Burnt

by Lacy Hart

  The bed looked freshly made, and the bedroom was clean as well. Just as I expected, there wasn’t much in the bedroom. Dad had his dresser, a night table, and an old wooden chair in there, and that was it. I looked through the dresser, finding nothing but clothing inside. On top of the tall, oak dresser was some cologne, and a few trinkets Dad must have picked up along the way, but nothing that would tell me anything about him.

  The nightstand offered a little more, with some bills with a rubber band around them, but nothing out of the ordinary. There was an extra pair of reading glasses on the nightstand and a pen and a pad there next to the phone.

  I opened the accordion door to the closet and saw Dad’s suits and shirts hanging there. Nothing looked new, which was keeping with Dad’s style. I rarely remember him wearing a suit unless he was going to a funeral. A few pairs of shoes were at the bottom of the closet, but nothing else. There was one small box on the shelf in the closet, and it looked to be a black security box. I figured if anything it might have something else in it. I pulled the box down, and it looked as if the lock was broken on it. When I opened the box, I saw a couple of medals Dad got while in the Army. He also had one of my old wrestling medals in the box as well. I had no idea he had kept it, let alone ever even came to one of my matches in high school. The box also held some basic papers, like the deed to the house, his discharge papers, social security card, birth certificate and nothing else.

  I placed the box on the bed and went down the hall, opening the closet door as I passed it. Nothing but towels and bathroom supplies were in there, and an old white robe was hanging on the back of the door. I popped into the other bedroom at the end of the hall. I remembered the room vaguely from the few times I stayed with Dad when I was seventeen, and expected it to be the same, but to my surprise, the room looked different. It was clean as well and seemed brighter than I had remembered it. It had a full-size bed in the room and a small dresser and nightstand, with a small closet opposite where the bed was in the room. There were no items in the dresser, nightstand or closet to speak of, which seemed odd to me. As I looked around the room, I noticed the light purple color of the paint on the walls. The best I could remember, the walls were always plain white in here. This paint looked like it was fairly new, with not a mark on it.

  Abby came up behind into the room to look around.

  “Is this going to be my room?” she said with some excitement as she fell back onto the bed.

  “I guess it would be if we stayed here,” I told her, unable to figure anything else out.

  “Awesome!” she said as she looked around. I could see her brain working behind those green eyes as she figured out how she would decorate the room to make it her own. I smiled as I watched her, feeling glad that she seemed happy with something for a change.

  “I’m going to go check out the garage,” I said to her as I walked out of the room. “You coming with me?”

  “I think I am going to hang out here for a bit,” she said to me as she looked around the room and out the window, which looked out onto the small backyard.

  “Okay, be careful,” I said to her.

  “Really, Dad?” she said to me, bringing back the irked preteen tone to her voice. “What is going to happen?”

  “Nevermind,” I mumbled as I walked out of the room. I went down the stairs and towards the kitchen, where there was a door leading out to the back porch and the back of the house where the garage was. I unlocked the back door and stepped out onto the porch. The porch needed a new paint job, and some of the boards seemed warped, worn or damaged. Dad obviously cared more about the inside of the house than the outside.

  I went down the two steps of the back porch, feeling the last step crack a bit under my weight as I moved, making me stumble a bit out into the overgrown grass in the backyard.

  I heard the window open above me and looked up to see Abby sticking her head out the window.

  “Be careful Dad,” she said with a smile.

  I smiled back at her and nodded at her smart-aleck statement. I walked through the taller grass over to the garage. The white paint on the garage, much like the paint on the house, was chipped and showed a lot of wear. The garage wasn’t very large, and the roll gate was locked from the inside. I used the key Rogers had given me to unlock the door to the garage and walked in.

  The air inside was very stale, indicating no one had been in here for a while. There was plenty of dust to be found here, with a lot of it covering the small counters where Dad had his tools lined up. The tools looked like they didn’t get much use, and there was also a small lawn mower tucked into the corner with some other lawn tools. To my surprise, there was also a vehicle under a blue tarp.

  For as long as I could remember, Dad rarely drove. I give him credit for that much since he liked to drink and never took the chance of getting behind the wheel. He always walked to where he would drink, usually at The Rail Station, the bar in town located right near the train station here, since Mom wouldn’t let him drink at the Homestead. It was less than a half mile from my mother’s house, and somehow he always made it back, no matter how much he had to drink that night.

  I pulled the tarp back to get a look at what was underneath and saw that it was a red pickup truck. The truck looked pretty new and based on a quick look at the registration sticker on the window I could see it was just a year old at most. Rogers hadn’t given me a key to any vehicles, so apparently, he didn’t know about it. I looked at the counters to see if I could find the keys but I didn’t see them anywhere. I checked the few drawers there as well without any luck, and nothing seemed to be hanging on the walls anywhere.

  I then remembered the old trick Mom did with stashing the key to the house in the broken shingle. I checked the wheel wells of the car and there, in the front driver’s side well, was a small case. I pulled the case out, and there was the key, on a fob with an automatic door opener. I pressed it, half-expecting it not to work, and heard the familiar sound of the locks shifting to open.

  I climbed into the front seat of the truck and sat there, not knowing what to do. The inside of the cab still smelled brand new, and a quick glance at the odometer showed there were only 113 miles on the truck, meaning Dad barely used the truck at all. I looked inside the glove compartment and found the insurance and registration for the car, confirming that the car was only a few months old. After a quick look around inside the cab, I opened the center console, not expecting to find anything in there. There was nothing but a pair of sunglasses.

  I flipped down the sun visor on the driver’s side and found the extra car key and fob tucked in there, along with a picture. It was odd that Dad didn’t have any other pictures anywhere in the house now that I thought about it. I flipped the picture over, and there was Dad, standing in front of a picnic table, with his arm around a woman who looked to be about my age on one side of him, and then a young girl on the other side of him. There was no indication or markings on the photo, and looking closer it looked like the picture was taken at Wilson Park, the one park located in town that had some picnic areas and play areas for kids.

  I didn’t recognize the woman or child. The woman was just about Dad’s height, with short brown hair and dark eyes. She was beaming proudly in the picture, and surprisingly, Dad was smiling just as wide, something I rarely saw him do. The girl on the other side of him looked to be about twelve or thirteen and had the same eyes and hair as the woman, making me assume it was mother and daughter.

  Why would Dad keep this picture in here? I asked myself, sitting back in the truck. I studied the picture a little bit more trying to figure it all out. Could it be a girlfriend? Dad was a charmer for sure, even when I was younger, it was clear about that, and he loved to flirt. It was a bit of a mystery.

  I took the picture and the keys to the truck and went out of the garage, locking the door behind me. I walked back up the steps to the back porch and went into the kitchen. I sat down at the kitchen table, an unimpressive, old Formica table that loo
ked like it came from a flea market or garage sale. The chairs matched it, and the one I sat in seemed unsteady. I studied the picture a little longer, trying to figure it out, but nothing was coming to me.

  It was then I remembered the letter Rogers gave me. I took the envelope I had folded in half out of jeans’ pocket and held it in front of me. I hesitated a little before opening it, a little afraid of what I might find in there. I didn’t really know what to expect from it. I tore open one end of the envelope, blew into it, and slid the letter out. I unfolded the letter and saw that it was handwritten by my Dad. Dad was never much of one for computers, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. I began to read the short letter.

  Travis,

  I know I wasn’t always the best person to be around, for you or your mother. Your mother and I had our problems, but just know none of that had anything to do with you. It wasn’t until after I was out of the house that I learned more about myself and how I had treated you and your mother. I wish I could take back some of what I had done and said over the years, and I am sorry we never got the chance to get back together again so we could actually get to know each other, and so that I could get to know my granddaughter.

  My one piece of advice to you is this – don’t let your life have any regrets to it like mine did. They will eat you up inside. Take advantage of the opportunities that come along to make yourself and your daughter happy. That’s what is most important in life.

  No matter what I may have done or said over the years, know that I was always proud of you. I’m just sorry I never got to tell you in person. Be a better man to your family than I was to mine.

  Dad

  I re-read the letter several times, and I could feel myself choke up a bit after each read. My father never gave much of an indication that he cared what I was doing or how I lived my life, but I guess I had read him wrong. Something obviously changed for him over the years, and now I was sorry I never got the chance to find out what it was.

  I stood up out of the chair and walked back out into the living room. Abby was sitting on the couch looking at her phone. I went over and sat down next to her, putting my arm around her so I could pull her closer to me. I expected her to resist a little, much as she had for the last few months, but instead, I think she could sense what I was feeling and came close to me, putting her head on my shoulder.

  “What’s that?” she asked as she saw what I was holding in my hand.

  “It’s the letter from my father,” I said to her, placing it back in my pocket.

  “What’s the picture?” she said to me. I held the picture out for her to see.

  “I’m not really sure,” I told Abby. “It’s your grandfather with a woman and girl. I don’t know who they are.”

  Abby took the picture in her right hand and studied it. I realized then that she had never seen a picture of Dad when he was older. I had some pictures of me from when I was a kid, but he was in very few of them. Since she never got to see much of him, it was natural that she had some interest. She looked closely at the picture and then handed it back to me.

  “He had your smile,” she said to me quietly.

  I hugged her tightly with my left arm that was around her and kissed her on top of her head.

  “Yeah, I guess we had the same smile,” recognizing it for the first time myself.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked, to see what she had been doing while I was exploring.

  “Nothing much, just messing with my phone. Oh, I never showed you the picture I got of Grandma and me last night at the restaurant.” Abby sat up and worked her fingers magically over her phone to pull up the picture. She handed me the phone so I could see it.

  There was Abby, smiling with her arm around my Mom, who was grinning from ear to ear. It was a nice picture of the two of them. As I went to hand the phone back to Abby. I stopped abruptly to take a closer look at the picture. I pulled the phone closer to my face so I could get a better look.

  There in the background, behind Abby and my mother, was someone looking into the camera as well. The blonde hair and face were unforgettable for me. It was Sophie, without a doubt.

  “Dad, are you okay?” Abby said to me as she sat up.

  I stood up from the couch and handed the phone back to her.

  “We need to get over to the restaurant. Now.”

  13

  Travis

  After Abby and I got in the car, my mind was still pretty distracted. I was torn between who it was that my father had this other life with and the notion that Sophie was here in Canon. I hadn’t seen Sophie since the end of that summer after our freshman year at college. I had decided at that point that I didn’t want to go back to college, that it had little to offer me, and I was ready to move on with my life. I had already signed up to take the fireman’s exam and was ready to do that, and I was hoping Sophie was ready to start a life with me, away from college, away from Canon.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t see it the same way. To her, school was important, and it was her goal to get her education, become a teacher, and make a difference that way. She never planned on coming back to Canon, at least when we had talked about life after college. She had ambitions of becoming a teacher at a school somewhere that needed a lot of help, like an inner city. I tried to plead with her that she could still do that and go with me to wherever we would end up, but she didn’t seem ready to give up the life she had at school, or in Canon, even though there wasn’t much keeping her here. Like me, she was an only child and basically grew up with just a mother in her life. Her father had left when we were in grade school together, and it hit her pretty hard. She was attached to her mother, and even through high school she didn’t go out much. We never moved in the same circles, but I sure noticed her, even if it was from afar.

  She has always had that something special about her. It was more than just the way she looked. Sophie was always very pretty, and her blue eyes could certainly catch attention, but to me, it was her radiant smile and the sweet way that she seemed to approach life. She was nice to everyone, even if people weren’t nice to her, because that’s just the way she was. I never was able to work up the courage to ask her out in high school because I always felt she was smarter than me and could do better. When I got to college that freshman year and saw her at orientation, it was like we were drawn to each other right away.

  There we were, two kids away from home for the first time, and we found someone from that little hole-in-the-wall town we were from. We clung to each other for weeks after that until we started to get settled in and meet people. By then, I was completely in love with her but still couldn’t tell her that. It was only after we went to a party together after a football game, and I had way too much to drink and was sitting outside with her, that I told her how I felt about her. She said she had feelings for me as well, and that was the night of our first kiss.

  After that we were inseparable. I walked Sophie to different classes each day, we had meals together, went out on dates and to parties, and spent as much time together as possible. I loved being with her and wanted to be as close to her as possible, but she made it clear to me almost from the start that she was virgin and planned to stay that way for now. I respected her decision, as frustrating as it could be at times. Some of our make-out sessions would go on for a long time, and we would end up in various states of undress, but it never went any further than that.

  By the time the spring semester had ended, and we came home together, I was deeply in love with her. She came over to my mother’s house for meals and to hang out, or we hung out at the restaurant. I worked there over the summer while she worked at Simmons, the local department store, in the women’s department. She would come over to the restaurant after her shift and sit with me or help me clean up after closing. Then we would stay up watching movies, talking on the porch, or making out in my room.

  We didn’t spend much time at her house since her mother didn’t really approve of her having a boyfriend. She wanted S
ophie to commit herself to school and not get distracted, and her mother made it very clear to me that Sophie had goals and ideas that were to be honored. It wasn’t until the end of summer approached, and it was almost time to go back to school, that I sprang my plan on her. The notion intrigued her, of us living together somewhere while I became a fireman, but that initial intrigue was gone by the next day. Sophie told me she needed to go back to school and begged me to go with her. I told her I couldn’t give up on my dream any more than she could give up on hers. We argued, there were tears, and when everything was said, she hugged me goodnight. The next day when I went to her mother’s house to see her, Mrs. Ingram told me she had left early to go back to school. That was the last time I saw her.

  That was fourteen years ago, and now here she was, in my mother’s restaurant, in the same picture as my daughter. Was she just visiting her own mother in town? I wasn’t even sure if Mrs. Ingram was still living in Canon. Maybe she was passing through and stopped in to see friends. Or maybe she lived here now. It seemed like more than my brain could take at the moment.