Reminders of Him

She has my hair.
I feel Ledger approach me from behind, but I don’t care. I want to
climb into this back seat and stay here with her booster seat and her hair
scrunchie and see if I can find any other remnants of her that’ll give me
hints as to what she looks like and what kind of life she lives.
I turn around, still staring at the scrunchie. “Does she look like me?” I
glance up at him, and his eyebrows are drawn apart as he looks at me. His
left arm is resting on the top of his truck, and I feel caged between him, the
door, and the grocery cart.
“Yeah. She does.”
He doesn’t say how she looks like me. Is it her eyes? Her mouth? Her
hair? All of her? I want to ask him if we have similar personalities, but he
doesn’t know me at all.
“How long have you known her?”
He folds his arms over his chest and looks down at his feet like he
doesn’t feel comfortable answering these questions. “Since they brought her
home.”
The jealousy that rolls through me is almost audible. I suck in a
trembling breath and push back my tears with another question. “What’s
she like?”
That question makes him sigh heavily. “Kenna.” All he says is my
name, but it’s enough to know he’s done answering my questions. He looks
away from me and scans the parking lot. “Do you walk to work?”
Convenient change of subject. “Yes.”
He’s looking at the sky now. “It’s supposed to storm this afternoon.”
“Lovely.”
“You could Uber.” His eyes come back to mine. “Did they have Uber
before you . . .” His voice trails off.
“Went to prison?” I finish with a roll of my eyes. “Yes. Uber existed.
But I don’t have a phone, so I don’t have the app.”

---

“You don’t have a phone?”
“I had one but I dropped it last month, and I can’t get a new one until I
get a paycheck.”
Someone uses a key fob to unlock the car a space over from us. I
glance around and see Lady Diana walking toward the car with an older
couple and a cart full of groceries. We aren’t in their way, but I use it as an
excuse to close his door.
Lady Diana sees Ledger as she’s opening the trunk. She grabs the first
sack and mutters, “Jerk.”
It makes me smile. I glance at Ledger, and I think he might even be
smiling. I don’t like that he doesn’t seem like an asshole. It would be a lot
easier to hate him if he were an asshole.
“I’m keeping the scrunchie,” I say as I turn the cart around.
I want to tell him that if he’s still going to insist on shopping here, he
should bring my daughter next time. But when I’m in his presence, I can’t
decide if I should be polite because he’s the only thing linking me to my
daughter, or if I should be mean because he’s one of the things keeping me
from my daughter.
Saying nothing when I want to say everything is probably my best bet
for now. I glance back at him before I head into the store, and he’s still
leaning against his truck, watching me.
I go inside and return the cart to the rack and then pull my hair up with
Diem’s scrunchie and wear it for the rest of my shift.

---

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LEDGER
There are a dozen chocolate cupcakes staring at me when I walk inside the
bar.
“Dammit, Roman.”
Every week he goes to the bakery down the street and buys cupcakes.
He only buys them so he’ll have an excuse to see the woman who owns the
bakery, but he doesn’t even eat them. Which means that leaves me with the
task of eating them. I usually take the ones that survive the night to Diem.
I grab one of the cupcakes just as Roman walks through the double
doors from the back of the bar. “Why don’t you just ask her out? I’ve put on
ten pounds since you first saw her.”
“Her husband might not like that,” Roman says.
Oh, yeah. She’s married. “Good point.”
“I’ve never even spoken to her, you know. I just keep buying cupcakes
from her because I think she’s hot, and apparently I like to torture myself.”
“You definitely enjoy self-torture. You still work here for some
reason.”
“Exactly,” Roman says flatly. He leans against the counter. “So?
What’s the update on Kenna?”
I look over his shoulder. “Anyone else here yet?” I don’t want to talk
about Kenna around anyone. The last thing I need is for it to get back to the
Landrys that I’ve interacted with her outside of the one time they know of.
“No. Mary Anne comes on at seven and Razi is off tonight.”
I take a bite of the cupcake and talk with a mouthful. “She works at
the grocery store on Cantrell. She has no car. No phone. I’m starting to
think she doesn’t even have family. She walks to work. These cupcakes are
fucking delicious.”

---

“You should see the woman who bakes them,” Roman says. “Have
Diem’s grandparents decided what to do?”
I put the other half of the cupcake back in the box and wipe my mouth
with a napkin. “I tried talking to Patrick about it yesterday, but he doesn’t
even want the topic up for discussion. He just wants her out of town and out
of their lives.”
“What about you?”
“I want what’s best for Diem,” I say immediately. I’ve always wanted
what’s best for Diem. I just don’t know if what I used to think was best for
her is still what’s best for her.
Roman doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at the cupcakes. Then he
says, “Fuck it,” and he grabs one.
“You think she cooks as good as she bakes?”
“Hopefully one day I find out. Almost one out of every two couples
divorce,” he says, his voice hopeful.
“I bet Whitney could find you a nice single girl to date.”
“Fuck you,” he mutters. “I’d rather wait until Cupcake Girl’s marriage
falls apart.”
“Does Cupcake Girl have a name?”
“Everyone has a name.”
It’s the slowest night we’ve had in a long time, probably because it’s
Monday and it’s raining. I don’t usually notice every time the door to the
bar opens, but since there are only three customers right now, all eyes go to
her when she slips inside and out of the rain.
Roman notices her too. We’re both staring in her direction when he
says, “I have a feeling your life is about to get incredibly complicated,
Ledger.”
Kenna walks toward me, her clothes soaking wet. She takes the same
seat she sat in the first time she was here. She pulls Diem’s scrunchie out of
her hair and then leans over the bar and grabs a handful of napkins. “Well.
You were right about the rain,” she says, drying her face and her arms. “I
need a ride home.”

---

I’m confused, because the last time she got out of my truck, she was
so angry with me I was positive she’d never be inside of it again. “From
me?”
She shrugs. “You. An Uber. A cab. I don’t care. But first I want a
coffee. I hear you guys carry caramel now.”
She’s in a feisty mood. I hand her a clean rag and start making her a
coffee while she dries off. I look at the time, and it’s been at least ten hours
since I was in the store. “Did you just now get off work?”
“Yeah, someone called in, so I worked a double.”
The grocery store closes at nine, and it likely takes her an hour to walk
home. “You probably shouldn’t be walking home this late.”
“Then buy me a car,” she retorts.
I glance over at her, and she raises an eyebrow like that was a dare. I
top her coffee with a cherry and slide it over to her.
“How long have you owned this bar?” she asks.
“A few years.”
“Didn’t you used to play some kind of professional sport?”
Her question makes me laugh. Maybe because my short two-year stint
as an NFL player is usually the only thing people around here want to talk
about with me, but Kenna makes it seem like a passing thought. “Yeah.
Football for the Broncos.”
“Were you any good?”
I shrug. “I mean, I made it to the NFL, so I didn’t suck. But I wasn’t
good enough to get my contract renewed.”
“Scotty was proud of you,” she says. She looks down at her drink and
cups her hands around it.
She was pretty closed off the first night she came in, but her
personality is starting to slip here and there. She eats her cherry and then
takes a sip of the coffee.
I want to tell her she can go upstairs to the apartment Roman stays in
so she can dry her clothes, but it feels wrong being nice to her. It’s been a
constant battle in my head for the last couple of days, wondering how I can
be attracted to someone I’ve hated for so long.
Maybe it’s because the attraction happened last Friday, before I knew
who she was.

---

Or maybe it’s because I’m starting to question my reasons for having
hated her for so long.
“You don’t have friends in this town who can give you a ride home
from work? Family?”
She sets down her coffee. “I know two people in this town. One of
them is my daughter, but she’s only four and can’t drive yet. The other one
is you.”
I don’t like that her sarcasm somehow makes her more attractive. I
need to stop interacting with her. I don’t need her to be here in this bar.
Someone might see me talking to her, and word could get back to Grace and
Patrick. “I’ll give you a ride home when you finish your coffee.”
I walk to the other end of the bar just to get away from her.
Kenna and I head outside to my truck about half an hour later. The bar
closes in an hour, but Roman said he’d take care of it. I just need to get
Kenna out of the bar, and out of my presence so no one can tie us together.
It’s still raining, so I grab an umbrella and I hold it over her. Not that
it’ll make a huge difference. She’s still soaking wet from her walk here.
I open the passenger door for her, and she climbs inside the truck. It’s
awkward when we make eye contact, because there’s no way we aren’t both
thinking about the last time we were together on this side of the truck.
I shut her door and try not to think about that night, or what I thought
of her, or how she tasted.
Her feet are against the dash when I settle into the driver’s seat. She’s
fidgeting with Diem’s hair scrunchie as I pull onto the street.
I can’t stop thinking about what she said—about Diem being the only
person in this town she knows besides me. If that’s true, Diem isn’t even
really someone she knows. She just knows Diem is here and that she exists,
but the only person she really knows in this town is me.
I don’t like that.
People need people.
Where is her family? Where is her mother? Why has none of her
family tried to reach out and get to know Diem? I’ve always wondered why

---

no one, not even another grandparent or aunt or uncle, has tried contacting
Grace or Patrick about meeting Diem.
And if she doesn’t have a cell phone, who does she talk to?
“Do you regret kissing me?” she asks.
My focus swings from the road and over to her as soon as she asks
that. She’s staring at me expectantly, so I look at the road again, gripping
my steering wheel.
I nod, because I do regret it. Maybe not for the reasons she thinks I
regret it, but I regret it all the same.
It’s quiet all the way to her apartment after that. I put my truck in park
and glance over at her. She’s looking down at the scrunchie in her hand. She
slides it onto her wrist, and without even making eye contact with me, she
mutters, “Thanks for the ride.” She opens her door and is out of my truck
before I find my voice to tell her good night.

---

CHAPTER NINETEEN
KENNA
I think about kidnapping Diem sometimes. I’m not sure why I don’t follow
through with it. It’s not like there’s a worse life for me than the one I’m
currently living. At least when I was in prison, I had a reason I was unable
to see my daughter.
But right now, the only reason is the people raising her. And it hurts to
hate the people raising her. I don’t want to hate them. When I was in prison,
it was harder to blame them, because I was so grateful she had people who
were taking care of her.
But from right here in this lonely apartment, it’s hard not to think of
how great it would be to take Diem and go on the run. Even if it was just for
a few days before I got caught. I could give her everything while I had her.
Ice cream, presents, maybe a trip to Disney World. We’d have a lavish
weeklong celebration before I turned myself in, and she’d remember it
forever.
She’d remember me.
And then, by the time I got out of prison for kidnapping her, she’d be
an adult. And she’d probably forgive me, because who wouldn’t appreciate
a mother who would risk going back to prison just to experience one good
week with their daughter?
The only thing preventing me from taking her is the possibility that
Patrick and Grace might change their minds someday. What if they have a
change of heart and I get to meet Diem without having to break the law to
do it?
And there’s also the fact that she doesn’t know me at all. She doesn’t
even love me. I’d be ripping her from the only parents she knows, and

---

while that might sound appealing to me, it would more than likely be
horrifying for Diem.
I don’t want to make selfish decisions. I want to be a good example for
Diem, because someday she’ll find out who I am and that I wanted to be in
her life. It might be thirteen years from now before she’s able to decide for
herself whether or not she wants anything to do with me, and for that reason
alone, I’m going to live the next thirteen years in a way that will hopefully
make her proud.
I snuggle up to Ivy and try to fall asleep, but I can’t. There are so
many thoughts swimming around in my head, and none of my thoughts ever
settle. I’ve had insomnia since the night Scotty died.
I spend my nights awake, thinking about Diem and Scotty.
And now, thoughts of Ledger are added to the mix.