out in the east paddock. They lift their heads as I pass.

I stupidly check the rearview. He’s still there. Smaller now, a dark shape against the morning light, standing exactly where I left him. He hasn’t moved.

The first tear comes without warning. Hot. Fast. I wipe it away with the heel of my hand. Then another follows, and another, until the driveway becomes a smear of gravel and light. I slow the car because I can’t see. Can’t drive. Can’t do anything except sit in this driver’s seat with tears running down my face and Colt shrinking in the mirror and the devastating knowledge that leaving him a second time might be the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I’m doing it anyway, because doing it feels easier than staying, and easier has always been my specialty.

I stop the car, engine still running, foot on the brake. Both hands on the wheel like it’s the only solid thing in a world that has suddenly become very, very fluid.

I force one slow breath into my lungs. Then another. My vision clears enough to see the road. Enough to drive. I wipe my face with both hands, then put the car back in drive. I slow at the gate. It’s open. Colt must have opened it this morning, before breakfast, before I came downstairs. The tears threaten to start again but I hold them at bay by sheer will.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, then drive through. I don’t look back. Can’t look back. If I look back, I’ll turn around, and if I turn around, I’ll stay, and if I stay, I’ll have to confront the terrifying possibility that the life I built was built on a foundation of fear rather than desire, and dismantling it would mean starting over, and starting over at thirty feels more impossible than starting over at twenty-two did, and I am forced to wonder whether I am exactly as brave as I was eight years ago—or whether leaving has simply become easier than staying.

The road stretches and curves as I drive. The ranch disappears behind a ridge. One last glimpse in the rearview of trees and sky, and then it’s gone, and I am on a highway pointing east, and the only thing ahead of me is a version of myself I’m not sure I recognize anymore.

Chapter Seventeen

Ijiggle the key in the door of the apartment I’ve been calling home for the past three years. The lock gives and the door swings inward as I step inside.

The apartment is quiet. City quiet, which isn’t quiet at all—traffic through the windows, the neighbor’s bass through the wall—but quiet compared to the ranch. No Mom humming in the kitchen or Colt’s boots scraping on the porch.

I drop my keys on the counter and kick off my boots. The first thing I notice is that my plants are dead. Not mostly dead. Not hanging on. Dead. Capital-D dead. The brown-crisp quality of something that has given up completely.

I ignore the dead plants and sit on the couch. I didn’t think about asking anyone to water them while I was away. I mean, I was supposed to only be gone three days. But then that two days turned into a week and it turns out plans can die of neglect pretty quickly.

I think about Mom’s garden and the care she brings to every square foot of soil, the way she talks to her plants the way some people talk to pets, with a tenderness that suggests she understands they’re listening. My plants died because nobody cared for them. Nobody touched them. Nobody noticed they were alive until they weren’t, and by then it was too late, and standing in a graveyard of potted things I purchased because apartments need greenery, I am forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that I am not, and have never been, a nurturer. I am a leaver. A builder of things I don’t stay to maintain.

I sigh and the sound fills the apartment. I glance around for something to do, then decide that I may as well start unpacking. I take my suitcase to my bedroom and pull out my clothes, trying very hard not to think about what they smell like, because what they smell like is Colt, and I don’t want to keep thinking about Colt. I toss my clothes in the wash, but hesitate when Colt’s shirt lands on top of the pile.

I pull it out, holding it in my hands. It still smells like him, but it’s fading already. Give it another day, maybe two, and it’ll be gone completely.