Page 47 of Long Road Home

I’d been right. He was tucked at his computer screen, game controller in his hand, gaming headphones on his head shouting, “Get ‘em! Kill ‘em! Oh man, he got you.”

I waved my hands to get his attention and his eyes lifted. His body jolted at the surprise of seeing his mom in his room.

“Yeah?” he asked, thumbs still wildly flew on the controller and his eyes were on the screen.

I shouted so he’d hear me. “Close it up! We’re headed to the store! And I need to talk to you!”

He rolled his eyes and nodded.

Awesome. Sullen pre-teen mid-afternoon.

We headed out to the grocery store, throwing every food known to man and boy alike into the cart. I’d mastered the ability before the age of seven to keep my eyes focused straight ahead, ignoring everyone around me. I didn’t have to look at them to know they’d be staring at me with that look of disgust or pity in their eyes.

But what if, like Jordan said, or Rebecca implied, that some of that disdain for who I was, who I would grow up to be, had all been in my head?

Had I spent my entire life carrying my own shame and embarrassment and assuming everyone else saw me through that same, broken lens?

“Can I get this?” Toby asked, breaking me out of my wandering epiphany. He was holding a box of packaged cookies, something we never ate.

“Yeah, sure.”

His eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I shoved his head playfully, chuckling. Sometimes my kid looked at me like I was an alien and who could blame him? “Sure, kiddo. Throw them in. Enjoy the junk while I allow it.”

For his part, he threw in three packages, grinning. “Might as well take advantage.”

“Whatever. Let’s go look at the vegetables.”

“You’re weird, Mom.”

Didn’t I know it.

We were picking through the fresh produce when it happened. When I felt someone’s gaze on me, boring into my temples, that prickle at the base of my neck that told me someone was looking. It’d happened more than once since I came back.

I tossed another apple into the bag, spun it closed and gathered whatever minuscule backbone I had.

As I looked up, my chest released, and I felt my lips drift up into a tentative smile. “Hi, Mrs. Whitman.”

She had been friends with Tillie. Not close, but close enough I knew she’d miss her. As far as I knew, the woman in front of me, walking toward us with her eyes glued to Toby, had never spoken an unkind word in her life.

“Hello there, Destiny,” she said, still smiling down at Toby. “How are you doing?”

“Okay. You?”

That looseness in my chest tightened as her aging smile grew and she lifted her head. God. She knew. She and her husband, and their entire family had been neighbors to the Marxs since what seemed like before time.

“Mrs. Whitman—” I started to say, a warning in my tone.

She shook her head. “Gloria, child. You’re old enough to call me that now.” She looked back to Toby and that grin on her sweet face widened exponentially. “And you, you handsome boy, you look exactly like your father.”

Toby’s brows shot up and as if he knew, understood the fact someone else had noticed something only I had spoken to him, he shifted toward me.

“Mom?”

“Mrs. Whit—”

“Gloria.” She continued looking at Toby. Not in an inspecting way, although it felt a bit awkward, but she looked at him like a year’s worth of memories were flashing in her mind’s eye. She shook her head and looked back to me.

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