Wild Rose Water

By Red L. Jameson

Karina DeRoss lines up forty Ambien, intent on terminal sleep. Just months ago, she lost her only child to a fentanyl overdose. But instead of a final exit, she finds herself in snowy Choteau, Montana, her hometown, rescued by her aging and alcoholic parents. Then she runs into her childhood best friend, the one person she betrayed as much as her Emma.

Darren Hassack promised himself he’d never forgive Karina. Back in junior high, she’d thrown him away for the popular crowd. And she’d known he was on his own without her. His Blackfoot and Hutterite heritage meant he straddled an invisible line of race and “otherness” yet never had a foothold on either side. But one look at his now shattered, long-ago best friend, and he finds himself not only offering his shoulder to cry on but his own home for her to recover, and a job as an extra hand for this year’s barley crop.

A Korean proverb says that when a child dies, you bury the child in your heart. It is a grief swaddled and held close, but it’s nearly unbearable to witness, especially for Darren who has never dealt with his own grief, let alone his loss of trust in Karina. As winter turns to spring and the night stays a midnight blue, grief will break them both. They must decide if they want to rebuild to live, truly live.

Wild Rose Water explores the connections we have to our past, to our grief, to the land we call home, and to love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red L. Jameson
• Release date: Jun 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005154943

Red L. Jameson

Red L. Jameson lives in the wilds of Montana with her family. While working on a military history master’s degree, she doodled a story that became her bestselling, award-winning romance, Enemy of Mine, part of the Glimpse Time Travel Series. After earning her gigantic master’s—the diploma is just huge, she couldn’t stop doodling stories, more Glimpse stories—because she couldn’t get enough of hunky Highlanders and buttoned-down Brits—and other stories, a paranormal romance series and a contemporary series, which grew into the pen name R. L. Jameson, under which she writes cerebral and spicy erotic romance. While working on yet another master’s degree—nowhere near as giant as the first, she wrote her first women’s fiction novels. But no matter which genre she writes, her novels always end with a happily ever after.She loves her readers, so please feel free to contact her at http://www.redljameson.com

Book preview

March

March subdivision marked by roses in water

Chapter One

Wild Roses

---

Kare

---

Ever notice how dirt collects on a snowflake? Dark matches light. They fuse together, one pattern over another, neither competing, just growing into microscopic lace. Icy dirty lace.

Ma’am, he says, scooping up the book that had fallen from my swollen, numb hands onto the frozen sidewalk.

I forgot people say such things. On a street corner in Choteau, Montana, where dingy snow is piled here and there, they do. I’d been staring at dingy snow, noticing the icy dirty lace, how the land here creates dark and light.

Such a little word, ma’am. But the politeness, light, flickers through my thoughts, dark.

His black-felt Resistol’s worn around the brim, barely noticeable gray sweat stains around the band. The hat dives down over his eyes, but I can still see them. Ice-blue, like the primordial glaciers a hundred miles north of here, and glowing in the shadow of his bill. Glaciers gaze down at the title of the book. The Grief We Don’t Speak. His denim-clad arm stretches farther, pretending he hadn’t read those words. Or the subtitle. Bereaving after Our Child’s Death. I expect him to throw the book, impatient from waiting for my sluggish response, and to run. Most people run from me. I became a pariah the day Emma died at thirteen.

Thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen. Odd, stilted, or repeated half thoughts are the fog of my brain. I can’t get her number out of my head. I don’t want to get Emma’s number out of my head.

I reach for the book, but my fingers slip. I blink and try again, vaguely recalling how to be polite. Smile. I need to smile. But I just can’t.

He steps closer, his long legs in jeans with an ironed crease down each shin. The jeans are worn, like his hat. Worn, but taken care of.

It’s easier to retrieve my book now that he’s nearer, though I haven’t read much of it. Does the book mention how my attention span is less than a Cocker Spaniel with ADHD? And my thoughts, God my thoughts—I’m not sure if I have the same IQ I had four months ago. I feel stupid. I know I must look it with lazy blinks and my mouth agape, wondering if I might scream at any second.

Thank you. My voice… When was the last time I’d spoken? I sound like someone strangled me. I feel like someone strangled me and I’m not sure I survived.

I stuff the book into my idiotic Birkin. The ten-thousand-dollar bag so out of place here in my hometown, a cowpoke village where men wear Wranglers and say ma’am. I don’t know why he’s not treating me like I have smallpox. I don’t understand why he’s still standing in front of me, looking down at me, his eyes—light, light blue, like the sky right before a winter blizzard—roaming over my face. A warning bell might be ringing through my skull about him or it could be an old reminder to grab Emma a juice or water about now, because that adorable kiddo of mine is always dehydrated. Was dehydrated. Was. Past-tense verbs are assholes.

Thank you. Wait. I already said that. He needs to leave, so I can try to remember what the hell I was doing, why I had thought coming to town from my parents’ farm was a good idea.

He narrows his eyes and licks his lips slowly. Full. His lips are full. It’s the first time I’m truly looking at him other than his eyes or the clothes he wears. The bell in my mind is trying to tell me something as I stare at his lips, of all things to stare at. I haven’t listened to anything in my mind for so long it’s similar to trying to remember a foreign language after not speaking it for years.

A rusty seventies Ford pickup crawls by on Main Street as loudly as a dozen train engines roaring to life at once. It’s cold. I can see my breath. And his. But I can’t feel it. I can’t feel any of it.

He cringes slightly then shakes his head, starting to say something. But his words are gurgled into a strange, muted grunt.

I take a step back, wondering what his deal is. Going to kidnap me, cowboy? I’m not sure I care. Take my body. Do what you will. And after, maybe you’ll kill me. That way I won’t have to deal with my parents and their worry if I kill myself because now that Emma’s gone, I can’t think of one thing to make life worth living.

Kare? He clears his throat. Karina DeRoss?

My maiden name sounds…that was another life. Before divorce. Before my only child, my Emma.

Yeah?

He licks his lips again. Maybe a nervous tick. I’m…I’m Darren. Darren Hassack. We grew up together. I lived on the farm next to your daddy’s. Well, I still do. I—

Darren? I remember a little boy in bib overalls and long brown hair that shined red in the hot, hot August sun. I remember running and laughing and him holding onto one of my pigtails and reverently telling me how soft my hair was.

Simultaneously, shame fills me, turning the sludge of my thoughts black and prickly, as I remember being in middle school and the town girls paying attention to me. To me, one of the farm girls. Me, who thought chicken shit and poverty was so steeped into my shoes I smelled like excrement permanently. I thought the town girls thought that too. But then they liked me. Only, they wanted me to stop being Darren’s friend. And all I wanted was to pretend I didn’t stink like the poor farm girl I was. So I dropped him faster than he could say, Wait, we’ve been friends since we learned how to walk.

Darren was the boy who I’d told all my secrets to—big and little. How I wanted to ride a unicorn, and how my mommy and daddy hit each other when they drank too much and when they didn’t drink too much too. He was the boy who wiped my tears away after fire ants bit every square inch of my legs. The boy who promised he’d never tell my secrets that I wanted to run away from the farm, from this cowpoke town, from him.

I blink and vividly remember how we swam in the irrigation ditch our farms shared. The ditch was covered with thick and bloodthirsty wild rose shrubs. But there was an opening where we’d play in the water or the mud for hours. Darren had been my very best friend until I was twelve—my Emma died at thirteen, thirteen, thirteen; a year older than me when I’d made one of the worst mistakes of my life. Emma never would have done something so cruel. Emma…

I laugh at the absurdity of the moment. I didn’t recognize him. He grew into a man. A Wrangler-wearing, ma’am-saying, big man, my friend who swam in his tighty-whities with me in an irrigation ditch. My lips crack, but I laugh this terribly wet-sounding sob of a laugh.

He smiles, but the look is full of worry, like I might combust from the strain. I might.

Darren. How are you? Of course I’d kept tabs on him throughout the years, thank you, Google, very much. He had been my very best friend and still remains the best friend I ever had. But, Jesus, what I did to him. I can’t believe I did something like that, desperate to be accepted for something I wasn’t. In the end as it was in the beginning, I’m poor white trash wrapped up in Louboutin and Hermes, but still and forever more just poor white trash.

Darren was a veteran. If I remember right, he’d been a Marine. He served for a long time but came back to take care of his mom after his dad died in some kind of an accident. I’m such a jerk to forget how his dad died, and I think his mom died last year. Cancer? Heart attack? I didn’t go to any of the funerals. I was busy, you know. So fucking busy. More like so fucking ashamed, too ashamed to own up to what I had done and apologize.

Married? Kids? For some strange reason Google wouldn’t tell me this. And of course, he’s not on any social media where I could have done more sleuthing. He doesn’t seem the type to Tweet, make posts with emojis.

He pushes his hat back a little. I see more of his eyes with thick dark eyebrows furrowing. He looks like Jesus with the beard. It’s the beard. That’s why I didn’t recognize him. He didn’t have hair like that when I knew him. In the church we used to go to together—where we’d kneel close and I’d try to make him stop praying because I worried God really did watch everything and knew just how much of a bad girl I was—was a picture of a solemn Jesus. With a halo. Darren is that picture. Only with a cowboy hat and Wranglers. There might be a halo. Bad girls don’t see things like that when they grow up to be bad women.

Fine. I’m fine. He clears his throat again. I, ah, heard from your mama that you might be in town. He sharply inhales. I’m sorry to hear about…

I brace myself for the nicety. I hate them. People say the stupidest things about death, about my baby being dead, about the fact that I can never see her again.

He takes his hat off and rakes a hand through his shoulder-length, rich brown hair then puts his Resistol back on. Ah, hell. Want a drink?

Yes, I do, Darren. Thank you.

We walk to a bar in silence. No cars or pickups rolling down Main Street, no one else around—that’s a small town for you. Snow’s piled up close to the sidewalk but there’s a little path free from ice. Darren tries to walk on the snow, his boots getting wet, so I get all the concrete.

He walks me to Elmer’s, the nicest bar slash restaurant in town, not even a block away from where I’d stood shell-shocked with my book on the concrete that’s now back in my stupid Birkin. There are only two other restaurants here in Choteau, including the A&W Root Beer drive-in. When we’re walking through the threshold of Elmer’s, he puts a hand on the small of my back, his warmth penetrating too deep, shocking me.

I catch him flinching, his hand back at his side, making a fist.

We sit opposite each other on two old vinyl bench seats with a chipped Formica table between us.

Darren, what the hell are you doing here this time of the day? asks a woman who I probably should remember. She’s about my age. Maybe younger. She’s pretty and she’s smiling at Darren like he keeps all her secrets too. Her smile wanes when she sees me.

Myrtle, Darren says.

God, I love that name, Myrtle. That’s so…here, Montana, small town. Old-fashioned and lovely, silently saluting foregone women who crocheted dainty doilies and drank from matching bone china tea sets and slept with curlers in their hair.

Darren continues, not noticing how I’m staring at the waitress with the name I love, Can you grab us a couple of—what do you like, Kare?

My nickname. I can’t believe he’s calling me that. Can’t believe he remembers.

He’s leaving it up to me to decide what we should drink. In my old life, I might have wanted wine, something red that wouldn’t be available in a town like this. Something that most people here couldn’t afford.

Tequila.

Darren’s blue eyes widen a bit, but he nods. Two tequilas and I need a beer too.

Me too.

Myrtle leaves with, I believe, a huff.

Should I remember her?

Darren shrugs. She went to school with us. A year behind.

She likes you.

He grunts. I’m pretty sure he knows about Myrtle’s affections, but he’s playing it cool. He always did that.

However, once, in seventh grade he tackled me to the ground on my gravel driveway and asked why I quit talking to him the year before, while he pinned my arms and legs down, hovering over me, pink in his cheeks, anger making his light blue eyes darker. I told him we couldn’t be friends any longer and that was that. Being thirteen I couldn’t articulate that he was too hick, too much a reminder of all the ways I myself didn’t measure up. I couldn’t tell him that his sweet mama, who was in many ways more a mother to me than my own, was Blackfeet—strike one against him in a nearly all-white town. His daddy who used to sing to his mama and make her slow dance with him in the middle of a rainstorm was a former Hutterite—strike two in a town whose main bigotry is aimed at otherness and being Hutterite was as other as other could get. The third strike, the one I knew too well, was being a farmer’s child. I had that strike against me too, and I would do anything to remove that pimple from my face—squeeze it, burn it, cover it with too much concealer. So I told him to piss off.

He never talked to me again.

Until today.

You married, Darren? Because I’m certain Myrtle wants to marry you.

He smiles and—holy cow—he’s beautiful. I don’t remember that. I remember in high school he was getting tall, and all the girls were talking about him and his arms and shoulders—a farm does good to a boy’s body. But I would try not to look at him, too hurt he wouldn’t look at me. Even if I did start our juvenile war, I wanted him to end it.

He won’t look at me now, his smile fading while he glances around the bar. His hat’s off. Probably sitting next to him on the bench seat with the holes and cracks in the vinyl. He was raised to be a gentleman, that I remember.

His hair sweeps against his shoulders, stick straight and so dark it looks nearly black except for the tips which are cinnamon brown. Naturally sun streaked, probably from sitting in a combine during harvest last fall. He unbuttons his denim jacket slowly. He’s noticing his surroundings, men like him always do, not paying attention to how he undoes himself, the button sliding through the hole then another, how the image is sensual. My skin prickles with goosebumps. I focus on a chip in the Formica resembling white marble.

How…how’s things? I ask, suddenly nervous. His handsomeness is making me nervous. I hate how good looking he is. I can’t focus on the chip but peek up at him. His arms are big, look like they could pick me up and nail me against a nearby wall.

Why I’m having inappropriate sexual thoughts about him is beyond me. Actually, no. The little I’d read from the book says I’ll have wildly inappropriate thoughts. I’ll say shitty things I won’t mean—although, that’s nothing new for me. The book talks about how grief affects the frontal lobes, the part of our brain that controls base, animal instincts. I’ll act out like the teenager my Emma was but can no longer be.

His eyes rake over me again, inspecting, probably poking holes into my carefully placed grief mask and looking inside. See? There? That was my heart, but it’s dead now, so don’t talk about it.

He nods. Once. Again. Can’t complain.

I roll my eyes. Come on. It’s me. Complain.

He smiles again and our drinks arrive. Myrtle is splashing my beer around a lot, but I don’t mind. I don’t mind her at all because she distracts me from how handsome my childhood friend has become. How he was once my best friend and I threw him away for a bunch of bulimic girls who gleefully stabbed each other in the back with their gossip.

Hey, Myrtle. I think we’ll need another shot soon.

I’m surprised by his request, but I like it.

She leaves, again, with a huff.

You dating her?

Who? Myrtle?

Yeah. Myrtle.

He makes a face, all scrunched up on the side. With his beard, I can’t make out which expression he’s going for, but I would guess incredulity.

Is that a no?

That’s a no.

Why?

He takes the shot, not looking at me again. Hey, Myrtle, he yells, over his shoulder. Just bring the bottle.

And—God help me—but I love that he asked for the bottle and I love Myrtle’s name and I’m so sad. I’m overwhelmed by all of it. So, of course, stinging tears fill my eyes. I take the shot, ducking my head after, trying to hide the fact that I’m crying.

Myrtle comes back, practically throwing a bottle of Cuervo on the table. That’s sixty dollars, Darren. You sure she’s worth it? She glares at me but sees tears standing in my eyes.

God, this is so embarrassing. I cover my face with a hand, looking down, trying to grab my beer. Maybe if I get enough alcohol in my system, it’ll stifle the tears.

Oh. Too late. One comes sliding down my cheek.

Myrtle. Goddamnit. Darren says something more, but I sniff.

I’m sorry, I mumble.

I smile at Myrtle, trying to make her feel better because it’s normal to feel jealous. It’s normal that she glares at me. What’s not normal are my tears, and I know it. I used to be the kind of girl who would return the glare. Maybe even say something behind her back as she walked away. Try to feel better about myself by looking down at my Christian Louboutin Choca heels, and tell myself I was better than Myrtle because I had the seven-hundred-dollar shoes, and don’t forget the Birkin bag that I would never tell a living soul but I think it’s ugly as hell. I had the things to prove I was better, I would whisper to myself like a mantra as if saying it enough would make it true.

I glance down at last spring’s toe-less shoes, so out of place in Montana during a snowy March. But Emma squealed when I bought them, begging to borrow them. They’re a creamy white with straps and a thick buckle at the ankle. We were the same size, although my daughter was already taller than me. Soon, I’d have to buy her bigger shoes. But not now. Not now.

There’s mud on the white and red heel. Emma would kill me for getting them dirty. Or would she? Was it me who would kill her for getting mud on my things? Was it me who yelled at her once for getting a grape juice stain on my Gucci jeans, jeans that were already expertly distressed? It was me. What a mistake. What a colossal mistake to have ever raised my voice at my girl, let alone to get so angry over pretentious jeans. They’re just jeans for