“Don’t do that.”
“Do what? Smoke?”
“No. Don’t be a dick. I know you’re hurtin’, Daddy. I see it.”
“You don’t know the half of it, girlie.” He slid off the tailgate, hiding a wince when the impact with the ground sent a sharp pain from his heel to his hip. He dropped the cigarette on the blacktop before he ground it out with his boot heel.
“I do know how bad you’re hurtin’, because I’ve seen the other half.” Keely moved toward him, snaking her arms around his waist, burying her face on his chest, her shoulders heaving.
His response was automatic. Ingrained. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. His sweet baby. She’d always be his baby no matter how old she got.
“I’m sorry,” she said through choked sobs.
And he’d forgive her no matter how bratty she acted. “I know you are.”
Keely tilted her head back and met his gaze. In that moment she looked so much like her mother, his heart swelled even as it ached. “You deserved better from me. From all of us. I’ve never spoken for my brothers, and I ain’t about to start now. I’m sorry I thought my connection to her should mean more than yours. I know better. I saw it that day of your surgery and it freaked me the hell out.”
“That what you mean by you’ve seen the other half?”
She nodded. “You and Mom; you’re two halves of a whole. She knew. Right away. I told her to calm down, it was routine surgery, the orthopedic surgeon performed that procedure ten times a week and it was nothing to worry about.”
In seventy-four years of life Carson had never been put under. As they’d wheeled him in to pre-op, Carolyn promised she’d be waiting for him on the other side. She had no idea how true that statement had been at the time.
“The minute you coded on the operating table, she stood up in the waiting room and said, ‘Come back to me. I’m right here. Where I’ve always been, where I’ll always be. I love you. Please. Come back to me.’”
That jarred him; what did it mean that he’d been reciting those exact same words to Carolyn every time he’d left her side the last week?
That you are two halves of a whole.
Carolyn had never told him what she’d said to yank him back. He had a vague recollection of being in a black void and then a sensation of floating away. Not that he’d seen people or places or a bright light or anything that defined his idea of heaven. He’d just heard Carolyn’s voice, pleading with him, and he’d battled his way back to find her.
Then later—minutes, hours, he hadn’t been sure of the time elapse—he’d woken up in a hospital bed with his wife sitting beside him. One hand held his, her other hand rested on his heart. Carolyn’s tears sliced through him until he realized they were tears of joy.
She’d whispered, “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Sugar—”
“I can’t… You died on that operating table, Carson. For two minutes you were gone. Gone. Away from me for good. Forever. You’re here and I’m so blessed.” She stood and kissed every inch of his face. The softness of her lips and the sweep of her breath on his skin, the scent of her shampoo and the occasional teardrop were a potent mix of love and fear and gratitude. So when her lips finally found his, when she looked in his eyes and said, “You are my life, Carson McKay, I’ll never survive a world without you in it,” his own tears fell without shame.
“You’ve kept me grounded every moment of every day for the last fifty years. Only you could fight god and nature for me and win.”
“Because I know you’d do the same for me.”
And I have. Sweet Jesus I’d fight the devil himself to have you back with me, whole, because I’m half of nothing without you.
“Daddy?”
He blinked and realized he was outside, in a parking lot, with his daughter. What did it say that this flashback stuff no longer spooked him? Because he feared if Carolyn didn’t pull through that’s all he would have of her? And he’d rather be lost in memories of his life with her and their past than face the reality of a future without her?
Don’t think that way.
He refocused on Keely. “What, punkin?”
“I’m sorry for givin’ you grief.”
“You’ve been givin’ me grief since the day you were born. But it ain’t all your fault. I tend to be overprotective of the women in my life.”
“Gee, ya think?”
Her gaze was so open and sweet that he couldn’t help but reach out and stroke her cheek. “Smarty-pants.”
“I knew from the time I was a little girl that you and Mom had the heart-body-and-soul kind of love everyone dreams of. As I grew up I knew I’d never settle for anything less.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know.” Her chin dropped to her chest and her hair hid her face. “After all this shit happened with Mom, Jack told me what you said to him on our wedding day. That a husband’s first priority is always his wife. Period. To love her, cherish her and protect her above all else. That you’d done that for your wife and you expected he’d do the same for me. Even if it went against what you and Mom wanted for me. The bond between parents and children was special. But a bond between husband and wife was sacred.”
Keely looked up; those big blue eyes glistened with tears.