Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Peter arrived next.
He had Harry’s eyes, too.
He joined in on the hug.
Jensen joined in, too.
The doctor came out a few hours later. Harry was on life support, and they didn’t think he’d make it due to the damage to his brain.
And just like that, my world came crashing down around me. Yet it was my family who kept my knees from hitting solid ground.
My Harry passed away three days later.
He took all the world’s color with him, leaving me with only black ink.
CHAPTER 26
Willow
Harry passed away the same way he said he came into the world—surrounded by love.
Theo and Peter handled a lot of the paperwork the following days, while I helped Molly go through some old photographs. Over the past few days, it felt almost as if Theo was avoiding me. He came in late each night, and by the time I woke up, he was gone. If I saw him long enough, I’d try to ask him if he wanted to fish, but he’d say no time and time again, saying he was too busy to fish.
Too busy to fish?
Theodore Langford?
No way in hell was that man ever too busy to fish. He was avoiding me, but I had no right to call him out on it. The way he processed his grief was his and his alone. Who was I to judge him? Theo made it clear that he needed space, so that was exactly what I gave him. Even though doing so crushed my spirit because my heartbeats were so deeply worried about his. I knew Theo wasn’t all right. I knew how much Harry meant to Theo. He wasn’t only his grandfather, but he was, in many ways, his actual father. He raised Theo from day one. He taught him how to fish, how to throw a football, how to be kind. How to treat a lady. How to love. Everything good in Theo was the product of Harold Langford—his words, not mine.
Still, I gave Theo his space.
The evening before Harry’s funeral, the August weather had been quite warm. Molly and I sat on the top step of her back porch, taking on the light breeze that skirted over our skin. I’d made us cups of tea, and my hands stayed wrapped tightly around my mug. Molly held hers the same way. She hadn’t really said much over the past few days, either. Maybe that was the way the Langfords coped with hardships. Well, at least two of them. Rumor had it—and the rumor teller was Jensen—that Peter hadn’t stopped drinking since Harry passed away.
I sat next to Molly on that top porch step, unable to form words. What could I say that could make any of this situation better? How could I express my deepest sorrows toward a woman who’d lost her lighthouse? How would she ever find her way home again?
“Ask me,” she whispered as her feet repeatedly tapped the step. “I know you’re wondering, so please. Just ask.”
“How are you?”
“Not too good. Not too good.” Her eyes flooded with emotions, and she lowered her head. “I just don’t know if I’ll ever see them again.”
“See what?”
“The rainbows.” She set down her mug, then placed her hands against her chest and shook her head. “I think he took them all with him. He took all the rainbows, and all that’s left is…rain.”
I pulled her into my side, and she allowed herself to fall apart against me.
“You know the worst part of it all?” she whispered. “I want to go with him, but I know he’d beg for me to stay. He’d tell me heaven didn’t have enough color yet, and he’d have to spice it up before I found my way there. He’d tell me to be patient and not rush the process. He’d say the best reunions would be the ones with a lot of time and space between our last meeting, so I could yap and tell him all about what he missed. He’d ask me to stay. So… I stay.”
“I’m so, so sorry, Molly.”
“Yes, well. We were never promised forever. That’s why we made every single day count. We never lived by the idea that we shouldn’t go to bed angry. That’s just not realistic. Some nights in marriage, you’re pissed off. You’re raging for days, weeks even. But we did have the rule that when we did go to bed angry, our feet would still touch. Even if they came with grumbling and curse words, our feet always touched beneath the cover. It was a reminder that we were still us. Even when our emotions didn’t match, our hearts still did.” She smiled, but I knew it was a smile of grief. Of sorrow. “I’ll miss his voice. I’ll miss his laugh. I’ll miss his bad jokes. But I think I’ll miss his touch the most.”