Page 20 of The Way Back Home

August

IDIDN’T MEAN TO FIXher chain. I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing down here. I’m tired. Too tired, but I couldn’t sleep now if I tried. Hell, I haven’t slept properly since I was first deployed. Kind of hard to sleep with so much sand and dust in your face. When I first enlisted, my Drill Sergeant would wake us up at all hours of the night. The bastard would go on and on about how we’d be expected to perform at our peak with little or no sleep. War doesn’t wait for a Marine to be rested. Back then, we’d cussed under our breath and joked about him being an asshole when he was far out of earshot, but when we’d deployed, we’d quickly learned how right he was. When you’re walking outside the wire in the Afghani heat and you can’t keep your head up, the worst thing you can imagine is having to keep going. Until your unit starts taking fire, or your dog hits on a scent, or you miss all the little signs that your training taught you. Then the worst you can imagine is blood, dust, hot metal that rips through your flesh, and the body of your best friend lying in pieces, stinkin’ of so much burnt meat, and fur, and blood.

Fuck. I fling the wrench. It hits the side of Dad’s old ride-on mower and clatters to the ground. Times like this I wish I drank, but alcohol doesn’t chase the demons away—nothing will do that. Not drugs, not booze, not women.Ha!As if I’d let anyone touch me with this ruined body. As if any woman would want to.

I didn’t just lose my dog, or a limb in that desert—I lost myself in the process. I have no idea who I am anymore, and now this pushy pain in my ass comes along and wants me to talk about my feelings, and open up to her as if she could fix me. She wants to tape me back together, and what? I’ll be back to the man I was before I lost everything? As if I’m not already fucked up enough. I don’t need her coming in here telling me that everything will be sunshine and roses if I just accept her help. I got my partner, my best friend, killed because I wasn’t paying attention. There ain’t no sunshine and roses in my future, only loneliness and pain and penance.

I glance up at the balcony. All the lamps in the house are off, but there’s still enough moonlight to see by. And as if speaking of the devil weren’t enough, there she is, standing on the porch in one of those silky little nightgowns, her hair falling loose around her shoulders and shining like a beacon in an otherwise black night. I can’t see her face, but I feel the weight of her stare from two stories up.

What is it about Olivia that makes me feel as if all my old wounds have been reopened and exposed? The woman has been here less than a week, and I don’t know if I want to choke her or protect her. I know one thing; I want to fuck her, slow, deep, and then hard and brutal, but that’s never going to happen.

Olivia can’t fix me, and I resent her for thinking she can. No one can fix me. I figure I have about another eighteen years before I can remedy the problem myself. I couldn’t do it when my parents were alive. I’d tried. I stuck a gun in my mouth so many times I lost count, but I was too chicken shit to pull the trigger. I couldn’t do that to my mamma. Not after everything my accident had put her through. It was easier to get lost and stay lost. It’s sure as shit easier than being back here, raising my kid sister and pretending like everything is just fucking peachy. When Bett is grown, I’ll disappear. I’ll finish what was started in that desert. She’s better off without me. Olivia will come to see that, too, eventually.

CHAPTER NINE

Olivia

ILEAN MY BIKE UP AGAINSTthe side of the church, grab my sandwich from the basket in front and glide my free hand over the cracked leather seat. August hasn’t just repaired my chain and pumped up my tires, but he’s cleaned the thing until its pale blue frame sparkles. He hasn’t fixed the breaks, a fact I realized as I went screaming down Oak Street, but I’m grateful to him all the same. I’ll have to find a way to repay him that doesn’t involve cooking him supper or helping him any, but for now, I have my very first town meeting to get to, and I’m late. We don’t have a lot of those in Fairhope, but Mayor Winkler asked me to come as I was leaving the market yesterday, so I accepted.

I expected that most of the town would be there, but what I don’t expect when I walk in is every pair of eyes in that room turning toward me. The entire town is here—including August, sitting in the very back row—and they are all looking at me. The church is hot as the eighth circle of hell, and I feel that surely my feet must be burning and horns have sprouted from my head with the way the good people of Magnolia Springs glare at me. I’m not exactly dressed up, as such, but I do have on a skirt, sensible heels, and a button-up blouse with a sash at the neck, tied in a loose bow. I am smart casual; I figured if this town meeting is held in a church, I should wear church clothes. According to the glances thrown my way, my church clothes do not have the Magnolia Springs tick of approval.

Wishing I could just melt into a puddle, I slip into the back pew—the same one that August is occupying—and I sit, wincing when my skirt that may have been just a little too tight when I put it on this morning threatens to saw my insides in half. I give my audience a tight smile and wonder how long I can go with my waistband cutting off all the circulation to my head.

Slowly, all eyes revert to the front of the church as Mayor Winkler takes to the podium. I open the tin foil on the sandwich I’d purchased from Stevie Rae Mae’s Bar-B-Que, whose sign read, “You don’t need no teef to eat my beef.”Yep, they spelled teeth with an f.Still, illiterate signage or not, the damn thing looked delicious, and after one bite I can see that you really don’t need teeth to eat this beef because it melts in my mouth like butter.

A moan escapes me, and all eyes swivel in my direction once more. Averting my gaze from Kathy Abernathy’s glare, I lower the sandwich into my lap and finish chewing the huge mouthful I bit off.

Mayor Winkler addresses the crowd. He doesn’t need a microphone, because the church isn’t that big to begin with—hence why everyone just heard me moan like a whore in it. “Thank you for being here, ladies and gentlemen of Magnolia Springs. Now I understand it’s Founders Day festival tomorrow, so I won’t keep you long because I know y’all got the Moon Pie-eating contest to prepare for. We’ll keep this short and sweet.”

“Take all the time you need, Mr. Mayor. I’m already set to take out that blue ribbon,” shouts a large man a few rows ahead of me. He’s wearing coveralls that barely contain his rotund belly.

“Dream on, Carpenter,” another man says from across the aisle, and while everyone is focusing on him, I use the opportunity to my advantage and duck my head, taking a huge bite out of my sandwich.Oh God. I don’t know why everyone in this town doesn’t just do away with the market and prepackaged foods and eat Stevie Rae Mae’s hoagies all day. They might seriously be enough to ignore the fact that the man is a rheumy-eyed eighty-year-old with very little teeth left inside his head. I may marry him anyway.

A beat later, while I’m scarfing down more of the sinful deliciousness, someone makes to sit beside me. I don’t even have time to look up. I just take another bite, slide across the seat and chew, chew, chew, my head thrown back in ecstasy, my eyes closed, and my tongue savoring each tiny morsel.

“Good sandwich, huh?”

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