by Tina Martin
Driving on a lonely, two-lane road on the countryside is more frightening than I thought it would be. There are no street lights guiding me along my path. I only have the high-beam headlights on my car to show me the way through the thick darkness.
Finally, after I’d stretched my pupils wider than I’ve ever stretched them before, I see his house. Every light is on, including the lights on the wrap-around porch. I drive down the paved driveway and park behind my father’s truck. I close my eyes, brace myself and then open my car door.
As I walk up to the front door, I remind myself that I don’t have to do this...that I can turn around, get back in my car and hightail it to my safe, comfortable, cozy hotel room. But tomorrow, I had to move into this place, so I may as well go in. Scope the place out.
I unlock the front door, push it open and immediately, I feel pressure in my chest – equivalent to the weight of a stack of small bricks. My breathing feels forced, like I had to make myself take a step.
“You can do this, Geneva,” I say, coaching myself. And with that, I walk on in the living room, taking a seat on the couch. That was a huge feat for me in itself. I never thought I would be back in this house. Never. And maybe that’s the reason why my father wanted me to come back here. He lived to make my life miserable. Don’t know why I expected that to stop at his death.
My eyes focus in on a picture of my mother centered on the mantle above the fireplace. When I left his house, I didn’t have any pictures of her with me, well besides the now faded picture of her in my locket, but I wanted a picture I could put up on my wall. However, I’d left in such a hurry, I hardly took anything I owned. I had only one suitcase, a few pairs of shoes and a week’s worth of clothes.
I stand up from the couch and walk over to the mantle, removing her picture and staring at her. My beautiful mother. A beautiful soul gone too soon. I fought to retain memories and images of her in my head over the years. But I was losing that battle. The memories, the happy times were one-by-one being wiped out by the stress of having to deal with a tyrant. But staring down at her picture now, I feel tears slide down my face. I drop to my knees, clutch the picture of my mother close to my heart and allow myself to cry.
“I love you, Mom,” I say, crying harder.
“Geneva.”
The voice from behind startles me. When I turn around, I see Wyatt, walking towards me. I quickly stand and attempt to dry my eyes. I don’t want him to see me crying.
“Geneva, are you okay?” he asks, attempting to put his arms around me but I push him away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, steadily drying my eyes.
“You don’t look fine.”
Exasperated, I ask, “What are you even doing here?”
“I followed you.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew you would come here and I didn’t want you to be alone. I told you I didn’t want you to come here alone.”
“Well, I’m fine.”
“If you’re fine, why is it that you’re crying?”
“I was having a moment. A personal moment.”
“Why were you crying, Geneva?” he asks, calmly.
“Wyatt, we’re not in high school. I don’t need you to rescue me anymore. From anything.”
“That doesn’t answer my question though, does it?” he asks, frowning.
And even a frown couldn’t obstruct his handsome face.
“I didn’t have a good picture of my mother, so when I saw this one, it made her real to me again. I miss her.” I walk pass him and head for the door. “That’s all I came here for and just as an FYI, I don’t need you to follow me to my hotel.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you back here in the morning, then,” he says in a sly retort.
“Guess so,” I say, flippantly before exiting.
CHAPTER 11
Three hours...that’s how long I’ve been in this house. Three long hours.
At nine o’clock this morning, I checked out of my hotel and came straight here, noticing how different the house looks at daylight. Outside and inside, the place is immaculate. Wyatt has informed me that a cleaning crew comes by once a week and scrubs the place from top to bottom. That’s one less thing I have to worry about doing.
Right now, I’m in my old bedroom, lying on the queen-sized bed, looking at all my old posters on the walls. Looks like my father has preserved my bedroom over the years. Everything is the same, well, except for the bed covers. The nightstands still have all of my junk in them – lip gloss, old high school passes, my senior yearbook and a bunch of other things.
Wyatt is here, too. He’s in the bedroom next to mine. I can hear him moving about, getting settled and talking on the phone about shrubbery. I figure it must be something work related. I also make a mental note to watch how loud I talk on the phone because these walls are not sound proof.
Three hours and five minutes...
Time drags on. I’m bored out of my mind. How am I going to survive staying here for three months when the first few hours are worse than Chinese water torture?
I get up from bed, stretch my arms high in the air and decide to take a walk through the house. I head downstairs and look around again. The spiral staircase leads down to the living room where there’s a comfortable, beige, leather couch set – the couch I sat on briefly last night. There’s not a TV in the living room. There has never been a TV in the living room because that area was off limits, reserved only for guests of the Knight Ranch to have elegant seating. The funny thing is, we rarely had any guests.
When I walk to the kitchen, I see all new stainless steel appliances that blends well with the granite countertops and white cabinets that look to be freshly painted. I open the refrigerator door to see if there’s any food inside and it’s not. It’s actually completely bare.
“I was going to run out and buy some food if you want to come with me.”
I turn around to look at Wyatt. He looks even taller in this house.
“Will you stop sneaking up on me?”
He smirks. “I didn’t sneak up on you. I just walked in the kitchen.”
“Well, next time make some noise or something so I can know that you’re lurking behind me.”
“Do you want to come with me to the store or not?” he asks, seemingly losing his irascibility.
“No. I don’t.” I leave him standing in the kitchen and continue my tour of the house. I skip my father’s bedroom because I don’t know if I can go in there. I do peer into the other two bedrooms downstairs. They are decorated nice as well – looks like something straight off of Pinterest. He must’ve had a professional designer come in and do this.
The family room is cozy, decorated with a dark, chalk blue micro-fiber sectional sofa with an area rug that has geometric designs and variations of blues, oranges and reds. The strong colors are complimentary to the pillows, the art on the wall and the table runner on the rectangular coffee table. The centerpiece of the room is the sixty-inch flat screen that’s mounted on the wall.
I step out into the hallway, figuring I’ll go back to my room when I see Wyatt standing at the base of the stairs.
I thought he was going to the store? I have good mind to walk on by him, run upstairs, grab my purse and get out of here, but I know that would probably anger him. Since I have to be stuck in this house with him for three months, I want to at least make sure we’re not at each other’s throats the entire time. Besides, I have a weird, unsettling feeling that he already feels some type of way about how things ended between us.
“Why don’t you want to go with me to the store?” he asks.
“Because I have other things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for starters, I have to stop by the funeral home to pick up my father’s ashes since his dying wish was to have them dumped in the pond behind this house.”
“What else?”
/>
“And I have to buy some clothes, toilet paper, paper towels, bath towels...things I need to live here.”
“And we can’t do that together?”
“We can…I just would prefer not to. Now if you would excuse me, I have to run upstairs and grab my purse.”
Wyatt steps aside so that I can pass and says nothing more.
When I come back downstairs, he’s not there. I feel relieved that he’s gone and I happily skip to the front door, jump in my car and drive to the closest shopping center.
CHAPTER 12
After I bought a few pairs of pants, some brown fall boots and then picked up more groceries than I think I needed, I stopped by the funeral home.
I hate funeral homes. I faintly remember being in one when my mom passed. Visions of my father slumped down over her lifeless body, crying uncontrollably, remains with me. I remember the smell of the place – like a mixture of cinnamon candles, black licorice and, well, death. And the people that work there...they almost look like zombies. Their eyes are always wide open. They wear black. They look creepy and maybe it’s just the stereotype of folks who chose this line of work because, in my mind, I cannot figure out why anyone would pursue a career working with dead bodies on a consistent basis. Then again, I guess somebody has to do it.
Anyway, after forcing myself to get out of the car, I walk in and immediately, a tall, old white man who, no lie, looks like he could be Frankenstein’s daddy, greets me. I proceed to introduce myself and tell him that I’m picking up my father’s ashes.
“Oh yes…Mr. Alfred…he was such a lovely man,” he says in a shaky, haunting voice.
“Thanks.” I smile reluctantly. Who uses lovely to describe a man? A dead man?
“I’ll be right back with your package,” he advises.
Package? Since when is a dead person’s ashes considered a package? Maybe he has me confused with someone else.
“Um, excuse me. I just wanted to make sure you knew I was here to pick up my father’s ashes.”
“Yes, Mrs. Knight. That would be Alfred Knight, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back with the package.”
He’s killing me with this package nonsense. I watch him walk away this time and after waiting in this spooky, uncomfortable sitting area for close to eight minutes, he comes back with a cardboard box.
Okay, so it is a package...
“Here we go,” he says, setting the box on the counter.
I notice the box is taped shut. “So this is it?”
“Yes it is. Now, just so that you’re aware, your father’s ashes are in a clear, plastic bag. The bag is inside of a marble urn and the urn is protected by this cardboard box. We know the difficulty some people face with having to carry the urn home with unpackaged ashes. Sometimes the urn rolls around in the trunk or in the seat of your vehicle and then, oops, ashes are all over the place. Here at Evergreen Funeral Home, we take the time to make sure you don’t have a spill on the way home...would hate to have to vacuum your loved one out of the car, now wouldn’t ya?”
What a freakin’ weirdo... I’m so ready to get out of here. “Um, do I need to sign anything?”
“Oh, yes,” he says, handing me a pen that has their company name on it – Evergreen Funeral Home, and a slogan that says, Death done right...the first time.
The first time? Was there a second?
I scribble my name and reach for the box but, to my surprise, the ashes are quite heavy. Feels like I’m trying to carry a fifth grader to my car instead of ashes. I never knew they could weigh so much.
“Need help with that, darlin’?”
“No,” I say, struggling. “I think I can manage, but thanks anyway.”
If I can just make it to the door...
I finally do and when I’m outside, I set this box on the ground and pull in a breath, getting this sickening smell out of my lungs. Then I pick up the box again, stagger to my car, unlock the doors and place the box in the back seat.
Finally, I’m on the way back home. It’s a little after four and I wonder if Wyatt is there. If he is, what is he doing? Sitting around, watching TV? What were we supposed to do in the house? Why did my father want us there together? Maybe he was also intoxicated when the will was drafted up. That would explain a lot.
CHAPTER 13
When I pull up in the driveway, I see Wyatt taking bags from his truck, walking into the house with them. He’s back outside by the time I shut off the engine and step out of the car. He walks right over to me and asks, “How’d it go?”
“What? Shopping?”
“No. Stopping by the funeral home?”
“I survived it. The urn is in the back seat.”
“Would you like me to get it for you?” he asks, his eyes fixated on my lips again.
I swallow hard and say, “Yes, please. I didn’t realize how heavy it would be.”
“Alright. I’ll come back for it after I take these bags in the house.”
I open the trunk so that I can get my bags, too. I make several trips in and out of the house, same as Wyatt, then after bringing the last bag inside, I began unpacking some groceries, placing the non-perishables in the pantry.
“I set the urn near the fireplace in the living room,” Wyatt says. “Is that okay?”
“Yes. That’s fine. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
After we unpack all of our grocery items, he says, “I took the liberty of getting some Applebee’s takeout if you would like to eat an early dinner. Don’t know about you, but I didn’t have any lunch today at all.”
I glance at the four plastic Applebee’s containers on the table, thinking about what’s in them. What did he order for me to eat?
“I got you some chicken penne,” he says as if reading my thoughts.
Good choice, I think silently then say, “Okay. Let me wash my hands and grab some plates. I’ll warm it up.”
“Alright.”
He pulls out a chair and takes a seat at the six-chair dinette. As the food warms in the microwave, I take two cups from the cabinet, fill them with ice and pour Sprite for the both of us. Sprite is his favorite soda, which is perhaps the only reason I purchased it. I walk over to the table, set our cups there, then set his plate on the table in front of him. My food is warming now.
“You should’ve warmed yours first,” he says, looking up at me, trying to force eye contact.
It works. “It’s fine, Wyatt. Eat.”
He smiles, then takes a sip of soda. “I’ll wait until yours is ready,” he says.
Just then, the microwave beeps. I take my plate, then sit across from him. We individually say our own silent prayer then we begin our meal.
“Thanks for dinner,” I tell him.
“No problem,” he says. “So how do you feel about being back in the house?”
“Um...I don’t know. I don’t think the magnitude of what’s happening has hit me yet.”
He nods. “That’s understandable.”
“Do you know how my father died?”
“I’m not sure. I just know that he died by the pond.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m the one who found his body.”
“What?” I say, frowning. “You found his body?”
“Yeah. I came by here to cut the grass and knocked on the door. I didn’t get an answer so I started my mower and began on the yard. When I finally made it to the back, I saw him lying by the pond. I didn’t think anything of it, you know, because he used to sit by the pond every morning and read the Bible.”
“Since when?” I ask. “I don’t ever recall seeing my father read anything, especially not a Bible.”
“Well, he was making an effort to change. He’d been sober for five years.”
“Oh, so I guess you and my father were just good friends, huh, even after all the things you knew he did to me.”
He shakes his head. “No. Your father and I wer
en’t good friends.”
“Then why did you reach out to him and make his acquaintance?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes. That’s why I asked.”
Wyatt takes a sip of soda then clears his throat. “You know…I don’t remember you being so smart-mouthed.”
I snap my head back. “Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said.”
“Well, I don’t remember you being my father’s B.F.F.”
I glare at him and he continues eating, avoiding me. So I continue eating because I’m starving, and there’s nothing worse than a hungry, frustrated woman. Deciding not to let him get under my skin, I say, “You know what...I’m not going to do this. I am not going to fight with you.”
“And I don’t intend on fighting with you.”
“Good. So I have a question for you.”
“Lay it on me,” he says.
Lay it on me...he looks like he’s trying to suppress a smile after he said those words. I ignore them and ask, “So I thought you’d be in love, had a few babies and living somewhere on a farm by now.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s what you used to tell me all the time when we were young. You said you wanted to live the same way you were raised.”
He dabs his mouth with a napkin. “I remember.”
“So you didn’t meet anyone? Didn’t date?”
“I dated...was with one woman for two years. We broke up…gosh…must’ve been six years ago.”
“And you haven’t been with anyone since?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“So what about your dream of living on a farm encased in a white, picket fence and having three children? What happened?”
“That wasn’t just my dream. It was our dream, Geneva. And to answer your question, I wanted those things with you. That’s why I don’t have them.”
I choke upon hearing his response. I’m coughing, my eyes are watering because I’m struggling to get my breath back.
Wyatt stands and before he can rush over to assist me, I hold up a hand to stop him and say, “I’m okay.”
