by Emily Bishop
The screen door slammed shut downstairs, bouncing against the house siding. My ears perked up as the familiar knocking of my father’s feet drew a line toward the television. His voice echoed out.
“Max? What the hell did I tell you about wasting your whole summer long in front of the television? Jesus Christ. If I was your age, I’d be out there throwing a ball around…”
I bolted toward the staircase and wound my way down to where my father stood in the line of sight between my son and the bright flashing square near the corner. Max’s hand was lifted, holding onto his spoon. Milk dribbled down toward the bowl.
“Grandpa, it’s only until I finish my cereal,” Max said.
“Dad?” I said, stepping toward him. My blue dress swirled around my thighs.
He glared toward me, gave me a onceover. “What the hell are you dressed up for?” he demanded. “You ain’t got work today, do you? Never seen you dress like this. You look like you’re competing in the freaking county fair.”
He was right—I wasn’t going to work. I’d taken time off the past little while, to deal with all of this.
“Dad, what did I tell you about coming here unannounced? Max and I have places to be today. You can’t just barge in and ask—”
My father took a step forward. Max tensed on the sofa, dropped his spoon. “Little lady, last I checked, you were living under the roof I paid for. Living in the house I gave you.”
I stared at him, eyebrows raised.
So, that was it. He’d use everything he’d done for me as a weapon to get me to do what he wanted, now? I hadn’t had a damn choice, no money to my name, when I’d accepted his offer to live here on my own.
He’d moved out with momma to a bigger place, one that suited his advanced position as mayor of Randall.
“What does that mean?” I asked and folded my arms across my chest.
Eric had been bullied. So had I, but not to the same extent. I wouldn’t let the trend continue any longer. I’d done my best to place boundaries between my father and my little family with Max-o, but it hadn’t worked.
“It means,” Dad said, and ran his hands over his mouth. “Little lady, it means I will come here whenever I want, and you will make me feel welcome. It means that you and Max owe me, that you’ll do what I say, when I say it, or you’ll be out of this house, on your asses. Get it?”
Max was frozen to the spot, his gaze shifting between me and the puffed-up Mayor.
“Is that what you think?” I asked. “That I’ll just let you walk all over us? I suppose I’ve let you do just that for years, haven’t I? But things are different now. They’re changing. If it means leaving this house, I’ll do it. Don’t you think I won’t, not for a damn second.”
“Changing, huh? This got something to do with that no-good scumsucker Holzman?”
“None of your business,” I said.
My father bore down on me, his fingers twitching at his sides, sweat streaming down his puffy cheeks.
“Everything about you is my business, girl. I made you. You’re mine. And you will do as I say or you’ll regret it, understand? How do you think the town would react if they found out their beloved mayor’s daughter is running around with that fuckhead?”
“Language,” I snapped. Max’s eyes were round as donuts.
“Holzman is bad blood, Olivia. Just like that kid you got back there,” my father said, tilting his head toward Max.
With that, Max bolted up from the chair, his cereal bowl scattering to the ground. Milk and cereal ran everywhere, over his jeans and T-shirt, soiling him. But within seconds, Max had thrown himself across the room, his cheeks growing bright red, toward my father—something he hadn’t done before.
“Don’t talk about me like that!” Max screeched, his hands drawing into fists.
I placed a hand on Max’s shoulder and squeezed, then placed my arm around his shoulders and drew him against my side. We presented a united front, me slightly closer to Mayor Thames, shielding my child.
“Don’t you talk about him like that,” I growled. “Don’t you dare. You have no right to treat your grandson this way.” My father had always whispered things, acted strangely toward Max, been too strict, but he’d never spoken about him in quite that way before.
My father’s expression altered. He slipped toward us. “Olivia, darling,” he said. “You know that that boy Eric’ll just leave you and Max here the minute he’s done. He’ll fuck you and leave you, probably pregnant again for all I know. And you know what? You’ll be left with me, baby girl. You’ll be left cowering and apologizing, eager for me to keep helping you with the bills and with Max’s school. Baby girl, you can’t do this all on your own. You never have.”
My jaw grew tight, my teeth sanding against one another. I peered up at him, rage filling my every cell. “I can look after my child without your help,” I said. “I can do whatever it takes to make that happen.” God, I’d take extra shifts at the diner where I worked when I wasn’t at the library. I’d save up. We’d been on the Mayor’s payroll for way too long.
That was it, wasn’t it?
He’d paid our bills without asking, with the silent understanding that we’d stay in line with what he wanted.
My father clucked his tongue, as if I was ridiculous in thinking we could be independent from him.
He dragged a single finger along my scar. The memory rocked through me: the ladder falling down as the crowd sped from the sight of the fire. Everything had gone black for a moment before I’d come to with blood streaming down my neck, onto my cheerleader uniform. Freddy, the quarterback, had found me and carried me from the flickering flames.
Perhaps I’d made it up, but I still remembered Eric at the scene of the fire, his hands in fists and his eyes burning orange, watching Freddy drag my screaming form away.
I shook my father off and stared him down. Max drew himself up too, taking in my strength and finding his own.
“Get out,” I said. “Get out or I’ll call the cops.”
“I own the cops,” Dad sneered.
“I don’t give a—I don’t care what or who you think you own. If you don’t leave, I will. With Max. I’m sure that will look great to all your followers—your daughter running out on Randall. I’ll be sure to tell everyone why, too.”
“Olivia…”
“Out.”
My father sniffed, purpled up like a plum, then marched for the door. He halted in it and looked back. “When this is over, you’ll come crawling back to me. You’ll realize that you’re nothing without your old man. Remember that. I’ll expect you to grovel, Olivia.” And then he was gone.
I drew Max into a tight hug and kissed his head, then held him gently at arm’s length, looking into his eyes. “You all right, Max-o? You’d better be. You know not to listen to old idiots who can’t tell their butts from their faces, right?”
That made him smile. The almighty butt joke still got him, even after all these years.
“I’m okay.”
“Now, look at this mess. You run upstairs and take a shower, get changed again. I’ll clean up here, all right? Don’t you worry about a thing. Your grandfather’s tantrums don’t change anything for us or our plans today. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now scoot.”
At eleven, Max and I piled into the car—the car my father had bought and paid for, on the spot, god help us—and cut out toward the edge of town. Anxiety burned through me as we drove. My father’s threats echoed through me.
He’d given me everything, when my body had given in to the pregnancy. But it’d all come with a tag. An ‘I owe you.’ He’d help me now, but that made me his indentured slave. And I wouldn’t take that a second longer.
I’d been trying to save up and find a way out of this for years. I just had to keep going. Had to find a way. For Max.
Max turned on the radio for us and cut out my negative thoughts. Together, we bopped along with classic hits and all the latest, each g
iving an out-of-ten score.
“Five!? Kid, you’ve got no taste. That’s a Fleetwood Mac song. They’re the best—”
“Sorry, Ma, but it’s gonna have to be a five from me.”
“It’s a hard ten.”
“We can average it out, I guess.”
“Meet at 7.5 in the middle?”
“I guess,” Max-o replied, shrugging his gangly shoulders.
“Fine.” My sigh was purposefully over-dramatic. “But I’ll remember this next time Ariana Grande comes on the radio.”
Max flushed bright red—he had the biggest crush on her—and cleared his throat.
The next song came on, and we sang together, trying for harmonies we couldn’t possibly achieve.
The barn house was far outside town, tucked between some old oaks that had begun to crowd over the top of the roof. The place looked mossier, foggier than it had when we were teenagers. The red paint of the building had flicked off more and more, after years of sun and storm and wind, and the driveway was now completely overgrown with grass and weeds. My tires crackled over it, winding us toward where Eric had parked his own car.
Near the barn door, Maggie and Eric walked hand-in-hand, the sunlight catching Maggie’s curls. She whipped her head toward us as we approached, delivering a vibrant smile.
I stepped from the car and Eric gave me a soft smile, then mouthed, “You look beautiful,” from afar. Max walked, tentative, beside me as we approached. His long tennis shoes, ones he’d only just grown into, flopped against the rocks. Eric’s gaze turned toward Max, and the pair of them sized each other up: father and son, son and father. The facts, at least some of them, were on the table.
“Hey there,” Eric said. He squatted slightly when we reached them, bringing his hand out to Max. Max gripped his hand and shook it, bringing his chin up toward his much taller father. Already, I could see the way their bodies were aligned. Max’s legs and arms were in direct proportion to Eric’s, just not-quite adult. In ten years, I was sure he’d his father’s spitting image.
“Hello,” Max responded. He turned toward Maggie, speaking almost as if he were at a job interview. Trying to impress. “It’s good to see you again.”
Maggie twirled, making her dress wave around her thighs. Blinking up at me, she batted her eyelashes. “Your dress is so pretty!” she called to me.
“Indeed. It is,” Eric said, reaching forward. He pressed his lips against the side of my cheek, terribly close to my scar.
“I’ve packed a picnic,” Eric said. “Maggie helped.”
“Daddy almost forgot juice boxes,” Maggie said.
“That’s horrible!” I laughed.
Maggie slipped her little fingers through mine, and the pair of them guided Max and I toward a clearing to the east of the barn. Sunlight streamed in between the trees, and the grass was a soft cushion beneath a blue blanket they’d stretched out. To the side sat a picnic basket stocked with cheeses and juice boxes and little candies and meats and baguettes, as well as a bottle of wine. My throat clenched.
“Wow!” Max cried, falling to his knees. “Is this all for us?”
“It sure is,” Eric said, sitting on the blanket alongside him. “Dig in, man. That bag of chips there, those are our favorites.”
“I love those, too!” Max said, tearing open the bag. “We love them, don’t we, Mom?”
I nodded, unable to tear my eyes away from Eric. On the blanket, between my son and his daughter, he glowed with confidence. His thick hand tunneled into the chip bag, taking several for himself, and he nibbled at them, beginning a light banter with Max. “The thing about these is they have the best crunch. You can hear it in your ear.”
Max followed suit, crunching down hard on the chip.
Eric and Max laughed together, and then Max dotted his napkin against his lips, anxious. He gave me a soft smile, shrugging. “Sorry, Mom,” he sighed. “That was gross, wasn’t it?”
“Your dad is going to think I raised you in a barn,” I told him, giggling. “But Maggie and I, we’re ladies. Aren’t we, Maggie?”
Glancing toward Maggie, I found her with lemon pudding dripping down her nose. She giggled at me, and I burst out laughing. The sunlight swept beneath a cloud for just a moment, drawing my eyes back toward Eric, who held onto them for a long moment. This: this was the blissful nothingness most families shared, wasn’t it?
Max began to open up to Eric, little by little. He laid a piece of ham across a bit of baguette and nibbled at it off and on, so centered on what Eric said back to him. “Wait, where is New Orleans again? Is that in the south?” Max asked, his eyes scrunching tightly.
“Sure is, Max,” Eric nodded. “It’s this beautiful town right on the ocean. Everywhere you go, you can hear music from somewhere. On the streets, there are big jazz bands that play all hours of the night. Trombones. Trumpets. Even accordions…” At this, Eric mocked playing the accordion, easing his body left and right in a dance. Max laughed hysterically.
“Do you play music?” Max asked.
“No way. You can ask your momma. I was never very good at anything as a kid.”
“Ah, well, that’s not true!” I piped up, surprised at how bright my own voice was. “Your daddy had this motorcycle that he drove fast across town. He could fix the thing just by looking at it for a second. And he was always there for me, when things got rough.”
“We were there for each other,” Eric said, his eyes holding onto mine once more.
“In some ways, we didn’t have anyone else.”
Max shifted on the blanket, dropping his bit of baguette to his knees. “My grandpa hated you, right?” he asked Eric.
To the side, Maggie had begun to play with her pudding using a small spoon, dotting bits of it onto the grass and watching the ants crawl over it. She cooed at them, a goddess of another world.
Eric nodded. “My father and your grandfather didn’t get along at all. And for that reason, I think, your grandpa never thought I was good enough for your momma. And in a lot of ways, I wasn’t.”
Max rolled his eyes toward me, his lips a thin line. “I think she loved you,” he told Eric, his words so pure. “Because I think when people don’t talk about people, that means they really care. You were a secret.”
A secret. Not anymore. I didn’t want that to be the case this time around. If this was an actual chance with Eric, if this… worked, then I wouldn’t give it up again.
Max and Eric had the instant connection Eric and I shared, on a different level. They’d already fallen into easy conversation, like they’d known each other for years.
“Max,” Eric said, reaching into a side bag and drawing out a soccer ball. “I don’t suppose you like soccer, do you?”
Max rushed to his feet, his eyes eager. Eric tossed him the ball, and he caught it, his hands stamping onto either side. Max rushed across the field, toward the sweeping weeping willow. Eric shrugged toward me, flashing that gorgeous bad-boy smile.
“Look at you,” I whispered to him, my core tightening up. “It’s like you trained for this.”
“I want to prove myself,” Eric told me, his voice firm.
Without waiting another moment, he cut across the grass to join Max. Max dribbled the ball from foot to foot before blasting it across the grass toward Eric. Eric kicked it in a high arc over both of their heads, making Maggie cry out with glee. She smacked her hands together and leaned tighter into me. Her hair smelled like flowers, clean and fresh. I imagined Eric helping her drizzle the shampoo through it, giggling with her as the water steamed down. It had only been the two of them, just as it had only been Max and I.
Now, we’d found one another.
Chapter 13
Eric
The storm steamed over us at around five pm, after hours of picnic. The clouds blackened, casting a shadow across Olivia’s face. We sat in the shade of the willow, watching as Max taught Maggie how to kick the soccer ball, guiding her little tennis shoe to the precise “sweet spot” on the sph
ere. She giggled, unable to sit still, and rammed her little head into Max’s stomach, like a wild boar. Olivia guffawed, sipping at a glass of wine as she leaned against me.
“We should leave before it rains,” I said, pointing toward the dark clouds. “Don’t want to get stuck out here.”
“Let it rain,” Olivia said, her voice sincere. “I don’t want to be anywhere but here with you.”
I knew it was the glass of wine she’d drunk. That she wouldn’t be so overt with her feelings. But I felt them, too, sizzling in the air between us, a combination of seeing one another as parents, of knowing Max, of watching Olivia trail her fingers through Maggie’s hair.
I kissed her. I couldn’t fucking resist it. My finger traced her ear, the softness of her cheek, before slipping toward her chin.
My cock responded immediately, and I cut off before it got too intense for both of us. God, I wanted to press her against the picnic blanket, dive my nose between her tits. Fuck her till she cried out my name.
But no. It couldn’t be here.
We broke the kiss, and rain peppered down on our cheeks. An ominous, shattering thunderclap ripped from above, and Maggie shrieked, then ran for us. “Daddy, that was scary” she cried. “It sounded like a monster!”
“Don’t worry, honey, it’s just a storm. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Quickly, we gathered up the picnic supplies, wrapping the blanket around the rest of the food. Gesturing toward my car, I called out to them. “Come on! Come with me!”
They followed me—my pick-up family—and we raced to the car. I slotted Maggie into the back seat, while Olivia joined me in the front. Max cackled as, above us, lightning flickered across the sky, so ominous against the black. Unconsciously, I slipped my hand along Olivia’s shoulder.
“I don’t want you guys to leave,” I said, voice firm.
Olivia turned her head toward me, her smile stretching. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the day shouldn’t end yet. It can’t,” I told her. As it tumbled from my mouth, I knew the impossibilities against it. That if I brought Olivia and Max back to the rental house, surely Anthony Thames would lurk past, discover she was there. Someone in the neighborhood might spot us, walking from the car. The gossip in that town rushed like wildfire, and it could burn us both. And with my father’s funeral just two days away… shit, we didn’t need the complication.
