by Krista McGee
He lets me cry, his grip so tight I have to struggle out of it when I’m done. Still snuffling, I wipe my face on my sleeve and crawl into the truck. The scent of wood chips and spearmint gum tickles my nostrils, and I settle back, breathing it deep. Dad drops into his seat, and I have to brace my hand against the door to keep from sliding into him on the sloping bench seat.
“Sorry,” he says.
The engine revs, and we leave the parking lot behind us. From the train station it’s just three miles to the house I grew up in. The distance flies by, leaving me feeling like an outsider. I can’t point out a single change, but it all feels foreign. The mixture of evergreen trees and cow pastures are a bizarre juxtaposition after the city’s skyscrapers and manicured parks.
I don’t want to be back here, but the oak tree in our lawn comes into sight and the pain ebbs a bit. The house isn’t anything to get worked up over, though I’ve always been happy to call it home. Ranch-style, white with yellow trim, it sits nestled in a jumble of evergreens. Within, everything about the furnishings is supersized to fit my mountain of a father.
We pull into the long gravel driveway, and I cringe at the ridiculous mailbox that’s been added in my absence.
“Where did you get that?”
“I made it,” he says, proud of his handiwork. The mailbox is ghastly: a ten-gallon bucket, our last name scrawled across it, perched atop the old post. “Whatcha think?”
“What happened to the old normal mailbox?”
“I backed into it with the trailer.” He chuckles, and the elastic bands around my heart ease up just a millimeter.
“Well, at least I know what to get you for Christmas.”
Dad parks the truck, and a small sigh escapes my lips. I hadn’t planned on living here again, ever, and the sting of disappointment jabs at my gut: I did not finish what I set out to do. But I can’t go back. I can’t. I need this house, and I need my dad.
“Who’s living in the old Miller place?” I ask, nodding at the only other house in sight—a farmhouse situated about a hundred yards to the east.
He cranes his neck to look past me. “Don’t know. Somebody just moved in.”
Several of the windows are alive with light. The truck rattles with the sound of a stereo, and my heart slows to the rhythm of the bass line. Like a metronome, it’s soothing, and I lean back against the headrest.
“Ah, heck. I’ll go over there after dinner and tell ’em to turn it down.”
“No. Don’t. Please.”
His shoulders sag, and I realize he’ll do anything to make me comfortable tonight. We sit in the cab, the rattling truck and bass guitar filling the silence.
“You know, kiddo, you don’t have to talk about it. You don’t. You don’t really need to do anything for a while.” He’s rehearsed this little speech, I can tell. “Just be, okay? Be here, and maybe one day you’ll see it really wasn’t your fault.”
I choke a bit and look into his big teddy bear face. He can’t know. He’s my dad. He sees only what he wants to see. He’ll never understand that I could have stopped it. I look out the passenger-side window, over the dead grass and the brown leaves scattered on the ground. I look out at the coming winter and the setting sun and say all I plan on saying about it.
“Ali was eighteen, Dad. My age. A little bit younger, really.” My body—my skin, even—feels so heavy with the icy weight of it all. “I could have stopped the whole thing. There’s no way around that, but you said it yourself. I don’t have to talk about it.”
I turn to face my father. He needs to know how serious I am. This subject is off-limits. Until the trial—until I’m sitting on that witness stand—there isn’t another soul who needs to hear my story. I look Dad straight in the eye. Tears gather there, they run down his face and sparkle in his beard.
“Okay. We just won’t talk about it,” he concedes. He kisses my nose. “Some guy named Pizza Hut made us dinner, so let’s get to it.”
He climbs out and throws a hostile look at the old Miller place. Then he grabs my bags from the bed of the truck and stomps inside.
“Pizza Hut, huh?”
I follow him into the house. His boots leave muddy prints up the porch stairs and across the linoleum floor. I used to reprimand him for stuff like that, but not today. Today, I simply ghost by.
Weaving around the mud splotches, I make my way through the kitchen and into my old room. It’s been vacant for two years, and still it looks the same. I pick at a loose thread on my jeans, uneasy at the lack of change. This ancient town is tightfisted with her diversions, and it’s quite possible I’ve had my share. The idea hurts. Like that dingy penny in the bottom of your pocket—the one that must be eighty years old. You scratch away the gummy muck and are horrified to find how new the coin is. Much newer than you ever would have guessed.
How did I get so filthy, so damaged in just a few short years?
I’d been given the chance of a lifetime, and now, two years later, my own inaction had ruined not only my dreams but the life of someone I’d loved. Broken dreams I can handle, but I’d give anything to go back and make things right for her.
That isn’t possible, of course. Some things you have to do right the first time. If the past three weeks have taught me anything, it’s that.
You don’t always get a second chance.
The story continues in Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore . . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When Krista McGee isn’t living in fictional worlds of her own creation, she lives in Tampa and spends her days as a wife, mom, teacher, and coffee snob. She is also the author of Anomaly, First Date, Starring Me, and Right Where I Belong.
