Page 105 of The Sun
“I just want you to know, I was never trying to take Sunny away from you.”
“I know, Elias.”
I swallowed. “And I may not be the kinda guy you had envisioned for her. I’d promise you that I’d turn into that kinda guy, but I can’t. If life has taught me one thing, it’s that not much is certain.” I paused, trying to gather my thoughts into something more coherent than babble. “The world kinda likes to work against people sometimes, so I can’t say that I’ll ever be what you consider good enough. I don’t really know what good enough is to you, but I love her, so I’m sure gonna try. And that’s all I can do, promise that I’ll try.”
His chin dipped, and he nodded a little before thumbing through the pages of the Good Book. He pulled out a faded polaroid which he handed me. “Give that to her for me, would you?”
It was a picture of Mr. Lower and a tiny Sunny in front of the water, the sun setting behind them. “Her momma and I tried three years for a baby before we had her.” He cupped his hands around his empty coffee mug and stared down into it. “I know she hates her name, but we named her Sunny because she was the center of our universe. And now I guess she’s the center of yours. That’s how life works. The sun never sets where it rises. . .”
I grappled for words, for anything to say, but I fell short because he was already pushing out of the booth and hitching up the waist of his uniform. “I just hope she can forgive me.”
“She’ll be off work at five,” I called when he neared the exit.
He nodded, then the bell over the door dinged. He walked to his cruiser, leaving me with the photograph that hadSunny1986scribbled on the bottom.
Sometimes, just sometimes, things work themselves out.
The trafficon the Parkway was at a crawl. Horns blared. People leaned out of their open windows and craned their necks to see what the holdup was. I had just picked up Judah from cutting Miss Weaver’s lawn, and we didn’t have anywhere else to be, so had it not been for the AC in my truck being on the fritz, I wouldn’t have particularly cared that we were stuck on the two-lane highway.
“What the hell?” Judah grumbled, snatching his ball cap from his head and using it to fan himself. “You’d think it was the fourth of July with this crap.”
Red and blue lights went flashing by on the shoulder. Soon after, an ambulance sped past, sirens wailing.
By the time we reached the T, my shirt was soaked with sweat, and Judah had already tossed his to the floorboard.
“Oh shit!” Judah hung himself out of the window.
Two cars had collided head-on in the middle of the highway. As we inched along, I noticed a third crashed against a telephone pole, nothing but a smoking heap of metal.
“That person’s gotta be dead,” Judah said.
Firefighters stood in a huddle on the shoulder, extinguishers at their side. Policemen were scattered across the median in an attempt to direct traffic.
It wasn’t until I flipped my signal to turn on the county road that I noticedSheriffin tan letters across the side of the crumpled car. My heart thumped at the back of my throat.
I wanted to say that there was hope, but really, all that existed within the site of Mr. Lower’s demolished cruiser was hopelessness and proof that life refuses to become bearable for anyone for very long.
It’s a cruel, bitter bitch.
40
Sunny
The doctors said thanks to a massive heart attack, my daddy was gone before his car slammed into a telephone pole at sixty miles an hour. The thought that he didn’t suffer was meant to bring us comfort, but all it did was bring me to my knees. I would forever believe that I had literally broken my father’s heart.
I would never have his forgiveness, and he would never have mine. I’m not sure which was worse, believing I had an invisible hand in his death or believing he died thinking I hated him.
I slept with Momma and Simon for the first three days after he passed, realizing what emptiness truly felt like for the first time in my life. Understanding just how unfair things could be.
We didn’t choose to be born. We didn’t choose to die. Yet, here we were. Expected to trudge through the hardships, expected to smile at the happiness, even though it can all be ripped away in an instance.
The Dignity Funeral Homestood across from the public beach, a one-level brick building with navy shutters. I’d driven past that building countless times and never noticed it, but I was sure it would never go unnoticed again.
Elias leaned against his truck in his gray dress shirt and black tie, smoking a cigarette.
That time, when I pinched it from his grasp, he didn’t stop me, and I didn’t cough, but I did cry.
His arms wrapped around me right along with the smell of leather and spice, and I broke even more. I shattered into a million, jagged pieces of pain and regret because I knew he would hold me together as best he could.
