Page 88 of Now to Forever

She nods; my face puckers. The name alone could make milk curdle in an udder.

“We went to school with them. Rotten apples don’t fall far.” Jessicunt, as I liked to call her, took every opportunity to remind me that I lived in a trailer park when Ford turned her down. My junior year, she wanted him, he wanted me, and she retaliated by making copies of a picture of the trailer I lived in with the words Ledger Dump typed across it and then plastered them in the halls. I wanted to punch her face; instead, I got naked with Ford on the hood of her car one night while she was at a late cheerleading practice. Even though I never told her, our satisfying tryst made her significantly more tolerable. “Ignore her. She probably inherited her mom’s saggy snatch.”

“Scotty!” she groans. “Gross!”

I cock an eyebrow; her groan turns to a laugh. “I’m serious. All the rotten ones do.”

“Maybe,” she says as she kicks a pinecone.

“How was therapy yesterday? You were quiet on the drive back.”

“Fine.” She kicks another pinecone.

“You shook up about your dad being shot?”

She looks at me, eyebrows pinched and as if that was a ridiculous notion.

“She asked if I ever think about visiting my mom.”

“And?”

Another shrug, another kicked pinecone. “And . . . sometimes. Seems messed up that the only way I’d get to see her is if she’s trapped without a choice, though.”

“When was the last time?”

“A couple months before she got arrested. She picked me up and we were supposed to go to lunch. We ended up outside of some apartment complex where she went inside for a ‘few minutes’ and didn’t come out for an hour and a half. She dropped me off at home with a bag of McDonald’s. When I told my dad, I thought he was going to kill her.”

I would have supported this. And burned the body.

Her shoulders slump, pulling my heart with it.

“She probably got sucked into a game of Monopoly. Those games never end, you know?” She looks at me. “That’s why I steal everyone’s money when they aren’t looking. Speed the damn thing up.”

“You play Monopoly?”

“No.”

She smiles, just slightly. “I know what she was doing.”

“I know you do.” The pavement turns to gravel as we turn into the driveway. “But it’s her loss, you know?” She looks at me like she doesn’t believe me as I take Molly off of her leash. “You’ve mastered the art of eye-rolling. And”—I shrug—“it’s too bad for herif she’s spending her life not being at the ass-end of that.” She snorts a laugh. “Plus, from someone who sees their shitty mom on a regular basis, you’re not missing much.”

“Why do it?” Wren asks as a crisp breeze stirs fallen leaves and the dog takes off after a squirrel. “Why go see her at all?”

How many times has June asked me this? How many times have I asked myself this? Every visit leaves me more frustrated than not, and yet, once a month, despite the hurt and heartache it causes, I go. I buy her groceries. I do a few chores in hopes of making her feel less alone. I try like hell to remember she lost the same people I did.

“Because nobody else does,” I admit. “And because she’s my only family.”

Wren says nothing; a cardinal lands at the feeder. I wonder if it’s Zeb.

“Miss!” A man’s voice cuts across the lawn. “Floors are in!”

Molly somehow has the energy to sprint, and we follow behind, the sight in the house taking my breath away the moment I reach the doorway.

It’s just boards of reclaimed hickory, hammered and stained then laid down right next to each other, but it’s morphed the house from construction zone to home. The strong angled walls have gone from being awkward to feeling like the arms of a mother welcoming her family home.

“Are you going to cry?” Wren asks with disbelief.

“No.” I knuckle thenottears from beneath my eyes. “I’m allergic to the glue they used.” She gives me a skeptical look; I turn to the man who installed the floors. “They’re beautiful.”

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