Forever & Always: The Ever Trilogy (Book 1) (14 page)

As far as your discussion of identity goes, I think you have a pretty unique view of the topic. I’ve never had the problem you do, obviously, since I’m an only child. But…do I know who I am? I don’t know how to answer that. Am I defined by who my parents are? Or were, since Mom is dead, and Dad is…absent. I mean, they raised me, they infused me with their beliefs and morals, gave me their DNA and the genetics that make up my talents and what I look like. But I’m also a product of society, right? I mean, our society is different now than when our parents were kids, and the structure and fabric of our society is a huge factor in creating who we are, right? But none of that says who I am. I’m Caden Connor Monroe, son of Aidan and Janice. I’m an artist. I guess I’m also kind of a cowboy, too. But who else am I? What else am I? I don’t know, and I don’t even know how to start answering that question.
 

I’m not a kid here. In Wyoming, I mean. I don’t think I’m a kid at all. Mom dying grew me up. Driving to Wyoming did, too, in a way. I mean, it was just a road trip, but somehow, the process of making that decision and carrying it out on my own eradicated the last bit of my childhood. I’m expected to get up at dawn with Gramps and Uncle Gerry and Ben, Miguel, Riley, and all the other ranch hands. I’m expected to pull my weight, and as Gramps’s grandson, as I get older and learn more, I’m also given more responsibility. I work from sunup to sundown, seven days a week. Before sunup and after sundown some days. I actually just got back from a twenty-hour nonstop ride around the entire perimeter of Gramps’s fence line, fixing breaks and collecting some horses that had gotten out. I mean that literally when I say twenty hours nonstop. We started at 4 a.m., and it’s past 2 a.m. now, and we just got in. I’m still in my boots as I write this, but I’m literally so tired the words are swimming on the page. I’m surprised it’s legible at all, honestly. I don’t mind the work, to be honest. It keeps me busy, keeps my mind occupied so I can’t get stuck thinking about Mom and Dad.

Anyway, I’m gonna pass out now. Talk to you soon.
 

Caden

I didn’t mention Billy Harper, or the date, or the kiss. I never would. Not my business. My business was breaking horses, foaling, herding. My business would be school. Art. Surviving. My business was
not
Ever Eliot and who she went out with or who she kissed. She was just my pen pal.

I put the letter in an envelope and sealed it, then passed out.
 

~ ~ ~ ~

The next few weeks went quickly. I got a letter back from Ever, but it was short and kind of empty. She talked about her latest painting project, an attempt to re-create a Monet piece stroke for stroke, color for color. I wrote back describing what an average day as a ranch hand on a working horse ranch was like. She didn’t mention Billy Harper again, and I didn’t ask.
 

Weeks turned into months, and then the start of the school year was approaching, and I had to decide whether to go back to Michigan.
 

“You’re goin’ back, Cade,” Gramps said, when I asked him what he thought. “You ain’t quittin’ school, that’s for fuckin’ sure.”

“No, Gramps. I mean I’d finish the last two years in Casper. Then I’d be here in the early mornings and evenings to help out, not just the summer months.”

“Oh. Well, I guess you’d best discuss that with your Pops. You know you’re welcome here, and I’d honestly be glad for the year-round help, as long as you finish school.”

“Dad won’t care.”

Gramps frowned. “He’s still your father, Caden Connor Monroe, and you ain’t an adult yet. You still owe him the respect of askin’ him, tell him what you’re thinking.”

I sighed. “I know. I just…I don’t want to go back. I’m…I’m worried he’s worse. He hasn’t even called once. Hasn’t texted. Nothing. Years past, he’d call a couple times a week to check in.”

Gramps shook his head. “I know, son, I know. But you gotta make the effort. I’ll fly you there, and if you decide to come back, I’ll help you move. I can spare about two weeks, most. We’ll rent a truck and drive you out here, if it comes to that.”

“Gramps, I don’t have nothin’ to move. Nothin’ at that house means anything to me. It’s just a bed and an empty dresser. I brought everything that was really mine that I cared about with me.”
 

Gramps bought me a one-way ticket to Michigan. I called Dad from the tarmac as the plane was taxiing, and he agreed to pick me up. He sounded like he had before: apathetic, absent. When he showed up an hour and a half later, he looked thinner than I’d ever seen him. His eyes were haggard, tired-looking. His skin was wrinkled, sagging. He hadn’t shaved, and even his scalp, which he was normally fastidious about keeping egg-smooth, was stubbled with receding gray stubble.
 

I tried not to stare at him as he drove us home—back to his house. I wasn’t sure where home was anymore. Home used to be this house, the one in Farmington where I’d grown up. But now…the ranch seemed more like home.
 

When we pulled into the driveway, he switched the car off but didn’t move to get out. He just sat with his hands on the wheel, staring out the windshield, focused on nothing. Seeing something I couldn’t see, maybe.

“Dad?”

He started, glanced at me. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I’m tired, Cade. Haven’t been sleeping well. Not for a long time. Don’t sleep much at all. Can’t eat much, either.”

“You’re not sick, are you?”

“Don’t think so. Just…I’m tired. I just don’t have any energy.”

I had no response for that. I waited for something to say, something to do, but came up empty. Eventually, I simply left him there in the truck and grabbed my single overnight bag from the bed and waited on the porch. It wasn’t until we were inside and Dad was halfheartedly stirring and adding spices to some chili he’d left simmering while he came to pick me up that realization struck him.
 

“You only brought one bag.” His voice was thin and sandpapery, a drastic change from the gruff and stentorian boom I’d grown up hearing.

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Care to explain?”

I twirled my shading pencil around my middle finger, a trick I’d worked to perfect during long boring hours in history and math classes. “I’m—I guess I’m pretty set on moving out to Wyoming permanently for the rest of high school.”

Dad didn’t answer for a very long time. I almost started wondering if he’d heard me. “Oh, really?” He set the lid back on the chili and rubbed his scalp with his palm. “What makes you say that?”

“I like it there. I…well, I don’t really have any friends here, and—I’d just rather be there.”

“I see.” He turned away from me, snatching a paper towel from the roll and wiping the counter. “Just like that, huh?”

“Look, Dad, I—all there is here for me is you and school. There, I’m working, and I can draw at school and stuff, and I—”

“I get it.” He was scrubbing vigorously at a spot on the counter, although I didn’t see anything on the counter that needed cleaning. “You need me to sign off on the transfer?”

“I guess I was thinking maybe you could emancipate me.”

His eyes registered shock, hurt, and I winced to think I’d hurt him. “Why?”

“Just because it would be easiest. I’m basically on my own anyway. Gramps will be paying me ranch hand wage, and—”

“No. There’s no need for that. You’re sixteen. I’m fine with you moving to Wyoming, as long as Gramps is okay with it. But I’m alive, and I’m available. I get that you want your space and don’t need me anymore, but I’m not going to emancipate you.”

“It’s not that, Dad.” I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, why I’d even considered emancipation.
 

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just…” I couldn’t bring myself to say that I was worried for him, for his health. For his…longevity.

“Move to Gramps’s ranch. Fine. I’ll sign off on that. But that’s it.”

I nodded. “Okay, then.” I wasn’t going to push the issue.
 

He sighed and went sort of limp, leaning on the counter and staring out the window listlessly. “Why’d you come back, then? Why’d you come back at all?”
 

God, he sounded so…lost. And lonely. I didn’t know what to say to him, what wouldn’t hurt him further. “I—it just seemed like the right way to do it, I guess.”

“Meaning it was Gramps’s idea.” He pushed away from the counter, heading toward his study. “Stay as long as you like. You know where things are.” And then he was gone, closing the study door behind him.
 

The kitchen echoed with his absence. The chili smelled good, but I knew it wasn’t done yet. Dad always ate at seven, and it wasn’t quite six. I heard the faint strains of music emanating from his office, and I recognized “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals. Sunlight poured in from the west-facing window, golden and brilliant. A bird chirped.
 

My stomach twisted, and something inside me ached, for no reason at all.

And then I heard a
thump
from the study, and I knew.

Eighteen steps from kitchen to study door. Half a twist of the wrist, vision blurring, the door sliding open slowly on silent hinges.

Well, it’s one foot on the platform/And the other on the train…

He lay on the floor on his side, curled up into a fetal position. His right hand clawed at the left side of his chest, and his eyes were wide and calm, tinged only a little by fear. He wasn’t breathing, but struggling for it, or struggling perhaps against the instinct to fight for breath.
 

I collapsed to my hands and knees beside him, fumbling my phone out of my pocket. “Dad…no. Please, no.” I unlocked the phone, tapped the icon to make a call, and had the nine and the one dialed when I felt his hand, heavy and urgent, on mine.
 

“No…Cade. Too—too late.”

“No, it’s not, Dad. They can get here and you’ll be fine. Just fight, okay? Please? Just hold on. Don’t—oh, god, oh, god—” I heard myself sobbing. “Don’t die on me, Dad. Not you, too.”

He gazed at me with soft, calm eyes. “I died with—with Jan. I’m just—just catching up to her.” He paused to wheeze, wince, and the light in his eyes faded.
 

“No, Dad. No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said about leaving. I love you.”

“No sorry. Don’t. Live. Love.” He squeezed my hand with his, sudden frantic strength crushing my bones, but I didn’t pull away. I squeezed back and cried like a baby. “Love you, Cade. Always.”

And then the light faded, faded, and was gone. The bruising strength in his huge hand vanished, sluiced away. I couldn’t breathe.
 

“Dad?” I shook him. “No!” I screamed. “No!”

There was nothing after that. Only a hand going cold, and my voice going hoarse, giving out.

~ ~ ~ ~

I woke up in my childhood bed, the smell of cigarette smoke touching my nose.

Gramps.

I sat up. Gramps was at my desk, flipping through one of my old sketchbooks. Anyone else and I would’ve lost my temper a little, but it was Gramps, and I couldn’t do that with him. My window was open, and as he flipped pages, he sucked a drag on the cigarette, blew it out the window, ashing into an empty beer can every once in a while. Gramps would flip, flip, flip, then pause to examine a sketch, flip again, drag in and blow out, ash, flip, flip, flip.
 

“Can’t remember what movie it is, but there’s a line in a movie,” he said, his voice thick and scratchy. “‘No parent should have to bury their child,’ the line is.”

“That’s from
The Lord of the Rings. The Two Towers
. Theoden, King of Rohan says it.” I’d gone through a phase, the year before art camp at Interlochen, where I’d watched those movies one after another for months on end. I could quote all three movies backward and forward.

“Ah. Yeah. So it is. You brought them with you to the ranch a few years back.”
 

“How’d you get here? When, I mean?”

“Your Grams had a feeling. I caught the flight after yours. Found you in there, with him. I think you’d been there a while. Not sure how long, but he was…he’d been gone a while.” Gramps shut the book and came to sit on the bed near my feet, the bed creaking under his weight. “You got shit luck, Cade.”

I started to sob. “I know. God, I know. I watched…I watched him die. Just like Mom. He…he said he’d died with Mom, that he was just catching up to her.”

“Sh-shit.” Gramps rubbed at his face, thumbed the corner of his eye. “Your dad and I had our differences, but…he was still my son. And I loved him. I was proud of him, you know. I don’t think…I don’t think I ever told him, but I was. He’d made good for himself, goin’ his own way, doin’ his own thing. Made good, for damn sure.”

 
“What now?” I whispered.

Gramps wiped at his face again, huffing in a deep breath, letting it out, broad, hard shoulders spreading and curling back in. “I don’t know, Cade. I don’t know. Carry on, one day at a time. S’all you can do, I think.” Carry on, one day at a time. I wasn’t sure how to do even that. Gramps clapped me on the shoulder as he stood up. “Take your time, Cade. I’ll handle things.”

Take my time? To do what? I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I was empty inside, and wished I could go to sleep and stay that way. But my eyes were open, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep anytime soon.

I ended up at my desk, drawing. I don’t even know what I drew. Only that sunlight shifted through the window, rising and falling as daylight streamed past me. I remember lines, arcs, and whorls, abstractions of the sorrow inside me. Heavy shading, shadows cast by nothing. I remember a raven, stark black on the white page. Wings furled, shown in profile, beady eye glinting and reflecting something hidden. A pocket watch hung by a chain from the raven’s mouth, the hands stopped at 6:35.
 

Then a lined sheet of paper, slightly angled to the left on the desk.
 

Ever,

That summer we met, Interlochen. The lake. Drawing all day. Sitting on the dock together. It was the last of my childhood, I think. The last happy days of my life.