Last First Kiss (4 page)

He released her in an instant. “Annie—”

But she was already opening the back door, and when it slammed behind her, for once she was grateful for this farmhouse, however dilapidated.

It still had walls and could keep people out.

S
AWYER
HELD
IT
together until he reached the fence. Annie rattled him more than he expected. Even with her short hair going north, south, east and west—goddamn was she a sight. The cute, awkward girl had grown up, less skin-and-bones, more womanly, but still a pixie. With baby blues that left him as tongue-tied as ever.

She’d run from him as if fleeing a ghost. He kicked a post, his boot going through the wood. More rot. He shook his head, molars grinding on reflex. Roger Carson seemed like a nice enough man, but if he were here, Sawyer wouldn’t be able to account for his actions. Leaving Annie to sort out this mess wasn’t kooky. It was damn irresponsible. Everywhere he looked required hard physical labor.

It didn’t surprise him that she didn’t want to be needy or ask favors. Not really. This was a hard country and it bred independent spirits.

Still, she needed a hand.

Annie Girl.

When he said she hadn’t changed, he’d told a lie—her smile had. Her open grin had vanished. Now the shape of her sweet mouth went through the motions, but was a poor imitation. She appeared tired, worried, and a little angry.

He paused, lost in memories of long ago. He’d invited her to a party the night of graduation, not giving two shits that Grandma considered the Carsons to be mortal enemies, and giving even less of a shit that her dad was the town weirdo. He wasn’t attracted to Kooky Carson, but his youngest daughter . . . now that was a different story. There was no one else as open, pretty, perfect and fine, a little bit of an oddball. But he didn’t mind the odd. The odd was cute.

By the time Annie had arrived, the kegger turned dangerous, too much beer. Too much restlessness. As she walked into the kitchen, people drew in like sharks sensing blood in the water. They hated her peasant skirts and strange tastes in music like it was a normal fact of life, as obvious as the idea cereal tasted better with milk, or Tuesday followed Monday.

Everything went down fast. Someone suggested a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, and as the crowd drove her toward the hallway closet, another person yelled, “Aw, yeah. Sawyer’s going to get some hippie ass.”

What was supposed to happen in a perfect moment—his and Annie’s first kiss—twisted into something ugly.

He’d set his shoulders and stalked through the mob, ready to bust into the damn closet, grab Annie and get her away. Instead, hands seized his torso, dragging him backward. He was bigger and sober, but they outnumbered him, beating him hard and fast behind the house. So-called friends, saying it was for his own good.

Inside, people cheered. He finally broke free and ran to the front, but it was too late. Annie fled down the porch steps, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Did you set me up?” she’d whispered, as someone shouted, “Way to teach that little Carson freak a lesson, Sawyer!” through an open window.

Annie had made good on her promise never to speak to him again, at least until today. Was she serious about selling Five Diamonds, a property that had been in her family well over a century, slamming the door on Brightwater forever? The town hadn’t treated her kindly in the past, but people grew up and changed.

He glanced down. There, beside his boot, a wild rose nestled half hidden in tall field grass. He’d almost stepped on the damn truth. Despite their thorny past, and whatever her recent hurts, something still bloomed between them. He squatted down and traced his thumb over the rose’s delicate petals.

All he could do was see how things would grow. He didn’t have anything to lose. There was no such thing as a third chance. Better make this second one count.

Chapter Four

[draft]

Musings of a Mighty Mama

Gratitude

older posts>>

Welcome to the start of the “Mighty Mama Thirty Days of Thankfulness.” To celebrate “the little things” here on the blog, I’m sharing snapshots that capture blessings in my life—an opportunity to reflect on the extra in the ordinary, to honor the perfect moment.

Today’s choice?

Soup.

Simple. Nourishing. No frills. Nothing else nourishes the spirit in quite the same way. My personal favorite is curried kale and apple—heavenly! Atticus played sous chef and deboned the leafy greens to simmer with chunks of onion, homemade stock, and a crème fraîche (we concoct our own curry powder using hand-grated turmeric, dried chiles, and organic garlic). Tasty and affordable, what more can—

“M
O
-
OM
,
WHAT
’
S
THAT
nasty smell?” Atticus inched toward the stove, sticking his tongue out.

Annie glanced from her laptop to the television timer. Her son might be her everything, but he still had twenty-two minutes of allotted PBS Kids time. From the living room, a cartoon character screeched at his little sister over who deserved the last sandwich at their family picnic. Annie gritted her teeth. This particular show shredded her last nerve.

She’d been staring blankly at the screen for ten minutes seeing only a pair of intense green eyes. There wasn’t time for blogger’s block, not with everything else going on. She had to finish the essay. Now. Her original content posts had dropped to a dismal twice-weekly rate since the divorce, padded out by Instagram-filtered photographs and product endorsements. Good, but not good enough to get her taken seriously once they moved to San Francisco. She needed to be seen as a serious writer, not a hobbyist.

The month of gratitude was an attempt to get back on track. She couldn’t afford to lose momentum, not after all the progress she’d made building up a stable readership and securing sponsors. How many hours were spent every week writing posts, trialing recipes, experimenting with new craft projects, scheduling social media across Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook, responding to comments and emails, and figuring out techy glitches on the site?

So many.

Too many to fail. Especially when she was finally on the cusp of making it.

Come on, focus. Focus!

Okay, which photograph should accompany today’s post? The shot where Atticus chopped kale turned out cute, but recently a troll had started filling her comments section with snark. Better not provide ammunition about the fact he wielded a knife and select a more generic shot featuring the simmering stockpot. The blue cast-iron was rather fetching in contrast with the soup’s earthy green. Although, frick, she should include the new wooden ladle. Earthwoods Utensils was
Mighty Mama
’s newest sponsor and needed to be kept happy.

Smiling at the Sun
, run by Zoe Renee, homeschooling mother of five who also managed a fourth-generation Vermont sugarhouse when not spinning wool or weaving, was the Death Star of mommy blogs. No one else came close to making motherhood look oh-so-effortlessly joyful. All Zoe’s posts went viral. All Zoe’s five children were daily showcased in hand-knit sweaters, happily feeding ducks, gobbling collard greens, putting on home puppet shows, or whittling chess pieces. Earthwoods also sponsored Zoe and she’d hosted a series of giveaways for the company last week. Annie couldn’t copy that, but a subtle slice-of-life endorsement wouldn’t go amiss.

“Ew, I don’t eat puke.” Atticus clutched his belly, round despite the recent five-year-old growth spurt that left his legs this side of gangly.

“We don’t use that word in this house.” Annie dropped her chin in her hand and stared out the window, suddenly exhausted. Imagine lying out in the grass, watching clouds drift over the range, without a camera for once, reveling in the sheer pleasure of the moment?

Sun shone on the split-rail fence that divided Five Diamonds from Hidden Rock. Sawyer had come this morning on foot. Did that mean he still lived next door? Once, okay, maybe twice, she’d searched for him on Facebook, purely out of idle curiosity, or so she told herself. He never set up an account.

“Vomit, vomit,” Atticus chanted, beating a fist in time. “The soup looks like vomit.”

“Come on, bud.” Annie searched for serenity and came up lacking. Instead, she reached for her favorite handmade pottery mug. “You have twenty more television minutes.” The coffee tasted bitter and black, but she chugged the lukewarm contents anyway.

Unlike Sawyer, Gregor never made her go all brain-mushy with longing, even in the earliest days of their courtship. She’d been more impressed with his age at first, thirty-eight to her twenty-two. He wasn’t another commitment-phobic college guy swilling PBR and playing video games. The fact that he didn’t hang at bars, but invited her back to his place to split a bottle of pinot noir, was intriguing. He traveled widely, wore collared shirts and read the whole paper, not just the sports section. Her own father wasn’t much of a grownup and hindsight suggested maybe her marriage wasn’t ever based in love, but rooted in Freudian daddy issues.

Fabulous.

Her college pals used to tease her for being an old soul. When the pill failed and she got pregnant, a city hall marriage at twenty-three felt fun, like playing at a normalcy she’d never had in her own eccentric youth.

She’d marched from a barefoot hippie childhood to a journalism degree into motherhood, and after founding
Musings of a Mighty Mama
, her world expanded with a large online community. Her recipes for pureed sweet potato and chick peas, or popular essays pondering water and electricity waste in cloth diapering leant a certain significance to what was otherwise hours of being screamed at while facing down various bodily fluids. Plus, writing was enjoyable, days passed more quickly when she put her brain to use. As college friends drifted away, she connected more to strangers through parenting forums and one-on-one messaging.

She poured another cup of coffee, her third this morning. The caffeine combined with post-Sawyer jitters set her teeth on edge.

No. Don’t think about him.

So what if she focused her attention on writing posts about Atticus’s food bravery (his favorite lunch—baked tofu with nutritional yeast), or making bird houses from reclaimed wood? The blog had made her feel valued when Gregor’s hobby became how many times he could dismiss her at dinner parties.

For the record, she got his jokes.

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A fish.

It was just that they weren’t funny.

The soup bubbled and she turned off the gas before it burned. “Honey,” she called to Atticus, now cannonballing off Great-Grandma Carson’s rocking chair with accompanying war whoops, “if you don’t want to watch a show, can you play with Lego? I’m so close to getting this post finished. Two more minutes.”

“Love you, Mommy.” Atticus snuck from behind and hugged her waist.

Her throat constricted. “I love you, too, little man.” Atticus was all that mattered, being his mom was a privilege, what she did, what she knew, what she was more or less good at—at least around sixty-seven percent of the time.

Her darling little privilege unleashed a high-pitched noise like a humpback dying a slow death by strangulation.

Time to get out the mental shovel and dig for patience. “What are you doing?”

“Is this what bobcats sound like?” Atticus made the ear-splitting sound again.

“Please, enough, stop.” She winced. “Let’s investigate it later.”

His dramatic sigh came from the toes of his red Converse. “I’m bored.”

“You’re five.”

“So?”

“So, you’re not allowed to use that word yet.”

He marched into the center of the kitchen and crossed his arms in a huff.

“Look, why don’t you run outside, poke around the old garden, go on a ladybug hunt? I can make you a snack.” Maybe they could take a hike to Rainbow Falls this afternoon. Generate material for a future post. She’d written a similar one about connecting kids with nature six months ago and generated lots of traffic and pingbacks. Also, she needed to focus more on writing about the farmhouse. Despite its many—God, so many—problems, it was charming in a way, with the wonky porch step, pressed-tin kitchen ceiling, and root cellar bursting with vintage canning jars.

Just don’t mention the plumbing or the roof.

Or hot neighbors.

“Hey, guess what?” Atticus brightened. “You know where food goes? Poop!”

Annie caught her grimacing reflection in the coffee. There wasn’t enough dark roast in the state this morning.

Atticus flitted to a chair and grabbed the Hello Kitty t-shirt crumpled on the seat.

“Wearing that again?” Annie kept her voice neutral. Another nail in the guilt coffin. The shirt was Margot’s, Atticus’s acutely missed half-sister. Annie had known Margot since she was eleven, the worst loss in the break-up.

Atticus whisked the shirt over his shoulder and banged out the back door. How many times had she requested he close, not slam, the screen during the last twenty-four hours?

Bills spilled from the wicker basket beneath the phone. Joy of joys. Another place Dad likely dropped the ball. Rather than face the wrath of the utility company or finish her post, she sat and clicked through the blogosphere, visiting virtual friends. Everything was coming up roses at
Happy Mommy
,
Three Kids and Counting,
and
Baby Steps.
Looked like
Smiling at the Sun
’s family had started grinding their own wheat, bully for Zoe.

Everyone appeared in top form: the essays were thoughtfully crafted, bursting with charm, felt toys, finger weaving and homemade chore charts. Everyone projected upbeat domestic bliss that settled on Annie like a weight.

Is Annie Carson real?
She recently googled her name and the first hit on the search engine popped up with that question.

Was she?

Yes and no. Some days she lived her best and worst self simultaneously, writing mothering essays that made her want to fist pump, while Atticus crawled between her legs begging for attention and dinner overcooked.

Last Easter, Annie paced the holiday grocery store aisle for fifteen minutes debating whether or not to buy box dye for the boiled eggs. It was right after the divorce papers were signed and her energy levels barely registered. In the end, she trudged to the produce section with a heavy sigh and stayed up through the night, stewing beets, purple cabbage, and kale.

She made the shit out of homemade dye.

“I am divorced,” she chanted, on repeat, over her keyboard at four a.m., writing up the corresponding blog post.

Divorced.

A love failure.

I suck.

Annie didn’t record how her tears infused the dye. Or share how the next day she’d screamed herself hoarse when Atticus splashed beet juice on the wool rug.

The Easter egg post received over two hundred comments. Every word of praise burned her insides like toxic ooze.

Outside, Atticus made another noise, a breathless grunt that didn’t sound good. Her chair clattered to the linoleum as she tore down the back steps at lightning speed. He hunched in the open barn doorway, face puckered, cradling his wrist.

“What happened?”

“Hurts, Mama,” he wailed. His hand bent at an awkward angle, one that threatened to send her breakfast across her fuzzy slippers.

“Shhhh, shhhhh. You’re okay, you’re okay.” She scooped his light frame against her and bee-lined to the car. Thank God the keys were under the sun visor.

“No! No!” He arched his back against the booster seat.

“I’m going to make it better.” She clicked the shoulder strap, gasping when his scream fired into her ear canal. Jumping into the driver’s seat, she carefully navigated the gravel driveway, avoiding most, but not all, of the potholes. Each backseat whimper struck her heart like a felling axe. At the main road, she gunned it, barely registering the scenery, the wide river lined with leafy cottonwoods or the snow-capped ridgelines.

“Hurts, Mama,” Atticus moaned over and over. She glanced in the rearview mirror searching for inner calm, bravery, anything, but the sight of his tears, the way his snub nose wrinkled as he held his body rigid, trying to move as little as possible, undid her. She sucked in and held a ragged breath.

If only she could siphon his pain into her own body.

If only she’d paid better attention.

If only
wouldn’t fix the bone in her child’s arm or the guilt-laced acid dissolving her stomach.

The local Brightwater hospital wasn’t big, and on a quiet Sunday morning the only other people in the emergency room were a black-eyed ranch hand who looked like he’d spent the night tangoing with an angry bull, and a grizzled man in Carhartt overalls snoring in the corner.

Great, she and Atticus were part of Derelict Hour. The more respectable Brightwater residents sat in church pews, not ushering their weeping only child into the x-ray room. She didn’t miss the frown the wiry-haired nurse gave her son’s Hello Kitty shirt. The woman glanced at the chart, a knowing expression crossing her features. “Carson, hmmm? Any relation to Kooky, er, Roger Carson?”

Didn’t sound like she was a fan of the man with the long salt-and-pepper ponytail, left-wing political sympathies, and endless supply of tie-dyed ensembles that contrasted with the valley’s usual denim and plaid uniform.

“He’s my father.” Annie resisted the urge to fidget. Did hospitals purposely make the seating as hard and uncomfortable as possible?

“Can I have a pink cast?” Atticus stared with a hopeful expression. His skinny legs dangled off the edge of the examination table and made him look so small and helpless. He should be wrapped in tender cotton wool, not sitting here with broken bones.