Page 21 of Healing Hearts
When Leann Picallo comes out of her house with a shovel in hand across the street, I steer the snowblower over.
“I can get this for you,” I say, even though I’ve heard through the town grapevine that she absolutely despises me.
She squints through the drifting snow at me, clearly not sure who’s talking. “That Trent Castillo?” she calls out.
“It is,” I say.
“Don’t need no help from you,” she says, coming down her porch stairs into almost waist deep snow with her shovel.
“I can at least have a path cleared for you in ten minutes. It’s no problem with this,” I say, giving the snowblower a good pat on the side.
“You know who my son is, Trent? He was one of your clients back in the day. Got hooked on meth. Still hooked on meth, as far as I know. But I don’t know much since he left home when I wouldn’t support his habit, when I tried to get him help. You might see what you did as harmless, but it wasn’t harmless to me. Wasn’t harmless to a lot of people in this town.”
“I made a lot of mistakes when I was nineteen,” I say, struggling to find the words. “I’m sorry your son got mixed up in those.”
She ignores me and starts shoveling, but it’s so ineffective that I’d laugh if I wasn’t so fucking ashamed of myself. Rather than leaving her to it, I start at the end of her driveway, blowing the snow out of the way.
There’s nothing I can do about what happened to her son, my part in it, but if I never start making amends, never try to help those people I hurt in some way, then I might as well have stayed in jail.
We don’t speak the whole time I clean up her property, even when I’m almost on her feet as she shovels, and when I turn to leave, she goes into the house, shovel in hand.
When I come in from clearing snow from what feels like every property on the block, Emily’s making dinner.
“All I had was stuff to make spaghetti. With Amir gone and so much on my mind, I think I lost track of groceries.”
“Who doesn’t love spaghetti?” I stomp my boots and take off my snowy jacket. “Any word on the roads?”
“Maggie has heard they might be open late tonight as long as the wind doesn’t pick up.”
“You okay if I stay here until then? Grady texted and said I could go over to Maggie’s with them if you were tired of me.”
“Is it possible for someone to get tired of you?” she asks with a hint of teasing.
“I know it seems impossible, but it’s bound to happen to someone at some point.”
“Not me. Not yet.” She drains the spaghetti and gives me a heaping portion before dishing up her own.
We both take our plates to the table, and there’s a surprising heaviness in the air. I don’t know if I carried it in from my conversation with Leann or if it’s been in here with Emily most of the day and I wasn’t here to feel it.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Emily says with a sigh. “I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking.” She gestures to the pile of papers. “I think I just need something to take my mind off it.”
“TheFast and Furiousmovie wasn’t enough to keep you awake last night,” I say.
“I only like the ones that have Vin Diesel in them,” she says.
“Ah, that was the problem.”
“And I’m a boring mom who goes to sleep early so I can get up early most days.”
“You’re not boring, Em. Far from it. Another movie while we wait for the roads to open or some games?”
“A movie,” she says. “My brain can’t brain any more than it already has.”
“We can watch my favorite Christmas movie,” I say as we finish our meal.
“What’s that?”
