Page 21 of Now to Forever

“No.” I grip the edge of the rectangular table, giving it a push—ugly thing is heavier than it looks. The first step of renovating a house, I learned after hours of watching the internet, is to empty it. And while there isn’t a ton in here—a couple shelves of books and tchotchkes, dishes in the kitchen, and a few paintings and pictures on the walls—the furniture is an obstacle. It’s all so old and heavy, it’s as if the wood has been petrified.

“Why?” she demands. “Because you had bad parents?”

“Again with the questions—you should be a cop.” I push the table toward the front door; she mutters something under her breath. “But.” I grunt as I start to work the table across the threshold of the door and onto the porch, noticing Molly’s head now fully in my box of fun at the base of the steps. “Hey! Out of there, dog! Sit! Run! Go live somewhere else!” She ignores my shouts, continuing her deep dive. Fucking dog. She listens to nothing I say.

I turn my attention back to Wren before giving a final shove of the table. “And I don’t think I would be a good wife. Or that I know how to find a good husband. Or that I care to find out about either.”

“Maybe you would if you didn’t read about monsters.”

I pant out a tired breath and look at her through the doorway, narrowing my eyes. “Don’t yuck my yum, She Who Applies Eyeliner with a Paintbrush.” We exchange tit-for-tat looks. “If you’re going to talk shit about my monsters, I’m not paying you to help.”

“You’re not paying me.”

“You’re not helping.”

She studies me, like she’s not sure what to make of this conversation, but when a small smile tugs at my lips, the same happens on hers. She walks over to the record player sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room and digs through the box of records next to it.

“Why do you have these?” she asks, examining one record before exchanging it for another then another.

“They were my brother’s.” She decides on one and slips it out of its sleeve and onto the player before settling the needle in the groove. I chuckle when Aerosmith starts rocking through the speaker. “He loved music. He was a musician. Acoustic stuff with a guitar. He had one of those voices that was kind of rough and kind of smooth. Worn velvet.”

Her silence encourages me to keep talking. In a rare moment, I want to.

“No matter what he sang about, it all sounded sad. Like the music itself needed a high dose of antidepressants. I’d tease him about it—try to get him to lighten up. Thought maybe he was trying to be some kind of moody hipster. But now I think maybe . . .” My thoughts drift to Zeb—dark hair long enough he could tuck behind his ears and haunted eyes. I knew he was using—Fordnailed it when he said it—and I fought him on it.“Are you high?”I’d demand when he called, talking in tongues of nonsense.“Come stay with me. I can find you a meeting or something.”He’d dismiss me. “Nah. I’m fine, Scotty. Just having a little fun. Taking the edge off.”And then I’d drop it. Because the truth was, what did I know about drugs? I’d only ever drank and smoked weed; I wanted to believe him. Desperately. Wanted him to befine.And even more, I didn’t want to push him away. Between our mother being what she was and our dad being a timebomb more gone than home, Zeb was all I had.

“Maybe what?” Wren asks.

“Maybe that’s just who he was,” I finish. “Sad.”

“What happened to him?”

I shimmy-shove the table to the side of the porch.

“The sadness won.”

Steven Tyler’s voice belts out “Dream On” in our silence, and for once, Wren doesn’t press me for more. Based on the barbed-wire lump in my throat, there’s no more to give anyway. He died a death I didn’t stop and don’t understand.

She thumbs through the box of records again. “Which ones are yours?”

I blink.

“Like which music do you like? You can’t only listen to stuff someone else picked your whole life.”

My chin pulls back. “Why?”

“Because it’s weird.”

In my silence, she raises her eyebrows.

“I like Miranda Lambert,” I finally tell her, grunting as I start pushing a chair toward the door.

She thumbs through the records again. “I don’t see any.”

“I don’t have any.” Her judgmental mouth opens to say more teenage bullshit, but I shut her down. “I’m on a budget. You done in the kitchen?”

On the porch with the chair, I put my hands on my hips, blowing out a winded breath as I look through the doorway at her.

“The cabinets are empty, most fit in the box,” she says, moving from the records to pat Molly, who has taken a break from rummaging to nap in a sun-painted puddle on the floor. “And I should go.”

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