Page 36 of The Roads We Follow

“Teach?” I scrunch my face. “Are you a teacher?”

“No.” Micah plants his hands on the slick pebbled concrete behindhim and leans back, saying nothing for a second. This up close and personal, I can see the pulse beat in his neck and the bolt of gold that streaks through the chocolate-brown iris of his right eye. Hattie’s wrong. Ryan Reynolds has nothing on Micah Davenport. “I was a licensed specialist in psychology at a school district where I live.”

I blink. “What does that mean?”

“I ran emotional disturbance testing, behavioral testing, cognitive testing, and scheduled in-office therapy for students and their families in need of extra assistance.”

My mouth gapes slightly as I rehearse his words in my head several times over. “So then, you’re not actually a bus driver.”

“Not exclusively. I’ve driven rigs this size a few times with my father and held a class C license since I was twenty-one. School districts always need extra drivers on hand during sports seasons, as does my local church in the summers. It’s come in handy more than once.”

“A therapist,” I muse again. Suddenly so much about him makes sense. His thorough advice and commentary, his listening ear, his astute questions, his willingness to engage in meaningful conversation.Micah is a therapist.

“I’m actually taking some extra time this summer to—”

“Hello, darlings,” Mama says as she bursts into the pool room with Adele on her heels. They both have bright pink cheeks and skin. “That steam cave is an absolute must. Micah, your mother and I missed that blessed experience when we road-tripped here. We were much too concerned about getting our hair washed with actual shampoo in a stand-up shower and not in a gas station sink. The soak time in the pools was a bonus.”

Micah stands to assist my mother in hanging up her robe on one of the hooks and then does the same for Adele. His act of chivalry causes me to speculate what Tav would have done if he were the one present. Would he have hoisted himself out of the warm water to walk across the wet concrete and help a woman he’s known since birth? The answer that surfaces is not a becoming one. While Tav has an arsenal of Southern manners at his disposal, he’s rarely withoutthe paid staff who’ve attended his every need for decades—at home and on tour. Charm is far more fleeting than chivalry.

“You never did say what the bath attendant asked my mother to sketch for you both to get in without paying, Luella.”

Micah follows a step behind Mama, ready to reach out for her at any moment if she loses her footing on the slick floor. The base of my throat burns as I picture him doing that for his own mother not so long ago. Lynn has only been gone a few months, hardly enough time for Micah to break a lifetime habit.

“The attendant couldn’t decide, so she asked Lynn to draw what she drew best.” Mama smiles. “So she drew Chickee’s house.”

“She drew my great-grandmother’s house?”

Mama nodded. “She used to draw it often on the road, always made it look like a fairy tale. That house was her favorite place on earth. No matter where we traveled or what landmarks we visited, Chickee’s house was what she sketched the most. That’s the house you grew up in, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.” The atmosphere changes almost instantaneously as Micah’s expression sobers. And I don’t even have to wonder about the grief that’s captured his thoughts. I know it well. All of us in this room have known it.

While physically he’s in the same thermal pool as Mama, his mind appears to be elsewhere. The pool they’re in is narrow and long, stretching the length of the other three combined. It’s also elevated several feet above the rest.

It’s a stage if ever I saw one.

With shaky confidence, I stand and cross the damp floor to the empty pool closest to the door, the one with the coolest temperature. I take the steps into the water and watch as Adele glides into the pool I just vacated. She appears to relax into its heat with ease.

Strangely, my muscles can’t seem to find the same reprieve, not when Micah has become so disquieted.

A moment later, the low hum of an old spiritual, the one about praying down at the river that’s been sung since the 1800s, warmsmy ear. It’s Mama. On the second time around, she does what she does best and adds lyrics to a melody that never fails to squeeze my heart until it feels like I’ve been hugged straight from heaven.

Maybe it will do the same for Micah. Three months is both so little and so very long to miss someone who now resides in heaven.

Sure enough, Mama’s voice croons the simple words in a solo, and one by one we join her until the four of us Farrow women are singing from four different quadrants inside a room that might as well be a cathedral. When it’s my turn, I close my eyes as my heart thunders against my rib cage. Our harmonies anchor to one another the way they have since I was in grade school, each of us building in dynamic as the chorus swells into a blend so achingly right. I wish we could secure this same sense of unity outside of song. Because it’s here, with my heart open and my voice lifted, that I feel the most connected to the family God gave me. No matter the differences between us, our frustrations, tensions, offenses, or grief, when the four of us sing together, all the chaos in our world is forced to yield as we merge into one with the music.

I’ve never desired to charm an audience the way my mother’s done for decades, perhaps because the voice I’ve dreamed of sharing with the world is penned from my imagination. But when the four of us become a single instrument, I can’t help but picture the pride I once saw in our daddy’s eyes when he used to watch us from his favorite recliner. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to understanding what God must feel when He looks at His beloved children.

As our volume decreases on the last chorus, and as our final few notes linger into a stillness that feels as reverent as a church meeting on Sunday morning, the whole room suddenly erupts in applause. My eyes open to scan the spa staff lining the walls and clapping with a passion that makes my insides melty, as does the way both my sisters are smiling.

And then my gaze lands on Micah. He’s smiling, too, only he’s not looking at the staff or at my sisters or even at my Mama.

He’s looking right at me.

10

Raegan

The National Park we’re staying at tonight in Hot Springs has a noise curfew of ten o’clock, which means everyone in our crew has finally,finallystopped stirring inside their bunks. I glance at my phone impatiently for the hundredth time and decide to wait an extra ten minutes ... just to be safe.

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