“That’s the one. And she’s a Gibson all right,” Rose said as we carried the cooler up onto the back porch and settled it against the wall. “Those Gibsons have lived around these parts for so long, I’m not sure which came first—the Gibsons or Montana’s statehood.” She dropped into one of the porch swings, chuckling to herself. “When Jesse and her started getting pretty serious, I began to worry if they ever got married, she’d make him take her name instead of the other way around.”
My stomach twisted over a few points in that information dump. Pretty serious and married being the big ones. I dropped into the rocking chair across from her and folded my arms over my stomach.
“Anyways,” Rose waved her hand, “she stopped by to see you. She mentioned she’d somehow convinced you to go to the big ol’ honky tonk next weekend and was just double checking to make sure you hadn’t gotten cold feet.”
“I doubt even if I tried to back out, Josie would let me,” I replied, wondering why she’d showed up in person. There was a great invention, only about two hundred years old, known as the telephone she could have used. But I knew why she’d stopped by. Why she’d probably wasted fifty gallons of gas in that gas-chugging machine of hers to drive from her place to this place.
It was because she was driving to his place.
I wasn’t a fool. Josie might have been the nicest girl I’d ever met, but she was still a young woman. That meant she was the most saint-like of sinners.
Jesse had been hers for a couple of years. I’d only spent a couple of weeks with him, and I knew he wasn’t the type of guy a girl got over. He was the type of guy a girl spent her whole life asking herself, What if? He was the type of guy a woman thought about when she sat across the dinner table from her second husband.
All drama aside, Jesse was the guy a girl didn’t get over. End of story. Truest story ever told.
I knew because I felt the same. I’d never get over Jesse Walker.
“You’re probably right. Josie doesn’t take no for an answer too often.” Rose’s expression changed. It eclipsed from carefree to worried. I’d rarely seen that shift on her face. “That’s why I was so surprised when she took a no from Jesse when she tried to get back together with him. She didn’t push back. She didn’t fight. She didn’t plead her case. She just . . . let him go.” Rose’s forehead lined as she studied the planks of the porch, like perhaps, within their cracks and crevasses, she could find the answers. “I don’t know what happened between those two, lord knows Jesse’s lips are sealed, but you don’t go from all but walking down the aisle to not even wanting to say each other’s name without something pretty big happening.”
What happened between Jesse and Josie seemed to be the million dollar question. No one seemed to know.
“I tried to be strong for Jesse after they broke up. Even though he tried not to show how much he was hurting, I could tell. A mother always knows when one of her babies is in pain.” I bit my tongue and kept my opinions on the matter to myself. “But I think my heart was just about as broken as his.” Rose gave a sad smile and sniffled. “I was so sure Josie was going to be my daughter-in-law one day, I’d started treating her like a daughter without even realizing it.”
“You miss her,” I said. It was obvious from Rose’s expression that she did.
“I do. I did a lot when they first broke up, but time, like anything, eases the hurt,” Rose said, grabbing hold of the swing’s armrest. “What I find I miss the most now, though, is the reassurance of knowing my baby had found himself a good person to spend his life with. When he was with Josie, I knew he’d be well taken care of and loved. At the end of the day, that’s all a mother can ask for when her little birdies leave the nest.” Rose exhaled slowly through her nose. “That they’ll find another nest as loving and warm as the one they flew from.”
My eyes closed. My heart dropped. My shoulders sagged.
I knew Rose wasn’t saying any of that to hurt me—she didn’t have a clue how I felt about Jesse—but her speech, coming hot on the heels of Garth’s speech, was the tipping point. That last wooden block slid out of the tower and made it crumble.
I’d been living a dream. I’d gotten lost inside of it and mistaken it for reality.
And I’d just woken up.
I stood and found my legs were stronger than I would have thought. I guessed after waking up, I could accept my fate bravely. “Rose? Would you mind if I took the rest of the day off?”
Her face flickered with concern.
“I’ve had this nasty headache all day I can’t seem to shake,” I said, drilling my finger into my temple. The real pain ran a couple feet lower. “I’m just going to find a quiet place to park it under a tree and hope some fresh air and rest does the trick.” I hated lying to Rose. I hated lying to her more than I’d hated lying to anyone else, but it had to be done. I couldn’t make it another nine hours of holding myself together. She’d see right through my act, or I’d lose it in front of her, and I didn’t want her to know about Jesse and me. I didn’t want her to ever know. I didn’t want to give her a reason to be ashamed of her son and awkward around me.
“Did you take some pain reliever, honey?” she asked, rising from the swing.
“Only about a hundred,” I exaggerated, “but this thing’s beyond medicine right now.”