laura-anderson-kurk

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we__e deprived of something meaningful.

With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can__ explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here and safe on clean sheets.

Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn__ change who we were or what had happened.

When Dad was in the middle of a description of the hotel__ laundry facility, I interrupted. __hy haven__ you told me today, like you do every day, that Mom__ going to be better soon?__e looked up then. His gaze locked with mine and held a promise that no matter what he said or didn__ say, he and I would ride this out together. __ haven__ told you that today, Meg, because I don__ know.

I__ felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we__ all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around.A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess.And wasn__ that just how life usually felt__ confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

Jo told me once that she was an old woman everywhere but in her studio. __here I__ only myself,_ she__ said. Standing in the middle of masterpieces that only Jo had ever seen and touched, I knew what she meant.

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls linger_they do. They linger a bit before they turn toward eternity. It could be that no matter how perfect their future will be, the past still tugs for a moment.

Look at this one._ I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent, knobby collarbone. He looked_complicated and hungry. She__ captured him focused intensely on a book, his face pressed against a wall like he was resting. Or waiting.

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.

I__ stumbled upon the inner sanctuary of a woman who loved the world. Loved the faces of people she saw. Loved the way a hand looked when it was relaxed. Loved the way a woman looked when she touched her own face. The way a man looked when he opened himself to her. Loved the way wind changed a tree or a field or a child__ hair. The beauty of a neck meeting a shoulder. The softness of a smile that wasn__ forced.

I really want to believe that when our Quiet Waters kids wake up in the middle of the night, scared, they__l remember being in their bunks with John and Kate and Whit and me right there protecting them,_ he said. __ hope we gave them that sense of belonging because I know there__l be times in their lives when grasping at those bonds could mean the difference between making it and not.

He was taking a leap here, negotiating with a crackhead, under the table, in a dark cantina. The courage etched on his face came from loving Aidia so much he__ close his eyes and walk through fire to see her safe.

I could__e gone on and on but the truth was all that mattered. __y brother died because someone was jealous.

I__e known her long enough to know that this was purely intentional._ He peered sideways at me, judging my reaction. __ like her just fine, but you should watch yourself around her. Tennyson is given to obsession, and her obsessions tend to run toward trouble. It__ kind of a Wyoming thing to push the whole __ild West_ routine to its limits.

Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, __ear God, Meg, you__e glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That__ so adorable._ Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother.

Is there one in particular, Tennyson?_ Henry said, ducking out from under her arm. __ could arrange a meeting._ __eah, the one from Texas_what__ his name?___hat would be Dylan. But he__ a nice guy and you__ break his heart. He dropped out of Texas A&M to come up here and saddle bum around with my horses year-round. Knowing your dad, I think you__ better be looking for a pre-med honors student.___eave my dad out of this.

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,_ he said, quietly this time. __e carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name.

I__ never seen him bare-chested. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable to me. His smooth, tight skin wrapped around the long muscles he__ developed over a lifetime of hard work. He found a shallow spot and sat, settling me onto his lap, holding my back to his chest. I couldn__ stop shaking and it had nothing to do with the water or with being half dressed in a cave with a boy.__othing else matters,_ Henry said in my ear. ____ here. Start at the beginning.