I'm looking for a way to feel you hold me
Feel your heartbeat just one more time
Reaching back, trying to touch the moment
Each precious minute that you were mine
How do you prepare
When you love someone this way
To let them go a little more each day
-'Beautiful': Amy Grant and Vince Gill
It took every single bit of my willpower to start that motorcycle and leave Maggie standing there to deal with Jonathon's rage. But I knew I couldn't tip my hand.
Not yet.
And beating the snot out of him the old fashioned way, to protect a woman I had supposedly only met minutes before, would have definitely been a tip-off. I just hope to God he didn't do anything more than yell at her.
Laying on the same boulder that Maggie had tried so desperately to stay on that night midnight swimming at the lake, I glance around taking in the gathered crowd of young adults. The hot August sun did nothing to chase them away, if anything it drew them out even more. I can't remember this area of Willow Lake ever being as packed with people as it is today.
The sound of tires screeching draws my attention back towards the parking lot. I knew he'd drag her out here, he does it every Saturday, whether she has to work or not. It surprised me when she offered to show me herself where the lake was, I certainly hadn't been expecting it. Maggie has never been the most trusting person in the world, especially when she doesn't know you. It takes a long time to get underneath the shell she's created for herself since Frankie died. I can only imagine how thick it is now, after the last year. So when she was willing to just hop on the back of my motorcycle it sure came as a surprise.
A welcome one though.
It was almost like she already knew me. That makes this whole thing just a little bit easier. My eyes continue to follow Maggie as she walks down the small slope of a hill, leaning down to spread her towel out on the browning grass. As if she felt my stare on her, she glances up to where I'm perched on her rock, holding my gaze for a moment before Jonathon comes up behind her, a rough hand landing on her shoulder. I couldn't hear them from the distance I was at, but I could clearly read the irritation in Maggie's eyes. Shrugging the hand off of her, she turned angry eyes out towards the water, ignoring Jonathon. He stood there for a few moments, watching her back, his face pink from anything but the sun. I stared as he turned and stalked off back up the hill, joining his brother Braeden and his two other cronies.
"This rock taken?" I pull my eyes away from Maggie to the familiar voice behind me.
"Go for it."
She smiles at me, hurriedly laying her own towel down on the boulder adjacent to me. Reaching a manicured hand out towards me, she introduces herself. "I'm Kendall, Kendall Hart."
Reaching over I take her offered handshake. "Billie Monroe."
"I don't think I've seen you around here before. New to town?"
"Something like that." I shrug a little bit, not exactly lying. I find myself turning my attention away from Kendall and back to Maggie. I had almost forgotten how incredibly gorgeous she is. Especially in a bikini. It's her favorite one actually, a light aqua color that completely brings out that amazing tan of hers. She actually looks a bit at peace, soaking up the sun, her eyes covered by the dark lenses of her sunglasses. But there's a storm raging under the outwardly calm exterior, I'm sure of it.
"Do you know Maggie?" Kendall never was one for the quiet.
"Do you?"
Kendall smiled, before a shade of something, sadness, regret, I'm not sure, settled over her features. "Yeah, Maggie's one of my best friends."
"Really?" That was a relatively new development.
"Oh yeah. After my sister Bianca died, I kind of took it upon myself to look after Maggie for her. It helps that we work together too."
"Your sister and Maggie were close?" I couldn't help myself.
Kendall glanced away from me to look at Maggie, who still hadn't move from her previous sprawled out position on her towel. "You could say that."
I decided maybe I had pushed a little too far, time to backtrack a bit. "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't have pried."
Kendall shakes her head a bit, a wistful smiling ghosting past her lips. "No, it's ok. As much as I miss my sister, and as hard as it is for me, day in and day out, with her not here. It's that much harder for Maggie."
I was touched by Kendall's sincerity. "You both must have been very close to her then."
She blushed a bit at that. "In two very different ways though." Turning away from her view of Maggie she refocused her attention on me. "Maggie and my sister were in love. In fact, they were together the night Bianca died."
So apparently Maggie does remember some of it. I was under the impression that she completely blacked out the entire night. Talk about a double edged sword.
Before I could come up with some type of platitude to keep Kendall talking, she continued on her own. "They found Maggie the next morning, out along the old Lancaster Pike, disoriented, with a huge goose egg on her head and a swollen lip. The whole way to the hospital she apparently kept calling out my sister's name." Kendall stopped to wipe away a few stray tears that had managed to escape from her mascara'd lashes. "The on duty ER doc happened to be a friend of both Maggie and Bianca's, so Maria knew that something had to be really wrong. So she called our Uncle Jackson and he went looking for Bianca where they had found Maggie."
Oh God, I had no idea that Jackson had been involved with the search. How could I have not known that?
Kendall sniffled a bit, continuing on. "I got the call a couple hours later. They had found her in a cabin about a mile away from the road." She shook her head, as if trying to ward off the memories of that day from seeping back into her conscious. "Jack had asked me to tell Maggie while he went to break the news to our mother, but I knew, if what he had said was true, and Mags had been screaming for my sister, she already knew. But I went down to the hospital anyway."
While I had known a lot of the details from that morning and the week following it, hearing it first hand, from Kendall no less, almost shattered my façade of overly curious newcomer. I gathered myself quickly, "And did she?"
Kendall nodded, her eyes flickering over towards where Maggie was still laying. "Before I even had a chance to go see her, Maria came up to me, crying. She begged me to try and calm Maggie down, she was worried that she was going to give herself a stroke, her blood pressure had shot up so high. I could hear her whimpering for my sister all the way out in the hallway." Again Kendall stopped to wipe away the stray tears. While I continued to feel more and more guilty for dredging all of this up for her.
"That must have been horrible for you, your own grief and then seeing someone else's."
"Billie, I don't think there's even a word for the look that was in her eyes that morning. Shattered seems far too simple. And the horrible thing is, in some strange way, Maggie's grief lessened my own. In taking it upon myself to help her get through my sister's death, I was able to cope better myself."
I tried to ease her guilt a bit. "Well I'd say you did a great job, she seems ok now." Which actually isn't true. Someone who didn't know her the way I do wouldn't notice it. Billie Monroe wouldn't notice it.
But Bianca Montgomery would.
