He moved through the trees into the grass, feeling the warmth of the sun shining on his head and beating through his tee.
He walked through the grass, his mind registering the cool of the turf on his bare feet.
Something you didn’t get in Arizona.
Something you got in Kentucky.
He lifted his head from his study of the grass, his eyes took in the scene and his body rocked to a halt.
Brand was in the lake, screwing around, able to entertain himself just as he was skilled at entertaining others. He was happy to be swimming on his own.
Kara was in her bikini at the side of the lake, feet probably sunk to the ankles in mud. Still, she was smiling and bouncing in the water, a giggling, squealing Jesse in her arms.
Sylvie was sitting at the end of the pier in shorts and a cami, her tanned legs over the side, her arms behind her, weight in her hands, head tipped back to the sun. The huge rock that he’d placed a diamond encrusted band under in Vegas two months after she moved to Phoenix blinking in the rays.
As he suspected, neither of his kids had a problem with him making Sylvie his wife. They also didn’t blink when told they were getting another sibling. Brand had two new people to jabber to and Kara had two new people to love.
They were happy.
Sylvie was happy.
So was Creed.
He forced himself to come unstuck and started moving again thinking what he thought when Kara was put in his arms. When Brand was set there. When he tucked his and Sylvie’s bundled Jesse close. When he studied his Sylvie, sleeping in sheets filled with rose petals.
He was thinking his Dad would like one fuckuva lot all the love that Creed had created, but better, earned.
“You got him?” he called to Kara as he put his foot up on the pier.
“Yeah, Dad,” Kara called back and shit, she was growing into her beauty. A year, two, he was going to be fucked.
God, he hoped the kid in Sylvie’s belly was another boy.
Please, God, he prayed, let it be another boy.
He moved down the pier and saw Sylvie had twisted, her torso just slightly but her neck all the way around. Her arms were still behind her. The diamonds he gave her twinkling. The green at her neck sparkling.
Every day, every single day, she wore his green.
Every day.
She smiled at him.
Warmth that had nothing to do with sun radiated down the pier and saturated him all the way through.
Creed smiled back.
There she was, his woman wearing his ring, his green with his baby in her belly sitting at the end of their pier.
His Sylvie.
His dreamweaver, able to weave dreams doing nothing but sitting on a pier and smiling.
The way it always was.
The way it always would be.
He stopped at the end by his wife and put the cooler down. She instantly flipped the top open. Creed bent and rolled up his jeans.
When he got them up, he settled at the end of the pier with Sylvie, his feet in the water and he saw hers were covered to her ankles, her watery toes painted a bright pink, the same color that was on her nails. His feet were covered up to the tops of his calves.
She handed him a frozen Snickers bar, he took it and she tore into hers.
Pregnant, his woman could eat. He’d never seen anything like it. She consumed everything in sight.
She also didn’t slow down and she was nourishing two so she needed a lot of energy.
Then again, not pregnant, his woman could eat.
She just ate like she lived, consuming life and enjoying the fuck out of it.
It was one of the myriad reasons he loved her.
Creed ripped open his candy bar and slid his arm along Sylvie’s shoulders.
She leaned into him, head to his shoulder and bit hard into her Snickers.
Creed followed suit and his eyes moved to the lake.
They were back in Kentucky because they told the kids a little of their history and Kara and Brand were curious about where their Dad came from, something, for obvious reasons, he had never shared much about. Something, because of this, they’d always been curious about.
Now they were in the lake that, since they could cogitate, they’d seen on their father’s back.
Creed didn’t want to come and Sylvie kept her mouth shut even though he knew she didn’t want to come either. She did this so he wouldn’t put his foot down and not come and therefore not give this to his kids.
Sitting there, eating a frozen Snickers bar, holding his pregnant Sylvie on the spot where he gave her her first green, practically on the spot where she gave him her virginity, his three kids splashing around him, he wondered why the fuck they hadn’t come sooner.
“We need a dog,” Sylvie said through frozen chocolate, caramel, nuts and nougat.
She had said this repeatedly since approximately seventeen hours after moving into his house in Phoenix.
“Gun would hate a dog,” he replied, having said this repeatedly since approximately seventeen hours after she moved into his house in Phoenix.
“You spoil that cat like she was your child,” Sylvie bitched and bit off another hunk of candy bar.
“Does she depend on me to eat?” he asked.
“Creed.”
That was all she said.
That meant yes.
“Does she depend on me to keep a roof over her head?”
“Jesus,” she muttered.
“Does she depend on me for affection?”
“Partially. She also depends on me, Kara, Brand and now Jesse,” Sylvie returned.
Creed ignored that.
“Does she depend on me to enforce rules so she gets along in our household?” Creed kept going.
“Like Gun follows rules,” she mumbled.
Creed ignored that too.
“So she’s like another child and if a dog’s gonna make her unhappy, we’re not gettin’ a fuckin’ dog.”
“Jesse loves dogs.”
“Jesse’s gonna have to wait until he has the body coordination to feed it to get one.”
“You’re so strict,” she muttered.
“I’m a Dad. That’s what Dads are.”
She pulled slightly back so she could tip her head to look at him.
When her green eyes locked with his, quietly, she said, “Creed, I want a dog.”
To which Creed immediately replied, “When we get home, I’ll get you one.”
She grinned.
Creed bent his head and kissed her.
Her lips tasted partly of Snickers but mostly of sun…
And Sylvie.
Thirteen hours later…
Creed stood beside the bed in the dark.
Sylvie was in it, on her side, her legs curled up.
Jesse was in his Diamondback pajamas on his back, tucked to her front with her arm around him. He had his arms over his head, his legs splayed out, his little fist tucked against Sylvie’s lips.
Carefully, Creed pulled the sheet up to his wife’s waist before he turned to his bag, dug into the bottom and pulled out the envelope and the flashlight.
Silently, he left the room, the hotel and got in their rental.
Then he drove.
He entered from the south side and parked where his research told him it would be.
He shut down the ignition and sat in the car.
“Understand why I gotta do this,” he said into the car.
As ever, over the years when Creed spoke to his father, Brand Creed didn’t reply. And as ever, over the years when Creed spoke to his father, he hoped like Christ his father heard.
And this time understood.
Creed got out, turned on the flashlight and illuminated the headstones as he walked until he found it.
Bissenette.
He turned off the light, shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans, ripped open the envelope and sprinkled the grass with its contents.
Jesse’s hair. Not the first that had been clipped, that was pressed in a frame that sat on Sylvie’s nightstand.