Chapter Thirty-Five - Lisa
We buried Mama late the same evening at Mount Nebo, not far from the largest of the cedar trees.
It was a brief and simple service, partly because of the cold and partly because me and Marcus were in no condition to stay out there for very long. Cody prayed, and we sang a hymn, and then in the last of the failing light, we laid her to rest in the pale Texas ground. I guess that little plot has seen a lot of such burials over the years.
Not many people were there; just Cody and Miss Josie, and me and Jenny and Aunt Michelle, and Brandon, and Marcus and his sister.
I cried almost the whole time, and Miss Josie did her best to try to comfort me, with whispered words about how we shouldn’t weep like those who have no hope. I knew that she of all people knew what loss felt like, and I was comforted at least a little bit.
Cody quickly filled in the grave before we all went back down to the house. Miss Josie had cooked a somber dinner, barbecued beef and pecan pie and various other things, and for a while we all gathered in the kitchen and the living room to talk in low voices. I only picked at my food and couldn’t find the heart to socialize much, even though I knew it would have been worse to be alone. I just sat beside Cody the whole time, and he held me when I seemed to need it, and that was good enough.
After a while Marcus left with his sister, and Jenny seemed to be getting ready to leave with Aunt Michelle also. But I had something else in mind, and when I was alone on the couch with Cody for a few minutes, I brought it up.
“Cody, would it be okay if I stayed here with you for a few days, till you go back to Alaska?” I asked wistfully, with my head on his shoulder. I could imagine lots of reasons why he might not think that was such a great idea, but I hoped he’d say yes in spite of it all.
“You don’t think it might make you look bad?” he asked, only half jokingly.
“I don’t care what the gossips think anymore. You and me both know that nothing improper will happen, and so does God. I just need you right now, that’s all,” I said, and he nodded.
“All right, then. I’ll only be here till Friday, though,” he reminded me.
“I know. But it’s better than nothing,” I said.
We walked home together through the pecan trees, holding hands but not saying anything. It was hard to walk on my wounded leg, and I had to lean on his arm most of the way and stop several times to rest. But eventually we got to the bunkhouse, and he silently opened the door for me. Once inside, we quietly lay down together on Cody’s big cedar bed, and then he held me while I cried myself to sleep.
That’s how it was for a few days. I had my good times, when the sun was out and I felt a little better and it seemed like life might actually go on someday. Then I’d slide off another cliff’s edge of black depression for a few hours.
Cody was always there, to hold me when I needed it, to make sure I ate and remembered to brush my teeth, to remind me not to give up on living. He took me outside when the weather was nice and tried to talk to me and make me smile, even though it didn’t work too often. Still, I thought then as I think now; it’s the quiet, loving angels of this world who ought to inspire more awe than any other kind of hero.
I still felt awful from the toxoplasmosis and the wreck and everything else, but I gradually healed, both in body and in heart.
Cody ended up taking an extra two weeks off from work to stay with me a little longer, although I suspect he probably got himself in trouble for that. He never said so, but I could read between the lines well enough to guess.
A week after the funeral, I could even smile again now and then, and by the time Cody’s birthday rolled around on the twelfth, I’d gotten to the point that I could even laugh occasionally and felt almost like my old self sometimes. There was still a shadow of pain in my heart, but nothing like what it was before.
But a fresh parting was looming ahead, when Cody had to go back to Alaska for seven more months. Two extra weeks was as much as he could manage without quitting his job completely. I was about to lose my steady rock, and I still wasn’t sure how I’d handle things with him gone.
He must have wondered about that very thing, because he asked me about it the next day while we were sitting in the gazebo by the lake. We’d just come back from having some leftover birthday cake and burgers with Miss Josie and Marcus and Brandon, which had buoyed me up more than usual. It had warmed up again after all the recent nastiness, although nobody expected it to last very long. There were already dark clouds piled up to the north beyond the lake, and little gusts of wind that hinted at another storm. But in the meantime, it was nice outside.
“Do you think you’ll be okay, if I head back up north?” he asked quietly, gazing out across the lake while he played with my hair.
“I’m sure I’ll survive. I won’t like it, but I know we’re on the downhill slide, now,” I told him.
“Yeah, but seven months is still a long time. If you need me to stay, I’ll stay,” he said.
Heaven knows I was tempted. But I knew what it would mean if I said yes, and I couldn’t let him do that.
“It’s all right. Go do what you need to do. Get the ranch back in shape, and then everything will be better for all of us. You’re not doing it just for yourself; it’s for me, too. I know that. I’ll be fine; I’ve got Miss Josie to watch out for me, and Jenny, and Marcus and Bran. I won’t fall apart, I promise. It’s time I learned how to stand on my own two feet, anyway,” I said.
“You always could,” he said.
“You think so, maybe. Boy, are you ever wrong,” I said.
“No, I know so. The way you handled Layla, and Brandon, and everything else, it’s pretty amazing, you know,” he said.
“No, not really. I just did what I had to do,” I said.
“That’s the whole point. You always did what you had to, no matter how sick and scared you might have been at the time. You’re one of the bravest girls I ever met, and it’s one of the things I love about you the most,” he said.
I’d never known that Cody felt that way about me, or that he thought I was so courageous. I certainly didn’t feel that way. But if he believed it, then maybe there might be a grain of truth to it after all. I smiled.
“Then don’t worry about me, Coby. I’ll stick it out, and then when you get home we’ll all live happily ever after,” I told him.
“Amen to that,” he agreed.
It stormed again that night, heavy and hard, with a freezing cold wind howling down the plains from Canada. Sometimes people like to say there’s nothing between Texas and the North Pole but a barbed-wire fence, and nights like that I can surely believe it. It was chilly even inside the house, and we burrowed under the covers in bed to keep warm. I snuggled up against Cody’s side and laid my head on his chest, with both his arms around me, just like I had on that other cold night in Alaska. I could hear his heart beat, and I felt warm and safe and right where I wanted to be.
“Marry me, Lisa,” he said quietly, when I was right on the edge of sleep.
“What?” I asked, not sure I’d heard him right.
“Marry me. I love you, and you’re the only one I want, for now and always. Let’s make it official,” he said. I knew those weren’t cheap words for Cody McGrath, and I was overcome with a surge of love for him.
“That’s all I’ve wanted ever since the beginning. Of course I will,” I told him, and he hugged me close.
I think that night was one of the happiest times of my life, no matter how odd the circumstances of his proposal might be. I was tucked away in a little house in the middle of a freezing storm on the Texas plains, and outside I could hear the wind whistling and howling all night long. But I was safe and warm, held close in the arms of my beautiful boy. It was bliss. In a lot of ways I felt like he was already my husband; he was so very much the heart of my world. In some ways, it felt like he always had been.