I park the Bronco and jump out, heading over to the stroller at a full run. When I get there I see her, spread out on the ground in front of a headstone, lying completely still, her arms outstretched, like she’s desperately trying to hug the grave. Like she’s desperately trying to hug her dead fiancé who lies under it.
My world stops and all I see, feel, and hear is her pain.
The pelting rain competes with a screaming Kate for attention and the world starts up again.
“Ashleigh?”
She is soaked, I am soaked. Kate—I look over at her and she’s half protected from the stinging drops by the canopy, but she too is soaked.
I kneel down in the grass and touch Ashleigh’s back. “Ash?”
She takes a long gasp and lets out a wail punctuated by the crashing thunder overhead.
My heart is in pieces. I’m shattered into billions of pieces with the sight of her grief.
“Ashleigh, we need to go. It’s raining. The baby—” I look over at Kate and she is in full-on wail mode right now. “I’ll put her in the truck, OK? Stay here. OK?”
I grab the stroller and push. I try to hurry, run even, but the soggy grass is not cooperating and I just make it worse. When I get to the Bronco it takes me a few minutes to figure out how to get the f**king seat to detach from the stroller. Once that’s done I buckle Kate into the backseat and shove the unfolded stroller into the cargo area. I do not have time to decipher that bullshit.
Kate roars her complaints. Her face is turning red from the crying and her little fists are shaking as she protests everything that just happened.
Fuck. I need to get Ash, but Kate—
I look around. I’m conflicted. How bad of a parenting sin is it to leave a baby alone in a vehicle?
The rain is still coming down hard, harder, maybe. I can’t leave Ashleigh out there in the rain. She’s falling to pieces on top of her dead lover. She needs me.
Kate is upset, she’s loud with her crying, she’s turning herself red—and that scares the shit out of me.
But Ashleigh is coming to terms with something life-crushing. Ashleigh is experiencing the worst moment of her life, maybe. I stand there, the rain running down my face, undecided. I’m back on that f**king mountain in Loveland and everyone I know is buried under a sea of white.
I slam the door of the Bronco and the sounds of the wailing baby fade. Kate is safe in the truck. She’s not out in the rain. She’s upset, but she is not hurt.
I turn away and jog back over to Ashleigh. She hasn’t moved and the rainwater is starting to puddle up around her. I kneel down and put my hand on her back. “Ashleigh?”
There is nothing but sobs from her. She is face down in the grass, sopping wet, muddy, and dying of a broken heart. I lie down next to her and push my face into her neck. “Ashleigh, please.”
She turns her head and I almost wish she didn’t. Her eyes are so bloodshot they scare me. Her cheeks are covered in mud and stray pieces of grass, and her hair sticks to her skin. Long strands are wedged between her trembling lips. “I can’t do it, Ford.”
“Can’t do what, Ash?”
“Live without him. I don’t want to live without him.”
Oh. My. Fuck. “Ashleigh—”
“I have so many things I need to say and I can’t say them. There’s nothing here, Ford. I thought I’d feel him here. I thought—” She hiccups and pushes her face back into the grass, then turns back and gasps for air. “But they never even found his body. He was blown up, into tiny little pieces. In some country filled with people who would do it again and never even blink. They blew up my Tony. He was the only one who loved me. The only one. And now I have no one. And he doesn’t even know, Ford. He doesn’t even know I had the baby. He missed it.”
Her pain escapes as a long mourning wail.
And I have no idea what to do.
“I’d do anything, Ford. Anything, if I could just talk to him one more time. Just lie on his chest and have his arms around me one more time so I could tell him all these things he needs to know. Why can’t we get one last moment? Why can’t I have one last moment with him? I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why I had to lose him. I just need a moment. Just one moment.”
I stare at her as my mind races with possibilities, solutions to this problem I know I can solve. I have all the answers, that’s what Dallas told Ash that night. I’m the guy with the answers and she needs me.
I lie down in the grass next to her. “Come here.” I grab her upper arms and she’s like a rag doll, limp. Dead weight. Empty. I pull her on top of me and wrap my arms around her, her sobs rocking against my chest. “Tell me, Ashleigh. Tell me all those things you need him to know. I’ll make sure he gets the message.”
Her crying stops abruptly and she lifts her head to look me in the eyes. Snot is running out of her nose and she sniffs. “Did he send you, Ford? Did he send you to save me?”
I break again. All this time she was asking if her dead lover sent me to help her.
All I can do is stare and nod. Her dark eyes are filled with sadness. But for a fraction of a second there’s hope there too. Hope that I can give her what she needs. I clear my throat and find my voice. “Yes, Ashleigh. He sent me.”
She drops her forehead to my chest and cries again, but this time it has a feeling of relief. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew the moment you asked me to come in your hotel room. I knew he was there that night, looking over me. Trying desperately to stop me from making a big mistake. And he couldn’t contact me himself, so he sent you. He sent you, Ford.”