Page 34 of Now to Forever

When we get to the lane that hasn’t changed in the years since I’ve lived there, I pull onto the edge of the road and cut the engine, letting the abrupt silence envelop us. In the absence of the music, the droning buzz of cicadas is thick.

In the distance: a door slams, a kid laughs, a motorcycle revs.

A faded sign for Mountain Acres sits at the front, a row of run-down trailers in a staggered line behind it. The lane running alongside is littered with cans, bottles, and one lone Dollar General bag skirting around in the breeze.

“I grew up here,” I start, staring out the windshield and feeling like I’m looking at a picture in a banned book. “In that second one”—I point in the general direction and she angles her head to see—“the greenish one with trash and boxes on the porch? That’s where I did homework—or didn’t do homework.” I chuckle softly and a faint smile lifts her lips. “My mom—Glory—didn’t want the job of raising kids—or any job for that matter. Sometimes she was there, most of the time she wasn’t. She’d stay out at the bars all night doing God knows what.” I heard rumors, of course. Kids never can keep a secret about what the parents of their peers were doing. I heard my mom had boyfriends, but her infidelity was the least of my concerns. All I knew was she never showed up when I asked her to. When I needed her to. “My dad was a trucker, Lyle was his name, on the road more than home. Probably better that way.”

The dynamic always shifted for the worse when he was home. Glory was around more, and the results were unpredictable. Them in that tiny trailer was like two sticks of dynamite being held to a match. They’d drink, they’d fight, they’d fuck. It was the epitome of toxic.

“I spent a lot of time at my best friend’s house. June’s her name. And with your dad. Though I’m pretty sure your grandma didn’t love that.”

Her expression stays unreadable.

At the trailer I once lived in but still pay the rent for, the rickety door opens and out walks a woman in cutoff jean shorts and a spaghetti strapped tank top, so thin she could pass as a skeleton wrapped in skin with stringy dark brown hair. She drops a bag of trash on the small porch next to the one I put there last time I visited. She pulls a cigarette out of her pocket and pinches it between her lips.

There’s an old-model, blue SUV in the driveway. If it’s hers, I have no clue where it came from or how she afforded it.

Our gazes hook, hold, and I start the ignition as she cups a hand around the lighter at the end of the cigarette, tilting her chin skyward to blow out the smoke.

Wren looks from the woman to me.

“Yep,” I say, reading her mind as I shift the Bronco into drive. “That’s Glory.”

Without another word, I turn up the volume of the blaring violins as loud as it will go and floor the gas, causing an abrupt jolt that jerks us back as the speed climbs to a number higher than Ford would approve of.

As the wind rips through the windows, Molly barks, head out the window, and Wren lets out an unexpected laugh.

We don’t talk the entire drive home, but the tension that filled the air in the house all week has lessened. When we pull into the driveway, Ford’s there, filling up the stupid bird feeders, and we watch him through the windshield after I park.

“Your car is old,” Wren says.

“It’s not a car,” I scoff, bristled by her first words after days of none. “It’s a Bronco. And it’s not old, it’s a classic. 1989—it’s older than you!”

She looks at me like this does not impress her, eyeing the tape deck and wind-up windows. Though I had it reupholstered and added a Bluetooth option to the stereo, there’s no hiding the fact it’s vintage. “Where’d you get it?”

“It was my brother’s.”

“You only listen to your dead brother’s records and drive his car?”

I blink, my silentand get to your fucking point, you little shithead.

“Well, do you even like it?” Even her eyeliner fails to hide the disgust in her eyes.

I scoff defensively as I look around the dated interior. Sure, the seats are uncomfortable and it’s a bit bulky, but . . . “Of course I like it,” I snap. “And I like you better when you don’t talk.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t look like something you’d drive.”

“Noted,” I mutter, turning my attention back to Ford, blissful amongst his birding equipment. “He always this weird about birds?”

“Yep.” She waves at him as we start to open our doors. “He’s obsessed. Apps on his phone, guidebooks everywhere.”

She makes her way to the bird feeders, thumping one before giving him a half-hearted hug. He says something that morphs her face into a reluctant eye-rolling smile then scrubs a hand in her hair. Glancing over her to me, he smiles with his whole face. He’s a good dad. The way some people know a house is solid by simply knocking on a random wall, I can tell by watching Ford that he’s the kind of father any kid would be lucky to have. It’s a one-two punch to my solar plexus.

By the time I get to him, Wren is lifting her bike out of the grass. To me: “Your poems need work.”

“So do your social skills.”

She shrugs, almost smiles, and pushes her bike a few steps before riding away, zigzagging freely down the street.

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