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  PART FIVE AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY PRESENT DAY

  Chapter Seventeen Tesserae Aiden sat back on the couch and watched Hannah take notes. It was four sessions later, unless it was five and he was remembering wrong. One session seemed to blend into the next. Each had been used to fill in the newly remembered details of his childhood. Some details had seemed to be remembered almost the moment he’d spoken them. And surely there was still more he was forgetting. But four or five fifty-minute sessions added up to a lot of details. Especially for a man who had forgotten his own past for so many years. “Hmm,” Hannah said, and bit down on the end of her pen. She stared at her notes for a second or two. “I think we can agree that’s awfully young to start drinking. I don’t mean it as a judgment. And I’m certainly not suggesting you’re the first.” “I didn’t drink a lot, though,” Aiden said. He didn’t say it defensively. He didn’t say much of anything defensively anymore. Not to Hannah. They had shared too many sessions for that. He had told her to

  Chapter Eighteen Boo Aiden began the morning by doing something he never did. He drove straight to the cabin. On the passenger seat of the truck beside him sat the carton full of clean pottery shards with cans of adhesive, grout, and varnish perched on top. He carried the box to the door and knocked, and Gwen answered in her robe, a mug of coffee in one hand. “I’m really sorry,” Aiden said. “I think this is exactly what I swore I would never do. But I’m just kind of excited about this. I hope that’s allowed. And that maybe you’ll forgive me for it just this one time.” “Tell you what,” she said. “This will cancel out the time I called you in the middle of the night. Now we’re even.” But Aiden saw a definite shiny, light quality in her eyes, and could tell by her voice that she was not the least bit sorry to see him. It made his chest feel warm and buoyant. “Now what have you got there?” she asked. “It’s a project I thought I could do with Milo.” “With Milo? Oh, I’m not so sure about tha

  Chapter Nineteen Hope Wildly Hannah was wearing a green jacket at their next session. A tailored blazer in a deep, rich shade that made something buzz in Aiden’s chest. It was a strangely comforting sensation. He had been here for almost fifteen minutes, telling her about the week’s developments, but had just realized that the deep jewel tone reminded him of the green shards of pot that Milo was using in his art project at home. But there was more involved in his reaction to the color than that. He just couldn’t get a bead on what it meant to him. He didn’t realize he’d been staring. He hadn’t meant to stare. “I give up,” Hannah said. “Do I have a stain? Missing button?” “Oh. No. Sorry. It’s just that color. Partly it’s the color of some of the pots in Milo’s mosaic. Well. Former pots. But it’s more than that. But I can’t say what exactly. I just have a reaction to the color.” “That’s not unusual,” Hannah said. “It’s not?” “No, not at all. Colors evoke feelings in people. Even if they’

  Chapter Twenty Trust “Elizabeth’s birthday is this week,” Gwen called in from the bathroom. Aiden was still in bed. Propped up, hands laced behind his head. Savoring the fact that they woke up together now. That they were together in the most literal sense of the world. It was their third morning all living in the big house. “What day?” “Tuesday. And before you say anything, you’re absolutely right. I should have told you sooner. I’m sorry, Aiden. With everything that’s been going on with the move and Milo starting therapy and all, I let that slip by me. And I don’t just mean telling you about it, either. I almost forgot her birthday. I can’t believe that, but it’s true. I know you probably wanted more notice to think of something to get her. But if it helps any to know, so did I.” Aiden waited a moment to see if she would emerge from the bathroom. Or if she had more to say. When nothing happened, he decided to move forward with his thoughts. He had been planning to run his idea by Gwe

  Chapter Twenty-One Born It was three days later when Aiden experienced the flip side of the pain of the wake up. It had never happened before, and he had not seen it coming. It had never occurred to him that he might be the recipient of an animal’s joy. He was mucking out stalls in the barn, starting with the brood mare, Misty, who was gigantic and ungainly with foal. He looked up from his shoveling to see Penny stick her head over the door of the stall across the aisle to look at him. Maybe even to tell him something. She was happy. Not just not unhappy. Hugely, quantifiably happy. He set down his pitchfork and shovel and crossed the barn aisle to her, and held out his palm, and she nuzzled it with her nose. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Every good horse should have a little girl, don’t you think?” That was the moment when Aiden realized he had been guilty of an error in his thinking. He would have to be more aggressive about selling his horses. He saw that now. He had been holding back

  Chapter Twenty-Two Teeth It was about three days later, possibly four, when Aiden walked into the barn and heard a gentle, breathy laugh coming from Misty’s stall. He walked over and leaned on the top of the stall door. Looked in on the scene. It wasn’t Milo. Elizabeth had let herself in to see the filly. Aiden took a moment to nurse his disappointment before he spoke. Meanwhile Elizabeth had not yet looked up and seen him there. She was holding her fingers out to the filly, who was sucking on them as if she could nurse from them. Elizabeth giggled again. “I know that seems fun,” Aiden said. The girl jumped. The foal spooked away and ran back to her mother. Elizabeth put one hand to her heart, then sighed out a breath of air. “Oh. Aiden. You scared me.” “Sorry. I know that’s kind of funny, how she’ll suck on your fingers. But it’s only fun now because she doesn’t have her teeth in yet. They come in really fast. So be careful.” “Okay,” she said, seeming a little embarrassed. “I’ll watch

  PART SIX AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY-ONE FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER

  Chapter Twenty-Three Pride Aiden’s uncle Edgar met them at the airport in Buffalo. Aiden had skipped the previous Christmas going back to see his mom. There had been too much going on at home. Milo had been loath to leave his therapy and his filly. And, because Aiden’s mother didn’t tend to know who Aiden was when he visited anyway, they had let the traditional family Christmas visit slide. But only for the one year, because Aiden knew he did not have unlimited opportunities to see her. Uncle Edgar waved to them as they stepped into the baggage claim area, and Aiden was struck by how much older he looked. As though he had become elderly in just two years. He wore a snow-white beard now. The skin on his face, and especially under his eyes, looked almost translucent in its thinness. He seemed a good two or three inches shorter than when Aiden had seen him last. He grabbed Aiden in a bear hug, then turned his attention to Aiden’s family. “You must be the new wife, Gwen. So nice to meet yo

  THE WAKE UP BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS Aiden has a deep level of empathy for both people and animals. Do you believe some people are more highly sensitive than others? Do you see this as an asset or a liability? Early in the story, Aiden’s life takes a drastic turn. What do you think was the final catalyst for Aiden’s “wake up”? In the aftermath, Aiden begins to lose his friends, his girlfriend, and the life he’s known. Do you think the benefits he derived from the wake up were worth the losses? Aiden used alcohol as a means to numb his pain and memories for many years. Milo covers his pain through expressing outward anger or rage. In what ways do both coping mechanisms help them get through as a young child, but become a detriment later? How do you think nature vs. nurture impacted Milo’s acting out toward animals? Was Milo predisposed to violence and cruelty, or were those actions a result of his painful upbringing? Both Aiden and Milo come from a background of childhood abuse, and the stor

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR Photo © 2017 Laurel Renz Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of thirty-two published books. Her bestselling 1999 novel, Pay It Forward, adapted into a major Warner Bros. motion picture starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, made the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list and was translated into more than two dozen languages for distribution in more than thirty countries. Her novels Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart
the World were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List; Jumpstart the World was also a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and won Rainbow Awards in two categories. The Language of Hoofbeats won a Rainbow Award. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in many journals, including the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and the Sun, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts as well as the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her sho

  Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Allie and Bea

  Say Goodbye for Now

  Leaving Blythe River

  Ask Him Why

  Worthy

  The Language of Hoofbeats

  Pay It Forward: Young Readers Edition

  Take Me with You

  Paw It Forward

  365 Days of Gratitude: Photos from a Beautiful World

  Where We Belong

  Subway Dancer and Other Stories

  Walk Me Home

  Always Chloe and Other Stories

  The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward

  How to Be a Writer in the E-Age: A Self-Help Guide

  When You Were Older

  Don’t Let Me Go

  Jumpstart the World

  Second Hand Heart

  When I Found You

  Diary of a Witness

  The Day I Killed James

  Chasing Windmills

  The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance

  Love in the Present Tense

  Becoming Chloe

  Walter’s Purple Heart

  Electric God/The Hardest Part of Love

  Pay It Forward

  Earthquake Weather and Other Stories

  Funerals for Horses

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542047951

  ISBN-10: 1542047951

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY

  Chapter One Clouds and Shadows

  Chapter Two Falling and Breaking

  Chapter Three Owning and Answering

  Chapter Four Tearing Open Everything

  PART TWO AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY

  Chapter Five The Wake Up

  Chapter Six The Roundup

  Chapter Seven The Falling Down

  Chapter Eight The Parting

  PART THREE AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY

  Chapter Nine The Remembering

  Chapter Ten The Tightening

  Chapter Eleven The Unearthing

  PART FOUR AIDEN DELACORTE AS A CHILD

  Chapter Twelve Aiden at Age Four

  Chapter Thirteen Aiden at Age Six

  Chapter Fourteen Aiden at Age Six and a Half

  Chapter Fifteen Aiden at Age Seven

  Chapter Sixteen Aiden at Age Eight

  PART FIVE AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY

  Chapter Seventeen Tesserae

  Chapter Eighteen Boo

  Chapter Nineteen Hope Wildly

  Chapter Twenty Trust

  Chapter Twenty-One Born

  Chapter Twenty-Two Teeth

  PART SIX AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY-ONE

  Chapter Twenty-Three Pride

  THE WAKE UP BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  AIDEN DELACORTE AT AGE FORTY

  PRESENT DAY

  Chapter One

  Clouds and Shadows

  The phone jangled Aiden out of sleep. His heart raced, and he knocked over a plastic drinking glass and the alarm clock while reaching to grab the receiver.

  His panic didn’t last. The voice on the other end of the line soothed him on contact. It felt like a drink of cold water, its relief spreading down through his gut on a hot and dusty day.

  It was only one word. But it repaired everything.

  “Hey.”

  It was feminine and smooth, that word. It felt like everything in the world Aiden had found to love. Or maybe that’s genuinely what it was. He could feel his heart expand, or at least the sensation of it filling. Swelling. It ached. It was painful in a very real way, but Aiden wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

  “Oh,” he mumbled, still mostly asleep. “Gwen. Hey.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s late. I know I woke you up. I knew I would, but . . .”

  Aiden sat up on the edge of the bed. He was wearing only boxer shorts, and the air in the room felt blissfully cool against his bare chest and back.

  “But what? Are you okay?”

  In the silence that followed, he watched shadows cast by the branches of scrub oak trees sway on his bedroom wall. He looked through his window to see the dark shapes of his sleeping brood mares in the nearest pasture.

  “I guess so,” she said. “I guess I just needed some reassurance.”

  “About what?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What about it?”

  “You’re not worried about it?”

  “No. Not at all. Why would I be? I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Just . . . you know.” There was a lot that could be read into her voice. Aiden knew that. He listened as hard as he could to every word she didn’t say. “You meeting the kids and all.”

  “You’re worried they won’t like me?”

  “More that you won’t like them. It’s hard. You know. When you have kids and you meet somebody new.”

  “I’m going to love them. I like kids. I told you.”

  “I know,” she said. But she didn’t sound as though that settled much. “I should have had you meet them sooner. I was a little surprised you didn’t press the issue.”

  For a moment nobody said anything more.

  “What can I say to reassure you?” he asked.

  “Nothing, I guess. Tomorrow just has to get here. I’m sorry I woke you up for no real reason.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “I will.”

  He didn’t, though. He thought he would but he didn’t. Something about her tone. About the subtext of her words. She was worried. Not just mildly insecure. Genuinely worried.

  Maybe she was worried about nothing. But Aiden couldn’t shake the thought that maybe she knew something he didn’t.

  He purposely did his food shopping before 10:00 a.m., to be sure he would get a grocery checker who was not Gwen. Not because he didn’t want to see her—he did. But he would, soon enough. Meanwhile he did not want to see her in that context. He did not care to put her in the position of having to serve him.

  Marge was his checker that morning—a jolly middle-aged woman with glowing cheeks and quick and frequent smiles. Her eyes came up to his face and lingered a couple of beats longer than normal.

  “Aiden Delacorte, I swear,” she began, “I have never seen a smile that big on your face as long as I’ve known you. And how long have I known you? Forever?”

  It surprised him. He hadn’t realized he was smiling.

  “Pretty close, Marge. More than thirty years, anyway.”

  “And all this fancy food. Shrimp. Cocktail sauce. Parmesan cheese. Fancy fresh pasta. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a date.�
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  “I might have a date,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  He didn’t say with whom, because she knew. It was a small town. Marge was Gwen’s coworker. It went without saying. As he spoke the words, he became aware of his own smile. Hyperaware of it, in fact.

  “I didn’t know you could cook,” she said.

  “Don’t know for a fact that I can, but I’m going to give it a go.”

  “Now I just know the frozen macaroni and cheese can’t be part of this fancy date. That must be for you, then. Right? To tide you over till dinner?”

  “No, that’s for her kids. Just as sort of a fallback. You know. In case they don’t like what I’m making.”

  A moment transpired. It was silent, but there was more to it than that. Something rolled in. It reminded Aiden of a cloud suddenly moving across the sun. Bringing coolness and making everything a little darker.

  “You’ve met Gwen’s kids,” Marge said. “Right?”

  Meanwhile her hands continued to run groceries across the scanner. A bottle of wine that Aiden would not drink, but that Gwen might want with her dinner. Soda and milk for the kids. A frozen pie for dessert.

  “No. Tonight will be the first time I meet them. Why?”

  “No reason. No reason.”

  She totaled up his groceries and he squinted at the price and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. Counted out three twenties. Still, something sat on the moment. Weighed on the heads of both the people involved in this conversation. Aiden had no idea what it was, and felt ambivalent about poking it to find out.

  “You know Gwen’s kids?” he asked her when it all got too heavy.

  “Yeah. She’s brought them in the shop a few times.”

  “They nice kids?”

  “Elizabeth is a doll. Just about the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet. And very mature for thirteen. You find yourself talking to her just like she’s an adult. Milo, now . . .”

  She allowed the sentence to drift off. Meanwhile she placed Aiden’s change in his palm. Three singles and a few coins. She folded his hand around the money and held his fist in both of her hands. He met her eyes, though it felt potentially dangerous to do so.