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She needs to turn around and walk away. It’s too dangerous; he can’t see her.
It’s been eleven years since Reggie Love last saw Mark Sway, and she’s almost shocked that she recognizes him. At twenty-two years old, Mark stands tall, around 5’10” or 5’11”. He looks strong, she thinks mildly.
—
When Reverend Roy Foltrigg had announced the discovery of Senator Boyd Boyette’s body all those years ago, the following media frenzy had almost been enough to send Reggie herself into hiding. Foltrigg got the recognition and support he’d so desired, and within a year he found himself in the running for Louisiana governor. Reggie, for her part, did find herself in quite the hot seat, when inevitably, she had to face sanctions for her behavior in contributing to the delinquency of a minor, obstructing justice, and the rest of her laundry list of unethical attorney behavior. Given, however, that the FBI got what they wanted in the end, and with all the bad publicity they received over the speculated mistreatment of Mark and his family, she was lucky enough that they didn’t want to push their luck with the public by throwing the book at her. She received a brief, two month suspension, and was back to work in no time.
It was a tough year for her, professionally, but she managed to get back on her feet, and was soon in high demand. And, much as she hated to admit it, she did have to give credit where credit was due, as Roy’s endorsements of her abilities once he’d become governor helped push her career to even newer and bigger heights. Insufferable bastard that he was, he was a damn good politician, and a reluctant friend.
Life was stale for a while, and Reggie found herself going through the motions more than actually living. It wasn’t quite the same pain she’d felt after her divorce, but rather a numbness that made it hard not to think about what she’d lost. Those two months of suspension would have driven her straight back into the warm and bubbly embrace of her favorite drug store liquor, if it weren’t for her mother, Clint, and the specter of Mark’s utter disgust and betrayal at her would-be weakness. Afterwards, she threw herself into work, and found relief in not having to think about anything aside from her many cases.
Even though Mark had told her he’d call, the sly, sneaky son of a bitch that he was, Reggie tried not to get her hopes up. It was impossible; the mob didn’t regularly get amnesia regarding betrayals, and there was still the matter of the hit that had been put out on both Mark and Ricky. So, she tried not to hope that he’d call, and prayed that he never would. If their safety was compromised because of her, she didn’t think she’d be able to handle losing another kid.
—
After three years had gone by, and Barry the Blade’s corpse had been discovered by boaters on Watauga Lake, Reggie felt that hope start to wriggle its way back. Try as she did not to think about the Sways, she never quite succeeded. And she was rewarded for her efforts, another two years later.
—
Six years after saying goodbye to Mark, Ricky, and Dianne Sway, and watching Roy’s private jet carry them off to Phoenix, Arizona, Reggie received a phone call one sunny afternoon.
It was a rather mundane day, a rare lazy Sunday, and Reggie was sharing sweet tea and lemonade with her on-again off-again lover, in her newly acquired house in Louisiana. She’d found it both easy, and immensely difficult to say goodbye to Tennessee, but Mama Love had told her time and again how much she deserved a new start, a new life, and she had finally started to believe it. Despite Roy’s years old offer of a job, Reggie Love had made quite a name for herself over the prior years, and opened up her own practice in the less-than-humble town of Madisonville, Louisiana. And if it was only a forty-five minute drive from New Orleans and a certain governor, then, well. Plausible deniability and all that.
They were halfway through a casual debate on some new policy recently enacted, not for the first time, when the shrill sound of the landline cut through Roy’s practiced words.
“I’d hate to cut you off dear, since it seems like you rehearsed a new monologue today, but seems like I’m not the only one already tired of hearing it,” Reggie drawls with a wink, leaning over to plant a soft kiss on Roy’s cheek to soften the blow.
He gives a low chuckle, eyes alight with amusement, as she excuses herself. They’re still making snarky remarks at each other, their version of flirting, when she picks up the phone.
“Reggie Love, to whom do I owe the pleasure?” She twirls the cord around her fingers mindlessly, resorting now to making faces at Roy across the room. She’s about to stick her tongue out, when a both familiar and foreign voice crackles through the line.
“Reggie?”
Abruptly, all playfulness leaves her, and she finds herself standing ramrod straight. Roy mimics her body language, concern etching across his face. He makes to get up but she quickly waves him off, turning her back to him and stepping around the corner. She walks until the cord is pulled taunt before she replies, in a hushed tone, half whisper and all desperation.
“Is that you?” She asks, unwilling to say his name, lest someone be listening. Lest this be a cruel joke.
There’s more crackling, like the caller just released a burst of air he was holding back, and then his delighted voice comes through with relieved laughter.
“I’ll be damned, Reggie Love, I have missed you!”
She lets out a wet laugh, but he’s speaking again before she can reply.
“Listen, I haven’t got long, an’ I know I shouldn’t be calling, but it’s been so long an’ I just wanted to make sure you were still, ya know…alive an’ all. Listen, I just thought you’d like to know that we’s alright an’ all. Ric-ahem. Scott is doing real well. He's just started high school, isn’t that somethin’ Reggie! An’ I, well I’m on the lacrosse team down here. I never thought I’d be into something so damn suburban but I do love messin’ up those gingerbreads on the field. And my mom, she’s got a real, and I mean like a proper job an’ all now. She’s a counselor, ain’t that the shit, Reggie? Anyway, how’re you, is everything okay? You didn’t get in trouble did you, after I left I mean? I saw something on the news after we left, but then they really cracked down on us, you know, like they really drove it through our heads that we can’t have no contact or nothin’ otherwise those guys could find us. I know I shouldn’t be making this call, but God Reg I just had to call, just once, ya know? I mean, I promised, after all. Reggie? You there?”
It takes a second to register that he’s stopped speaking, and is now waiting for her to start. She moves the receiver away from her mouth while she takes a few deep breaths and sniffles, wiping away some stray tears. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the kid – which, hey, he’d never know if she called him that in her head – until his voice, slightly deeper, but just as full of life as it had been before, came filtering through the yellow landline of her Louisiana home. She’d kept the same number all these years, just in case.
Pulling herself back together, she puts the receiver back to her mouth.
“Hey kid,” she whispers, and barely registers the huff of annoyance on the other end of the phone. She continues quickly, clearing her throat before she can get the “I’m not a kid” speech.
“I’m so glad to hear from you. I’m so glad y’all are doing well. You make sure to tell your mama that you’re proud of her, ya hear? And..and I’m proud of you too. All of you. You’re right, you shouldn’t be calling, but damn am I glad you did. I’m alright, I am. I’m working, I even got my own house now.”
“You moved out of Mama Love’s?” Comes the excited response.
She lets out a huff of laughter. “Yes, I did indeed, got myself my own house, and my own practice too. Now I can help all kinds of stubborn clients. None so stubborn as you though!”
They share a quick laugh, tension she didn’t know she was still carrying slowly oozing its way out of her. After a moment, however, they both sober up.
“Hey Reg, I’m real happy to hear that, ya know? I’m real happy you’re doin good. I’ll tell Mama, and R- Scott too. Listen, I gotta go now, okay? But stay cool, okay Reg? I love ya, ya know?”
A small smile spreads across her face, and she feels softer than she has in years when she replies, “I love you too. But hey, listen. Promise me something before you go, okay?”
“What’s that?”
She lets out a huff. Of course he wouldn’t make any promises without knowing what he was agreeing to first. Always suspicious, Mark Sway.
“I want you to promise to never call me again, okay? You were right; it’s too dangerous. Promise me. Okay?”
When there’s a prolonged silence on the other end, she prompts him again.
“Promise me, M-... just promise me.”
“...okay,” comes the hesitant reply. “I promise Reg.”
She inhales sharply, feeling relieved and deeply sore, an ache settling in her core. A familiar one, but one that doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, now that she’s heard his voice. He’s doing good; they’re all doing okay. The Sways are going to be just fine.
“Thank you. I’ll let you go now, okay? I love you kid. I know you’ll be just fine. And I will too, so don’t you worry about me.”
“Okay Reg. I love you too. Goodbye Reggie Love.”
“Bye bye,” she whispers.
She stays on long after she hears the click of the receiver, and the dial tone echoes in her ears as she pries herself away from the phone after what feels like hours, finding her way back to Roy’s infuriatingly comforting arms. He doesn’t ask, and he can’t possibly know, but it seems like he does anyway. Reggie doesn’t cry, and though she aches deep in her chest, she feels more settled than she has in a long, long time.
—
After that phone call, Reggie feels like someone’s breathed fresh, new air into her life, and the years pass quickly but contentedly. Life in Louisiana is different, but in a way that makes her feel like she’s been reborn. Life goes on, her practice grows, and Roy moves in. Reggie still thinks about the Sways from time to time, but the client she got too close to doesn’t make her ache anymore, and she finds peace in that.
Until five years later, when she and Roy take a trip to Aurora, Colorado. It’s a few days into their trip, and she decides to wake up early one morning and head to the local farmer’s market while Roy snoozes away.
She’s digging through the peaches, because for some damn reason Roy has never had one, and she’s determined to make it his new favorite. She’s running through potential peach centered dishes in her head, from peach pies, to peach salads, and wondering if picking up a drink mix to make peach margaritas would be too much, given that she wouldn’t be able to drink any, when she sees him.
He’s tall now, probably towering over her small, 5”5’ frame, and he’s filled out in a way that she finds difficult to reconcile with the eleven year old that was a little over half her size. She’s staring, she realizes after a while. She hasn’t seen more than his profile, yet she knows, undoubtedly, that it’s Mark Sway. A tall, confident, adult Mark Sway. The compass that swings out of his shirt only confirms it further.
It’s odd. Reggie hadn’t known the Sways long. She’d represented Mark for only a few months, and yet the impact they’d had on her life was immense. She often found herself pondering how a few months of knowing someone could change the trajectory of her life so tremendously. Before the Sways, she was adrift, holding on to a stray plank of wood to keep herself afloat amidst a sea of sorrow, and after the Sways, though she had to overcome a lot of that same sorrow, she’d had a newfound purpose. She’d no longer needed the symbol of Mama Love’s compass to keep her on course, which was why she’d gifted it to Mark, all those years ago. So he’d never lose his way the way she had.
It occurs to her that she doesn’t even know his new name. He’s always been Mark to her. This thought brings her back to her initial one; it’s too dangerous. He can’t see her.
Though it’s been eleven years, Barry the Blade is dead, and the public has long since moved on from the media storm surrounding Mark Sway, the mob never forgets. It’s been eleven years but the mob never forgets, and here she was, staring at Mark Sway. An adult Mark Sway, who was just beginning to live his life, probably had his brother and mother waiting at home, maybe even someone special, and she was staring at him. Putting him in danger. He can’t see her; she needs to go. Now.
It wasn’t Canada or Connecticut, but he had ended up somewhere that started with a ‘C,’ just like he’d once excitedly babbled to his mother, so many years ago. She’d forgotten about the peaches. He was looking at cantaloupe. Another ‘C’ word.
She needs to go; he can’t see her. But she can’t seem to move. She must look insane, or criminal, God, a woman her age, staring at a young man across an early morning farmer’s market.
She’s halfway through another rambly thought when he turns around. His eyes seem to find hers immediately, and for a split second time slows down, like she can feel the nanoseconds ticking by, as realization slowly leaks into his eyes and his mouth parts in recognition. And then time speeds up, slamming through her double time as she drops the peach she was holding and the three she had in her basket come tumbling out when she reaches down to grab it.
“Fuck!” She exclaims, muttering apologies to the young woman running the stall. She’ll have to buy them, of course, but she also needs to get out of here, immediately.
Then she feels a hand on her arm as she stands up, and when she turns around, an almost six foot tall, lean Mark Sway is leaning over her and enveloping her into a giant hug. She needs to go, she thinks faintly, but realizes that she can’t possibly leave.
Five minutes later, after they’d parted and she’d held his face between her hands and whispered his name to make sure it was really him, as if there was any doubt, they’re sitting at a picnic table with her plastic bag of peaches that she’d awkwardly purchased sitting next to her. They keep shifting, threatening to litter the ground once again, so she double knots the bag before finally facing Mark head on, who’s sitting across the table and observing her silently.
There’s a brief silence as they study each other, before a large, dopey smile splits across his face, reminding Reggie terribly of the eleven year old boy he once was. She can’t help but mirror it, and soon they’re laughing about nothing.
Mark sobers up first, reaching across the table to rest his hand atop hers.
“I’ll be damned, Ms. Reggie Love. In the flesh, right in front of me,” he says, still smiling widely.
“What’s it been? Eleven years? Not a kid anymore, am I?”
She chuckles, shaking her head fondly. She pats his hand atop hers.
“Just about, kid. Ah, I guess you’re right. All grown up, I can hardly believe it!”
“Whatchya been up to Reggie? God it's been so long. I never really gave you a chance to speak that time we talked, and I always wished I’d gotten to ask you more, but I guess we really do get second chances, huh? I mean, after all, it was you who gave my family ours.”
Reggie shakes her head, patting his hand again.
“Oh no, don’t give me so much credit Mark. You did that yourselves. And don’t worry about that now, there’s no need. I’m okay, and I’ve been just fine. But I suppose you’re right about the second chances. Ask me anything you want. No rules, no limits, you ask me and I’ll answer.”
A gleam of recognition twinkles in Mark’s eyes at Reggie’s words. It was almost exactly what she’d told him some eleven odd years ago, in Mama Love’s house.
“And you’ll tell the truth?”
“If it takes my skin off,” Reggie replies, crossing her heart.
He grins again, and Reggie is hit with a wave of gratefulness that he lives a life now where smiling comes so easily to him. Before, she could count on one hand the amount of times she’d seen him truly happy. Then again, it’d been a particularly stressful time back then, what with his brother in a coma, and the mob after him.
“Alright. How’s Mama Love?”
Reggie smiles, grateful she doesn’t have news to disappoint him with.
“She’s good, real good, thank you. For a while, a few years back, she had a bit of a health scare, but she got through it, thank God. She’s always been a fighter.”
“I see where you got it from then,” he says with a toothy smile.
“So you don’t live in Memphis anymore? You said you had your own practice now, but, well. I tried looking you up a couple times after we talked but I could never find anything in Tennessee.”
She takes a moment before she answers, ruminating on how his previously deep southern accent has devolved into a slight twang, his previous half words and rushed sentences now thoughtful and deliberate. She’s once again struck by how much he’s grown up.
“Ah, yeah, that’s right. I live in Louisiana now. Madisonville.”
“Louisiana? Whatever the hell made you want to live in the same state as that pain in the ass, Foltrigg? I hear he actually became governor after the whole trial deal, didja know?”
Though he says it with a teasing grin, Reggie hesitates. She has the momentary thought of, what if he’s disappointed in me , before she shakes it away. She’s too damn old to be worried about what anyone thinks, and she’s not ashamed of the life she lives, not anymore. She’ll be damned if she starts again now.
Taking a deep breath, she gives Mark a sheepish smile in return.
“Oh, of course. God forbid Roy doesn’t get something he’s set his mind on.”
He must notice the wistfulness on her face, or the way her smile has gone all soft, and her eyes far away as she recalls their devolution from foes, to reluctant friends, to eventual lovers.
“Hold on a minute. Oh my God, there ain’t no way. Reggie Love, please tell me you are joking right now.”
“Well, hey, listen now. Louisiana has a great demand for lawyers, especially with all those fancy folk up in Madisonville. It made sense, is all.”
“Yeah, sure, all that, and the fact that Roy Foltrigg lives up there?”
“Well,” she shrugs. “It was a nice perk.”
“Goddamn Reggie! Roy Foltrigg? Reverend Roy Foltrigg? Really? Shit!”
He lets out a laugh in disbelief, before his face turns thoughtful.
“You know, I can actually see it, now that I think about it. The signs were definitely there.”
“Oh really?” Reggie huffs, her turn now to laugh in disbelief.
“Oh yeah. Remember in court, when I took the fifth?”
“Yes…” she says, not knowing where he’s going with this.
“Well, y’all were practically flirting right out in the open then!”
“What? We were not! We did not! What are you talking about?”
“When he said something about you wearing a nice suit, and you told him to drop dead! You guys were totally making eyes at each other.”
Reggie pauses, the memory of that time, so many years ago, slowly coming back to her. She’d been attempting to delay Mark’s questioning regarding whether or not he had any knowledge of where Senator Boyd Boyette’s body had been buried, and tried to request a change of venue to Louisiana, where the alleged (at the time) murder had taken place.
She and Roy had gotten into a rather heated back and forth, when he’d changed subjects to compliment her suit.
“That’s a pretty suit,” he’d said, to which she’d responded, “Drop dead Roy.”
She remembers the smile that had lingered on his face, as they’d shared a charged moment before the judge cut them both off. If her mind hadn’t been racing in a million different directions on ways to avoid Mark having to testify, she might have lingered on it. As it was, she didn’t get the chance until much, much later, and by that point she’d all but forgotten about it.
She laughs at the memory, glad to have it back.
“Gosh I forgot about that. Well, anyway, it wasn’t until a long time later that anything happened anyways.”
He opens his mouth again, a shit-eating grin atop it that Reggie just knows promises endless teasing. She cuts him off before he can get started.
“Anyways, got any other questions, or is it my turn?”
“Alright, alright. Just a few more,” Mark says, sobering up a bit. His expression turns serious, and he hesitates a bit.
“I said no limits,” she reminds him softly.
He stares at her for a bit, before he haltingly asks the question on his mind.
“How…how are your kids? Did you ever…hear from them? After everything?”
She starts, surprised that he remembers, all these years later, about her previous custody situation. Granted, she probably shouldn’t have shared as much as she did with someone so young, but she’d needed him to trust her, back then. And it had helped her too, much as she was remiss to admit it. She immediately understands his hesitation to ask her then, as the situation back then wasn’t too desirable. She hadn’t seen her kids in around four years at that point, and they were well into their teens. Now they were in their twenties, and she knew them a lot better. They’d had to give each other a lot of grace, but she was grateful they’d found their way back to each other.
“I do,” she begins, a serene look enveloping her face. “It was difficult, at first. After the whole trial debacle, I still didn’t hear from them for a long time. But I later found out that it was more because of their father than them. When she turned eighteen, my girl came and found me. And a couple years later, when he turned eighteen too, so did my boy. It was hard, sometimes still is, but we had to relearn each other completely. There was so much about them I didn’t know, and I was a completely different person than they remembered. It took a lot of time, a lot of grace, and a whole lotta love, but we’re good now. Really good. I talk to both of ‘em regularly, and they come down to see me every other holiday.”
Mark listens intently, his face lighting up with relief and happiness on her behalf.
“I’m real happy to hear that Reggie. I mean it, I’m really happy for you. I’m glad you’re happy.”
His face expresses an earnestness that she hasn’t seen since he’d asked her for help after escaping the hospital in an attempt to shake both the feds and the mob. She meets his gaze and reaches across the table to give his hand another squeeze.
“Thank you, Mark.”
They share another look, taking solace in each other’s presence, in the knowledge that after everything that happened eleven years ago, when they thought they may never make it out okay, or even alive, that they’re both doing well. Thriving, even.
Reggie allows herself a few extra moments to savor the insanity and beauty that is life, before shaking herself out of it.
“Alright kid, my turn now.”
He laughs, folding his hands in front of him like a schoolkid, with the same audacious glint from his youth.
“Well damn, I don’t even know where to start! Just, tell me everything, I suppose!” Reggie exclaims.
Mark lets out a guffaw, spreading his hands out in a dramatic gesture.
“Alright Reg, here it is. Wait, let me remember.”
Reggie waits expectantly, amusement all over her face.
“Alright, I got it. Okay, we left Memphis, touched down in Phoenix, and Ri-Scott- Ricky got the treatment he needed. Then once he was better, me ‘an momma ‘an Ricky decided to start fresh in the lovely state of Co-lo-freakin-rado! Suffice to say, we were sorely underprepared for the cold. Momma almost canceled the whole thing – until she saw that walk-in closet, that is! Woo-wee was she excited about that! I mean, she didn’t have near enough clothes to fill it, but anyway. Me ‘an Rick started school, which you already know, Momma got jobs at a few different places, and she even put herself through school! You already know about that too though, she’s a counselor now. She helps women in bad situations ‘an all that. I’m real proud of her, we both are,” he pauses, grinning toothily.
Reggie returns his smile. “I bet you are. That’s no small thing, that. I hope she’s real proud of herself too.”
“Oh yeah, she bought herself a nice suede coat for her troubles! Anyway, so yeah, me ‘an Ricky started school, Momma decided to send us to therapy, which I hated -”
“Of course you did.”
“-but, and don’t tell her I said this, it did kinda help, I guess. Kinda. Anyway. I joined the lacrosse team, Ricky joined some geek club, Momma got another fancy, new job, and I graduated. Can you believe it? God, sometimes I used to think I wouldn’t live to eighteen, and now I’m a damn college graduate!”
“That’s incredible, Mark! I always knew you’d do great things. How’d that all happen, what did you study, tell me!” Reggie prompts.
“Well, yeah, I guess I skipped a few steps. Alright, well, I said I played lacrosse, but what I didn’t say was that I was real good at it. Like, really good. Anyway, I got scouted and lucked myself into a full ride to Colorado College. I didn’t know what to study, so I just ended up settling on history. I actually ended up really liking it, but anyway. I managed to keep my grades up – gotta be a good example for Rick ‘an all that, not that I needed to be. He graduated as valedictorian last year, can you believe it? My kid brother, the genius. Anyway, so yeah, I graduated a few months ago. Didn’t have any of those fancy ropes that Ricky had, but hey, at least I made it. And yeah, that’s about it!”
Reggie exhales, taking a moment to absorb the massive data dump of the Sways’ lives over the last eleven years. She’d always had high hopes that Dianne would find her place in the world, and she was so damn happy she had. She’d often thought of the other woman when she was getting reacquainted with her own kids, thinking of the strength she’d been forced to have, not only through everything regarding the trial and Ricky, but even before then. At twenty-seven, she’d been through more than most people had in a lifetime, and she’d come out on top. It helped Reggie keep faith when it came to her own life, and her, at times, tremulous relationships with her kids.
The fact that Ricky was doing so well was a big relief too. She’d never gotten to know him, but she’d known how important he was to Mark, and to see the pride rolling off of him as he talked about his little brother is enough to reinforce Reggie’s conviction that she wouldn’t change a single thing that’s happened. Either before, during, or after. It helps soothe the thing inside her that sometimes questions her choices, and has her worried if she’s ever done the right thing. Roy helps with that too.
And Mark. The biggest pain in the ass she’s ever had for a client, a kid who rebelled against everyone and everything, who was forced to take on the world too young and too fast, who put his mother and brother before everything. Who’d been willing to sacrifice his life for their safety at the too-young age of eleven. He’d come farther than Reggie had ever hoped to dream, though she’d always known he’d be alright. Hell, he was more than alright, he was flourishing, and she thanked every god she could think of.
“Wow. I don’t even know what to say. I’m so damn proud of you, kid,” she whispers, gripping both his hands in hers, hoping he can feel her sincerity.
“I never doubted that y’all would be alright, and I’m so damn happy y’all have made the most of your new lives. You were never made to be anything less than spectacular, Mark Sway. You hear me?”
Mark blinks a couple times, eyes shining with a sudden swell of emotions.
“Yes ma’am,” he says softly.
They sit for a moment longer, acknowledging the long history between them, all the things that happened so many years ago, and all the things they’ve accomplished until now resting safely between them. Until, of course, Mark has to go and burst that bubble. The kid never was one for sentimentality.
“Alright, enough of that sappy shit.”
Reggie lets out a bark of laughter, wiping the wetness away from her eyes before any tears could escape and embarrass her.
“Alright kid, whatever you say. Tell me about that fancy degree of yours. You planning to be a history teacher or something?”
“Hell no!” He exclaims immediately, startling a laugh out of Reggie.
“Well, what then?”
Suddenly, for the first time, perhaps since she met him, he gets an air of self consciousness.
“What is it?” she prompts. “I won’t judge. Scouts honor,” she promises, holding two fingers up in salute.
He huffs out a laugh, before answering while not quite meeting her eye.
“Well…what would you think if I said I was thinking about going to law school?”
As soon as the words register in Reggie’s brain, she can’t help the giant grin that overtakes her face.
“I’d say, ‘God, I pity the poor sonuvabitch who has to face you in court.’ I’ve seen how vicious you can be, after all.”
And just like that, any tension mounting dispels itself from Mark’s shoulders, as he laughs with her, for the umpteenth time in the last half hour. The rest of the time goes by pretty quickly after that, as they spend another half an hour or so talking and catching up, with Reggie learning as much as she can about what the Sways have been getting up to, and Mark poking fun at Reggie’s love life. (“Fuckin’ Roy Foltrigg, Reggie, I can hardly believe it. Not even Reverend Roy Foltrigg anymore, it’s fuckin’ Former Governor of Louisiana, Roy Foltrigg. Goddamn, Reggie!”)
When all is said and done, and she’s remembered to send a quick reply to the worried influx of Roy’s messages, saying she’d run into an old friend unexpectedly, they find themselves standing across from each other again. The bag of partially bruised peaches is gripped tightly between both of her hands, and Mark’s shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his well-worn and partially tattered jeans. The tank top he’s wearing with deep cuts where the arm holes are supposed to be is swaying slightly from the wind, and Reggie finds herself relieved that his style is pretty much the same. If he’d suddenly become a slacks and polo shirt wearing fella, she might’ve lost her mind.
Goodbye is difficult, as it always is, and it hurts more than it did when they parted ways in an airport all those years ago. But it also hurts less than when they’d last spoken to each other, through a shitty landline five years ago, with Mark’s promise never to reach out again. She knows she probably won’t find herself so lucky as to run into him again.
The inevitable awkwardness creeps back in, as they run out of ways to avoid their imposing separation, until Reggie can’t stand it anymore.
“Damn it boy, give me a hug and get on with it, won’t ya?”
And that’s enough, because he steps forward and envelops her in his too-tall frame again, and Reggie clings to him with the knowledge that this is the last time she’ll ever see him.
“You stay well, okay? You stay outta trouble, and don’t worry your mama, ya hear?”
“I will Reg, I promise,” comes his muffled reply.
“I know. I know you will. I love you Mark. I’ll always keep you with me. And I’m always proud. Always, always. We made it out okay, kid.”
“I love you too Reg. I won’t ever forget you.”
—
Later, when she’s sharing Roy’s first peach with him, she thinks, despite the slightly mushy texture from when they’d fallen, that she’s never tasted anything sweeter in her life.
—
She ends up being right about never seeing him again, but she never stops knowing him. Six years after seeing him for the last time, she gets a letter with no return address. It turns out to be a wedding invitation, with a hand-written note that reads, “I know you probably wouldn't have come anyway, and I appreciate you putting my safety first, my family’s safety first, even all these years later, but I wanted you to know. I’d’ve loved to have you, and I know Riley would’ve loved to meet you. Take care, and much love.” The invitation has no address on it either, just in case, and the invitation displays his Witness Protection name, but Reggie knows, and she cherishes it. Her and Roy celebrate when the day comes to pass, with a special meal and a nostalgic cigarette that she no longer needs.
He sends several more letters throughout the rest of her life, detailing the birth of his first kid, a beautiful baby boy named Ryder, then a lovely little girl three years later, named Diane Love Sway. Reggie books a trip to Memphis with Roy that same night, and buries a dozen rose seeds where the Sways’ trailer used to sit, in honor of that sweet baby girl.
Mark sends notes too sometimes, no more than two or three sentences, detailing his mother’s work as a counselor, or Ricky’s college graduation, his entrance into a PhD program for, surprisingly, Forensic Psychology. He explains that understanding the reasons why things happened, and why people did the things they did, helped Ricky get past the trauma of his childhood, and how that cultivated an interest in criminal psychology. He never includes the names of the schools, or the places they work, because their one sided correspondence is fraught enough as it is, without any extra compromises to the Sways' safety.
Though it means she can never reach out to him, she celebrates with his memory all the same. She keeps him in all her big moments, and uses his life as motivation in her lowest. She raises a glass (of sparkling apple cider) to him at her wedding to Roy, (the infuriating, closet romantic that he is, who asked her to marry him under the sparkling night sky in front of a cabin in Maine, after an intimate dinner under the stars). She says a prayer for him at Mama Love’s funeral, and she thinks of him when she watches her son’s son graduate elementary school.
And decades later, when Reggie Love’s obituary is published in various newspapers with the date of her public funeral, amongst her kids and grandchildren, and all the friends she’d made that are still alive, a middle aged gentleman hangs back well into the afternoon until no one is left at her grave. He places the single rose he’d brought with him gently on her grave, and Mark Sway has one final conversation with Reggie Love, before leaving Louisiana for the first and final time.