Shopping for a CEO's Fiancée

“Sword battle!” Al’s estimation of me goes up while his eyes remain glued to her hand. “Good for you.”

“I learned from the best,” I say. “My brother’s really good at digging in the knife.”

Al slaps the car once. “Well, then, if it’s just you two playing around, you’re good to go. I’d recommend a spare set of pants, though, for you there, uh…”

“Andrew.”

“Right. Andrew.”

Dec turns on the car.

“Are we free to go?” Shannon asks nicely.

“Sure.”

Amanda waves to Al as Declan pulls back onto the road and follows the GPS.

“That did not happen,” I grunt. “You tell Dad, I will kill you.”

“I won’t tell Dad.”

“I mean it, Dec.”

“Jessica Coffin already has pictures of you two on her Twitter stream,” Shannon says sadly. She holds up her phone and hands it to Amanda.

“‘Andrew McCormick takes his zombies seriously,’” she reads. “What does that even mean?”

“See?” I grumble, holding my junk carefully. The shocks on this piece-of-shit car are terrible, and my boys are pretty blue. “She’s losing her touch.”

“Wait a minute,” Amanda says, tapping the screen. “Her account—just now! Where’d it go?”

“Where’d it go?” Shannon repeats. “What do you mean? It’s right there.”

“I hit refresh. It’s gone.”

“Gone?” Shannon’s face lifts with a triumphant smile. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

My project has been fulfilled. I just unplugged Jessica Coffin’s influence.

At least something went right today.

Chapter Nineteen

Saturdays like this are rare in Massachusetts. The wide, open sky is a shade of blue you only find in a jeweler’s shop, and the light wind is a relief from the sweltering late-summer air. After a string of muggy days where breathing feels like drowning, the change is welcome.

And today is a day for nothing but change.

The path away from the giant patch of grass where the town has carved out fifteen regulation-sized soccer fields is well marked, but my eyes can’t seem to find it. The sign is right there: “Honeysuckle Path,” with the piece of wood carved into the shape of an arrow, the words burned into the wood in a quaint, quasi-colonial font designed to add prestige to the town, one of the oldest in the state. I read the words, but my brain doesn’t process them, and then—like a bird of prey with telescopic sight—it all clicks.

I take my first step on the bare-dirt line in the center of wild weeds. This park land was set aside for families and school children to use as a nature preserve, for sports, for picnics and hikes.

And this is where my mother died.

Her grave is not here. Elena Montgomery McCormick’s final resting place is in a cemetery a few towns away. But this is where she took her last breath.

A breath I never saw.

I come here when I want to torture myself. Always at night, and always in the cooler seasons. Cross-country skiers burrow tracks in the winter and I follow them, head down, always pausing right by the bridge where she died.

Where I almost died.

Where, for years, I wished I’d died.

Declan’s never been back here, as far as I know, and I can’t blame him.

Knowing what I know now from Terry about Dad’s treatment of Declan, I need to come here. After she died, Grace set up therapists for Declan and me, but the sessions were short. We were fine. Trauma? What trauma? It was a freak accident.

I was the freak.

My skin itches, the bright sun pouring down on me, my body uncovered, a short-sleeved polo, shorts, and sneakers all I chose to wear. Vince is right: I take greater risks every day just driving to work.

But living a life hidden in darkness and cold was never about logical risk assessment and playing the odds.

I almost invited Amanda to join me here, today. Almost.

As I walk, I hear the rumble of car engines behind me, a flurry of activity, then shouts and screams of kids unbound. Music from an ice cream truck jingles in the background, blending with the muted cacophony of childhood fun. That day, thirteen years ago, when I was a forward on my team and taking a break between games to go for a hike with Dec and Mom, I remember Dec asking if we could grab an ice cream bar.

And I said, “Coach doesn’t want us loading our stomachs with junk.”

Those were some of the last words my mother ever heard from me.

What if I’d said yes? What if we’d gone to the parking lot instead and had Mom chide us for eating too much sugar, had Dec buy us each two chocolate-coated bars, had shoveled them in like the growing teens we were? What if I’d paused and what if, what if, what if?

Thirteen years of what ifs.

Except none of those comes even close to the what if Declan carries inside him.

It’s the question I can’t ask him.

It’s the question he asks himself every day.

As I reach the split in the path, another what if assaults me, the Y in the road a dimension splicer, my dead mother down one path, my living mother down the other. We picked the right-hand path out of sheer randomness, a decision that meant nothing in the moment, yet everything three minutes later.

When Amanda jumped in the water to rescue the animals at Dec and Shannon’s wedding, she made one of those instinctual decisions, the kind that makes sense at the time.

Everything makes sense at the time.

Until it doesn’t.

Fresh air assaults my lungs, the scent of freshly-mowed grass nauseating. It takes me back thirteen years ago, my legs shorter, tighter, body all elbows and knees, getting used to my newfound height. It was the very end of sophomore year and I just got my driver’s license. Mom let me drive. Declan mocked me endlessly from the backseat, calling me “Grandma” at every intersection.