Regardless of all the newcomers, this town is still emptier than a tomb.
“Hey, Mr. Ryker. You’re looking mighty dapper today in that fine blue shirt. Cookies fresh?” Jason shakes his hand and flashes him a million-dollar smile that’s sincere, honest, and charming, the way he always is, while acid pulls up my chest with the overwhelming smell of mildew mixed with something fruity, something spicy, something nauseating.
“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Lee. And yes. The cookies are freshly baked. Peanut butter and oatmeal today.” With his eyes bugging out of his head like the fish from a pelican’s throat, he gestures toward the same chipped plate that I’m convinced never gets rinsed off then turns toward Rylee and takes a good long look at her chest and down the length of her body.
“Help yourself to the cookies.”
I shudder at his shifty eyes and the thought of eating anything inside this place.
Cookies in hand—all but me—we venture toward the Room of Relics, a small room in the back of the museum with a modest display of arrowheads, a few pieces of Indian pottery and artwork, and some Karankawa teepee remains. For reasons I’ve never really understood, we always end up in this room, and even though I’ve been in here dozens of times, it still creeps me out.
Every time I walk through the door, it feels like spiders crawling up my back.
Something sinister and ugly lurks in these four walls.
And the smell, which is foul and pungent, seems to radiate from Ryker’s pores, or Jigsaw’s as we sometimes call him after Jason and I decided he looks like the maniac in the Saw movie.
Tall and lanky, with a full head of snow-white hair that he keeps closely cropped, he looks like he’s in or around his mid-sixties, with cavernous wrinkles etched deep into his face, a nose long and thick, covered in deep, crimson spider veins, and eyes that are as blue as any sky but which literally bulge right out of their sockets. He wears no wedding ring and has no family or relatives that I’m aware of and dresses simply in worn khakis with either a blue or black button-up shirt that looks every bit as aged as his pants. Strangely, he drives an expensive Mercedes that probably costs more than my daddy earns in a year.
Nobody knows for sure how Daniel Ryker affords his luxury cars.
Palms sticky and warm, I rub at the sides of my cut-off shorts and release the breath held tight in my chest. Holy shit, I’ve been in this place dozens of times and come out with all my body parts still attached and my sanity intact. There are no ghosts or goblins lurking behind the walls, no evil spirits looming in the ceiling. I need to stop spazzing out and letting my imagination get the best of me when there’s no real reason. This isn’t the Overlook Hotel. It’s not Motel Hell. It’s simply an old musty building like many others in this town, with an introvert inside that reminds me that I watch way too many slasher movies on television and take them way too seriously.
But as hard as I try, I can’t seem to do it. Shiver after shiver raises the fine hairs on my arms. My gut rolls. My body trembles.
I hate this place. And I don’t know why.
Dallas, Austin, Corpus Christi … they all sound like heaven on earth.
Chapter Two
Today
Jen
Breaking Benjamin blasts from the car speakers as my fingers dig deep into the steering wheel, the miles becoming fewer and farther between, and the town I grew up in looming in the distance. This juncture, this crossroad—returning to a place with memories I seek to forget—doesn’t seem real but closer to a dream staring down at me like some kind of spiritual shadow.
The far West Texas country community, which considers football a religion, deems milking your neighbor’s cow illegal, and where cleaning a public building with a feather duster may very well get you thrown into jail, was once my home. It’s where my daddy is buried. It’s where my best friend took her life. It’s where I met my first love and my first lust and the place Keith Ryker first called me sugar and treated me like sin.
Somehow, I never felt that I belonged in Springhill.
With the afternoon glare of the sun beating down on the windshield, I lower the Jeep’s visor while staring out over the same unkempt two-lane country road with its same deep rounded potholes still the size of small ponds. Rylee and I drove these parts hundreds of times, and I had once known each and every one of the damn monster ruts by memory and just exactly how to maneuver my little Toyota Corolla to avoid them.
Today, they’re unfamiliar and Rylee is long gone.
Ten years have passed since my last visit. With my daddy gone, my mother and her husband living up in the Panhandle, my only sibling, Jake, living with his wife and children in Denver, and most of my friends and family scattered all over the country, I’ve had no real reason to return.
Until an unexpected phone call on a Saturday night from the one person I’ve never been able to refuse.
Hot, sticky perspiration trickles down my neck and my insides twist and turn tighter as I enter the outskirts of town in the afternoon’s haze. I reach for the vent and re-adjust the air conditioning to try to escape the sweltering, late-August heat spilling down through the car windows. Like every other day this time of the year, this part of the country is hotter than blue blazes. Scorching rays of boiling-hot sunlight pound the pavement with not a trace of a cool breeze anywhere.
Shit, I hope this isn’t the biggest mistake of my life.
The Drag. It’s what we called this stretch of road when I was growing up. I’ve driven it hundreds of times, going back and forth, up and down, doing the same thing as everyone else—killing time, searching for something, or anything, to do. Today, it feels different, almost abandoned. Traffic is virtually non-existent, and I can’t help but wonder if the kids still drive this street or what they might do for fun all these years later.
Anxiousness and concern powers through my chest at what could very possibly be the most outrageous, irrational thing I’ve ever done. My mother and brother think so. Doubt floods my mind for the hundredth time, while something else tells me I’m where I need to be. Since I was seventeen, I knew I’d love Keith Ryker until my last breath. I knew it two weeks into my junior year of high school.
I knew it when he introduced me to Dominance and I gave him my virginity.
I knew it the day he broke things off between us only weeks later and when I left the city limits of Springhill confident I’d never return.
Sometimes the hole this town left inside my chest aches so deeply that it’s hard to bear, all of which makes me wonder—again—if my mother and brother are right about my sudden return and this new venture ahead of me.
Dozens of questions flow through my head as I glance at the silent phone beside me. God knows I want to call Keith and tell him I’m here. More than anything, I do. But I’m bowled over with nerves when it comes to this man, much more so than just fifteen minutes ago. Plus, what do I say? After spending nearly two hours talking about the past, the present, and the future, I still need more of an explanation than what he gave me. I need questions answered more thoroughly. There’s so many of them. So damn many. Suddenly, nothing but uncertainty is playing in my mind.
Why did you really stop calling? Why did the e-mails truly stop coming? Why did you walk away from us? Did you simply want my virginity and nothing more? Did you want a stronger submissive for your Dominant ways? Are you in a relationship?
With jealousy gnawing at me over questions that I’ve asked myself a good hundred times, some part of me wants to believe that he could no longer stand being apart and that he’s never been able to hold down a relationship. Yet, that’s nothing but a silly delusion and childish to boot.
He ended things. He moved on and stopped communicating with me nearly two years ago.
Hudspeth Drive is right ahead, another street I’ve probably driven a hundred, if not more, times. The largest house at the bottom of the hill still belongs to Keith’s family, even though it sits vacant the biggest part of the time since his mother prefers l
iving in Ruidoso, New Mexico, nine months out of the year. The shop-and-rob is still just to the left of Hudspeth, the dilapidated Smith Motel on the right. Rylee’s old family home looks like a whole new house with its white-painted brick, completely restructured landscaping, and a circular driveway in front that wasn’t there before. A few weeks before Rylee’s death, Clay and Ladonna Fisher separated, and the last I heard, Ladonna is living in a single-wide mobile home outside of town, surviving on her divorce settlement and whatever she earns by doing the town’s clothing alterations and sewing prom dresses and special occasion attire.
Not a day passes where I don’t think about Rylee or that I’m not still burdened with guilt.
The knot in my belly tightens with more wrenching memories. Rylee was the happiest I’d ever seen her that last summer. Awarded an academic scholarship to a Division 1 university three hours from Springhill, she couldn’t wait to get moved into her dorm, find a part-time job to help with living expenses, and check out the campus bookstore. She’d been on top of the world, excited about the future, her nose in one of many old medical journals given to her by her grandmother for hours at a time.
I can’t wait to check out the bookstore.
I know you hate t-shirts, but I’m sending you one anyway.
I better be the first to know when you and Keith finally do it.
It was in the summer of 2005. Springhill was suffering through one of its worst-ever droughts. Yards were brown and dry. Shrubs were wilted and weak. Deep cracks separated the parched soil. That summer was when I knew my days in the small arid town were ending. Jason became quiet and distant after he and I almost did it. Keith and I did do it. And my best friend, Rylee Fisher, never got to know either of those things.
Instead, she took her own life.
Icy chills slip up my back. Rylee was like a sister to me. I knew when she had a headache, when she was dieting, when her mother was drinking. I knew she struggled with algebra but loved science. I knew she hated horizontal stripes on any of her tops because she claimed they made her boobs look like cannons, but she loved rock band t-shirts. And I knew she had been quieter than normal, a little distant, and her energy level lower. But I had no idea she was hurting on such a level and had only been concerned over my own selfish needs.
Since the minute I learned she was gone, my heart has been a little less full, my laughs a little less frequent. Some days I miss her so badly that I close my eyes and, for a moment or maybe two, I can see her face, hear her silly laugh and soft voice just as clearly as I did all those years ago.
Sometimes, I just know she’s here beside me.
White billowy clouds are beginning to hang low in the sky, and I wonder if rain may be moving in. From the looks of things, the town could sure use it. Childhood memories jar my mind over and over again while I draw closer to Scenic Drive and the small three-bedroom house I grew up in.
Jen, you don’t leave the house until the dishwasher is unloaded … Jen, not a minute past 10 PM. … Jen, get off the phone.
Downtown looks nothing like I remember. Mayfield Jewelers is now a deep blue, Smith’s Pharmacy a golden yellow. There’s a new high school and football field, an auto parts store, and even a do-it-yourself car wash. Springhill feels unusual, unfamiliar, uncanny, and more like a foreign town instead of the place I once called home.
Daniel Ryker is long gone, found dead in his home a couple of years after I moved. His death was ruled a suicide after being discovered with a single gunshot wound to his right temple by his own gun. Since Daniel had no known family, I’d heard that the city purchased a simple headstone and buried him right here in the local cemetery.
Martin Ryker lost his battle with heart disease after years of suffering, and Jason’s family moved back to Massachusetts, where they’d originally come from.
Mom and my stepfather, James, live in Lubbock, where James works for some kind of parts manufacturing company, while Mom works part time for an independent insurance adjuster. Jake, my only sibling, lives with his wife and two kids in Denver, which may as well be a million miles away. And the last few relatives in our family have either since passed or are spread around the globe.
For me, home has been a one-bedroom, lower-story apartment in a growing suburb of Dallas, Texas. Nearly fifteen years in the city has left me knowledgeable in the legal field, given me a great job with all the growth opportunity I could ever want, and gifted me with loads of good friends. But with all the positives come a whole slew of shitty relationships, constant traffic, and day after day of nothing but depressing news on television, all of which has left me paranoid, lonely as hell, and more than ready for a change. But Jesus, is this the change I need or want? Returning to a place where my father died? Where my best friend ended her life? Am I batshit crazy leaving good friends and a job with mountains of growth potential? To work every day in a building that I had nightmares over as a child? In a town I used to count the days until I could leave?
Fuck! Fucking fuck!
Only the big man above knows for certain if this is another colossal mistake, but if I never sit in another energy-zapping, miserable traffic build-up again or drive down Interstate 635 with its constant road rage and over-crowding, I sure the hell won’t lose sleep.
When Keith convinced me to return to Springhill and start a new, safer, less-congested kind of life that involved helping him reopen the newly renovated museum, I couldn’t decide who was the craziest. Him … or me. I’d almost fallen out of my chair as I listened to myself agreeing to move back.
Over a decade has separated me and that damned museum, but there are days that I can’t get the place out of my mind. Some mornings I wake up with the smells of dust, mildew, and cinnamon lingering in my bedroom, along with the strong presence of old Mr. Ryker and the very best friend a girl could ever have.
I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me, Rye. Forgive me for putting my own needs in front of yours. I wish every single day that you went peacefully and felt no pain.
With mountains of doubt and deep piercing souvenirs that left me a broken mess when I was eighteen, why in hell am I returning to a town so hot and dry in the summers that water rationing prevents a pretty yard? Where an hour’s drive is in store just to purchase any clothing that doesn’t involve simple Levi’s and t-shirts? Why would I give up a high-salaried paralegal job with guaranteed yearly bonuses and a load of sincere good friends to return to a place where bad memories outweigh the good? Live in a house where my daddy died? Manage a museum when I know nothing about art and don’t have the slightest idea about overseeing a small business, all in a place that makes my blood curdle?
Why am I uprooting the life I’ve grown to accept? Why am I doing any of this?
Because Keith asked. Because Jason still lives here. Because I … love them both.
Chapter Three
Jen
301 Scenic Drive had once been a simple little house covered in white siding, the windows dressed with sky-blue shutters, and a long row of shrubbery winding down the entire length of the large yard and hiding it from the street. Just after dawn on Saturday mornings, like precise clockwork, my brother stood outside trimming the hedges to an even perfection, while I had the chore of dusting and vacuuming as my mother tackled the laundry of four and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors.
With the trailer only inches from the driveway edge, I finish easing the Jeep underneath the attached carport, my heart racing in my ears.
Holy shit, this place is nothing like before.
As I scan the yard, the first thing I notice is that the shrubbery is replaced with a charming scalloped-spaced white picket fence separating the lawn from the street and the next-door neighbor. The house’s siding is the same, still white, only newer. Black shutters replace the blue. When I see the missing swing that once hung from the roof overhang on the side of the house, my throat tightens, but then just as quickly, I’m staring at its replacement hanging on the end of the newly built wraparound porch,
which brings a massive smile back to my face. Suddenly, I’m chomping at the bit to hang ferns down the length of the porch and hoping this West Texas sunshine will keep them thriving.
With dozens of memories shuffling through my brain, some wonderful, some melancholy, life seemed so much simpler.
Scratches at my windowsill late at night.
Whispers through the screen.
Bees in the park with the sun beating down.
My mother running her two-day-old car straight through the living room wall.
It’s these silly heels I wore today. My foot slipped right off the brake.
This house is a bittersweet reminder of shared meals, household chores, arguing over curfews, tending to a sick parent.
Sweet.
Loving.
Somber.
Heartbreaking.
And now, 301 Scenic and its new porch swing, white picket fence, and all the thick green grass blanketing the yard is owned by none other than the man who took my virginity, betrayed me, and broke my heart, which makes Keith not only my new boss but also my landlord.
My God, I’m really doing this. I must be crazy.
Hands shaky and heart thundering wildly, I reach underneath a bronze flowerpot full of blooming pink and white begonias to retrieve the key. With only seconds passing after I unlock the door, a sudden eagerness sends me traipsing through the three-bedroom house and looking inside cabinets and closets, opening and shutting shades and wood blinds, staring out windows.
Holy shit balls, this is a brand-new house!
Dark distressed wood covers the floor in the sunken living room while beautiful white crown molding runs between the freshly painted gray walls and ceiling. Built-in shelving, finished out in white with a niche in the middle for a flat-screen television, covers the wall where a large antique buffet table once stood, and flat Roman shades in a lighter gray than the walls showcase the four white windows facing the street, which was originally a long picture window. Surprisingly, he’s left the large walk-in closet in the corner of the living area, which I’m thankful for since this house never had much storage. When I open the door, my chest tightens for a few seconds and I almost sense the faint smell of gun oil with visions of my dad’s gun collection, along with the vacuum cleaner, spare luggage, winter coats, and men’s hunting apparel that once filled the moderate-sized space. Keith has ironically done exactly what my daddy used to say he was going to do before his health got bad. He’s added three rows of shelving and a stack of built-in drawers that weren’t here before.
Call Me Sugar Page 2
