Page 13 of The Tomorrows After You
“That doesn’t make any sense, Dad.”
Dad smiled again, casting a line far into the center of the creek.
“Sometimes things don’t always make sense, Brennan. There are some things we can’t put to logic. But they work out anyway. Or they don’t.”He tilted his head back and forth.“But usually, they do. If you believe they will. That’s the magic of it. You never know. You can chaseafter something your entire life and never catch it. But the moment you stop chasing and start picturing what it’ll look like when it’s yours, well, you might discover that it’ll end up finding you.”
A few minutes later, a tug on Brennan’s line made his eyes go wide.
“Dad!”he shout-whispered, afraid to scare the fish.“What do I do?”
“Be smooth, don’t tug. Lean back and then reel in the slack, nice and slow.”
It had only been a tiny smallmouth bass, but I’d never seen Brennan so excited. At the time, I was grumpy that my brother had all Dad’s attention. I had a small children’s pole, and it wasn’t catchinganykind of bass.
I remember being surprised when our dad made him throw it back.
“That’s just a little guy, not even enough meat on him for little Riot here. Would be a waste and it’s a shame to waste a living thing.”Brennan pouted.“How about this? We come back same time next year and that little sucker will be so big and fat that when you catch him again, you’ll be able to feed all three of us.”
Brennan’s eyes lit up at that.
Unfortunately, we never made that trip back to Alum Creek State Park. A few months after that camping trip there was a huge fire in the valley. It was the poor section and all the houses still had old knob and tube wiring. Nearly the entire block burned down, and it took my dad with it.
Brennan had begged my mom to take us back to the campground, but after the funeral, she had become a recluse, despondent. She was never the same after losing him. None of us were. Brennan didn’t know how to process his feelings. He never cried. He just looked surprised. Surprised that he was suffering something he didn’t understand. Still, he begged Mom to bring us back to Alum Creek. Time and again, she said no. It wasn’t something she was comfortable doing.
When I was old enough to understand what that trip had really meant to him, I promised, no matter what, we would go back once football ended my freshman year of college.
And like so many years earlier, Brennan was once again let down by his family. I was already in jail by then, awaiting sentencing that would take another several months to be made.
It wasn’t Alum Creek State Park, but that night as my brother and I cooked SpaghettiOs over the open fire pit, halfway between my house and his, I knew we both felt closer to Dad.
5
Nicolette
Irolled up to Chelsea’s house at eight-thirty, astonished by how familiar everything still was. Aside from the plethora of children’s toys scattered around the yard like landmines, it was exactly as I remembered, down to the rockers that we had spent hours on, giggling about the way cute boys did or didn’t give us attention.
My heart pulled at how much of her life I had missed.
I knocked on the door and the running water cut off before Chelsea pulled the door open a moment later.
As we methodically went through almost two bottles of wine, I relaxed at the ease with which we fell back into conversation. As if it were the summer after junior year. We were busy waxing nostalgic when a wave of sadness came over me. I reached across the table and took her hand.
“Chels, I’m so sorry I haven’t been back to visit you and the girls. And I’m sorry I wasn’t at the wedding. Or the baby shower.”
She laughed into her wine glass.“Honey, do you know who was at my wedding?”My blank stare told her I didn’t.“Because I don’t. I remember moments but I couldn’t tell you who was at the wedding or the showers.”She waved dismissively, shrugging.“You’re here now and I’m glad to see you’re doing so well.”She patted my hand.
“Where’s Bill?”My eyes scanned the tiny, cluttered house. Who knew kids needed so much...stuff?“I was hoping to see him.”
“He works as the night maintenance guy at the Center.”
I frowned.“I thought he was a shift leader for the coal mine?”
Chelsea shook her head.“They laid everyone off almost ten years ago. Pastor Blackwell got some reports that Godot had the highest rate oflung cancer in almost the entire country, so he outsourced the whole operation to some management company. I guess they only hire within their union so no one in Godot actually works in the Godot Valley Coal Mine anymore.”She offered a flat look.
“Pastor Blackwell? Good to know Jeremy’s dad is still large and in charge.”My stomach turned sour at the thought of my old high school prom date.“How on earth did he manage to convince the coal mine to outsource?”
“Well, because he owns it. The church owns the land the mine is in.”
Had I known that? I knew it owned a large amount of the land in Godot, but it seemed bizarre for a church to manage something like a coal mine.“Really?”I said.
