The regret came with the sunset, the usual time of day when everything hurts more, stings harder, feels worse. The homesick hour. Whoever named it Golden Hour never met my mind because it's a searing ache that catches my breath in my throat and leaves me in tears if I'm not busy while it's happening. It's been that way since I was very young and Bailey was suddenly too old to be sent with me to the family farm for the summer and suddenly I was the only child there, working in the sun, standing in the living room watching the river as the sun set over the hills and wishing I was with someone who understood me. The moment I hit double digits I started spending summers with Lochlan and he turned them into a magical time of day but I still fight against that weird feeling of complete and utter abandonment. Bailey and I are not as close as I wished we had been. We're too far apart in age but at the same time she was more of a parent than our parents and I miss her every day.
I miss him too. I picked up my phone and stared at it. A single word message this morning confirming safety on the other side and I haven't responded. I am to forget. I am to try. I am to follow these new rules only I don't know who they're for. Him or me? What's the point of all this again? Oh, right. Improvement in the immediate, alarming issues and then a head-start or a fresh start or a new start or whatever the fuck this is. I don't know. I don't care.
I pick up my phone and type a reply and then I erase it. I type another and then I erase that one too and it's like he knows I'm here. Another message pops up from him. He probably saw me typing but then nothing went through. The second message is just a heart.
Oh, he's trying. This is good. I send one back, off the hook, out of the fire and the frying pan and I turn off my screen, putting my phone in the pocket of my sweater.
***
It's dark finally and we got through a mountain of early-spring yardwork. It's a new season. It's another fresh start and I am throwing myself into doing good. Into doing better. New music, new haircut, new jacket. New mittens. New gardening gloves and new shoes. A whole new me. New church on the podcast but piped through the big speakers while we listen and eat our breakfast in the easy silence of a rainy Sunday. New season. New hurt.