Mae smiled, her heart shiny and bright as if the sun itself resided there. Gazing around the rig’s interior as she finished dressing, she finally understood the true meaning of home. It wasn’t Crownville, where her roots were, or Batavia, where their house was, or even the Freightliner, where they were now. It was Clyde, Rosalee, and Ken. It was Roxie and Belvia. It was Rose. It was family. No matter where the road took them, they’d never leave home, and there was no place Mae would rather be.
Ten minutes later, they climbed out of the rig, bundled against the December chill. Belvia had parked adjacent them, and her Kenworth stuck out like a Granny Smith against the dusting of snow, its grill bearing a Christmas wreath. Like Clyde, she’d left her engine running, and the sounds of twin exhausts carried down the otherwise-desolate road.
Mae waited until Clyde was on the ground before handing him Rosalee, who looked like an overstuffed pink burrito in her snowsuit. She’d ceased crying and was now focused on the falling snow, holding out her mittened hands as if to catch them. Mae hopped out behind them and closed the door, adjusting her toboggan.
Across the road, the passenger’s door opened, and Roxy poked her head out, waving, her own toboggan topped with a ridiculously large pompom. “Oh my God, I need to get my hands on that sweet baby!”
Mae laughed and looped her arm through Clyde’s as they walked over. Seeing Roxy so happy and healthy almost brought tears to Mae’s eyes. As Clyde had predicted, Rox and Belvia had fallen for each other, much to Mae’s surprise and delight. She’d never in a million years pictured Roxy as a lesbian, and, truth be told, she didn’t think Roxy herself had, either. At least, not until the former prostitute had met loud, proud, and larger-than-life Belvia. But, aside from Roxy’s obvious happiness, perhaps the most beautiful thing to come out of their relationship was the fact that Roxy had given up the life and joined Belvia on the road. Never again would Rox be treated the way she had been the night Mae had met Clyde. Belvia would see to it. The two had found love against all odds, and Mae was overjoyed for them.
Belvia came around the front of her rig wearing a Santa hat and a man’s Carhartt coat. She threw her hand up at Mae and Clyde but paused to help Roxy down from the rig—something that proved precarious due to Roxy’s stilettos.
“You can take the hooker out of the lot, but you can’t take the hooker out of the hooker,” Clyde whispered in Mae’s ear.
Mae almost choked on a laugh and elbowed him. “Stop it.”
When Roxy was safely on the ground, she took one last rushed drag of her cigarette and then tossed it, stamping it out before hurrying over to meet them.
“There’s my Maybelline. How you been, sugar?” Roxy asked, hugging Mae but encompassing Rosalee and Clyde, too. The scent of perfume and cigarette smoke enveloped them, and Mae grinned, hugging her back, so glad to see her it hurt. “And you,” Roxy said to Clyde, kissing his cheek and leaving a smudge of red lipstick. “You still a scoundrel?”
“Till my dying day,” Clyde told her, chuckling.
“I’m good,” Mae added with a laugh.
Roxy pulled back and let out a squeal, reaching for Rosalee. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, let me at her.”
Clyde handed Rosalee over, and Roxy promptly showered her with kisses and compliments. Clyde looked on with pride, patiently answering Roxy’s string of questions relating to any and all milestones that Rosalee might have had since they’d last met.
Mae turned to Belvia and hugged her, too. “It’s good to see you.”
“Been too long,” Belvia said, giving her a rib-cracking squeeze.
“Agreed,” Mae said. Life on the road left little time for meet and greets. Often, they were on opposite sides of the country, and their haul schedules rarely coordinated. Mae and Roxy kept in touch over the phone, but seeing her and Belvia in person was always long overdue. And today, bittersweet as it was, was no exception.
“How you liking beauty school?” Belvia asked, shoving her gloveless hands into her coat pockets.
“I love it,” Mae admitted. She’d been taking cosmetology courses at the vocational school in Owensville since October. They offered a daycare program, which enabled her to attend classes with Rosalee in tow, and it was only twenty minutes from Willow Brook Convalescence Facility. She visited Rose as much as possible, as did Clyde when he was home. Rose adored Rosalee, and seeing the two of them together had gone a long way toward thawing Clyde’s frosty heart. “I’d like to open my own salon someday.”
The idea had been kindling inside Mae since she’d picked up her first pair of professional scissors. Just thinking about it filled her with a pride she didn’t fully understand. All she knew was that, from the start, her life had been a how-to manual for a trailer-park train wreck, and she was as determined as hell to climb out of that gutter once and for all. She’d loved her ma, but Mae would not do as she had done. Not with Rosalee looking up to her. Not with Clyde by her side. There had been a few potholes along the way, but with eighteen wheels carrying her on, the ride from here on out would be a good one. And, by God, she’d see her dreams come true. Not only for herself and Rosalee but also for her ma. Desiree had left a tarnished legacy behind, but her heart had been in the right place, and knowing how proud she’d be of her only daughter was the fuel to Mae’s fire.
“No shit?” Belvia asked, looking genuinely impressed.
Mae smiled. “Yeah.”
She’d have to complete her certification first, and they’d need to save money for the building, but the prospect was a shimmer on her horizon, and she intended to keep her eyes on it.
Belvia nodded in approval. “That’s good, kid. Damn good.”
“What’s good?” Roxy asked, turning to them with a bouncing Rosalee in her arms.
Belvia gazed at Roxy and Rosalee, a hint of longing in her eye. “Our little Maybelline here is planning to open her own salon.”
Roxy’s eyebrows jumped. “No shit?” she asked, mirroring Belvia’s sentiments.
Mae laughed. “Someday.”
“Hot damn,” Roxy said with a grin, shaking her head. “Your mama would shit a brick she’d be so excited.”
“You ever think about writing sonnets, Rox?” Mae laughed.
“Before I answer that, mind telling me what the hell a sonnet is?”
Chuckling, Belvia put her arm around Roxy and Mae both. “Come on.”
Clyde walked ahead of them and opened the low, rusty gate, its filigree metalwork so old, parts had broken off entirely, leaving behind only the skeletal remains. Even in the snow, the cemetery’s neglect was evident. Frosted weeds grew unchecked along the fence line, and tombstones protruded crookedly from the earth, white-capped and forgotten—much like the cemetery itself. Desiree’s grave was the newest, and though it had been over a year since she’d been buried, the mound of dirt atop her hadn’t fully settled. Mae swallowed, grief rising like a tide coming home after a long journey at sea. Her ma. Her messy, hopeless, heart-of-bronze ma. Oh, how Mae missed her.
It was the first time Mae had visited since the funeral.
As if sensing her swelling heartache, Roxy leaned her head on Mae’s shoulder. “We gotcha, babe. We gotcha.”
The memorial, which Mae had finally been able to afford, was set last month, and a pillow of snow topped its curved spine. When they reached the foot of the grave, Mae drew to a stop and gazed down at the snow-dusted inscription.
Desiree Louise Harrison
April 10, 1962—August 2, 2018
Mother. Grandmother. Friend.
It was simple. Unadorned. All that needed to be said.
The unnamed cemetery, which rested atop Creamery Hill just outside of Crownville, was a mostly forgotten patch of bone-filled ground where the town’s poor were laid to rest. At the time, leaving Desiree here with the nameless, the unwanted, the disgraced had left a yawning ache in Mae’s heart. Hadn’t her ma deserved better? Despite what she was? Hadn’t she been a living, breathing human being like everyone else? To Mae, it
had been society’s way of taking out the trash, and she’d been the lone janitor.
Only she hadn’t been alone.
Jerry had been there, his overalls smeared with dirt and his brow damp with sweat after a morning of digging.
And, today, Mae was surrounded by her tribe.
Today, she didn’t see the weeds, the sagging fence, or the crumbling tombstones. She saw the graves of people who’d been overlooked. Who’d fallen through the cracks. People who, once upon a time, had laughed, sang, danced, and loved. Who’d been loved. Now, the tangled vines climbing over the fences and stones with abandon felt wild and beautiful in an ungoverned kind of way. Just like Desiree had been.
Roxy adjusted Rosalee on her hip and glanced at Mae. “She was a good woman, Maybelline. Did the best she could by you. And she’d be damn proud. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Tears brimmed in Mae’s eyes, but she nodded. “I know.”
Clyde, who had been gazing at Desiree’s memorial, looked over at Mae. Their eyes met, and she smiled. It was a tender smile. One full of sadness, love, and hope. He smiled back, and, for a moment, it was just the two of them, her past, present, and future surrounding them like a sweet embrace. The evolution of her life, the journey from daughter to mother, and now wife, had been a chrysalis of change. She’d become someone new at every transition, and he’d fallen in love with every one of her.
“I never had the pleasure of knowing her,” Belvia said, her breath coming out in frosty puffs. “But it sounds like she was quite a character.”
“She was,” Mae agreed with a laugh, dabbing her cheeks with the back of her glove.
Gazing at the tombstone, Roxy shook her head, laughing. “Remember that time she beat Trina with the bitch’s own wig because she called Jerry a retard?”
Mae laughed, too, pride warming her from the inside out. She did remember, and she’d never seen her ma so mad as she’d been that day. Desiree had been no stranger to trash talk. It was the way of the lot, after all, and her mouth had been as foul as the next hooker’s. But the one thing she’d never tolerated was a bully. Even if that meant kicking the ass of a six-foot-tall prostitute with breast implants the size of watermelons. Mae had been sixteen at the time, and the moment the R-word had come out of Trina’s inflated mouth, Desiree had commenced to giving a beat down to rival all parking-lot beatdowns. Mae had never been so impressed by her ma.
“Yeah,” Mae laughed. “Trina had black eyes for a week.”
“And she had to walk around with that scary-ass hair of hers until she could afford to buy a new wig.”
Mae threw her head back, her laugh hearty and cathartic. “Because ma flushed hers down Shifty’s toilet.”
Roxy’s grin was feral as she looked at Desiree’s grave, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Damn straight. Your mama was a bad bitch.”
Clyde was grinning, too. “Now that’s a fight I’d have paid money to watch.”
Belvia chuckled. “Sounds like my kind of woman.”
“You have no idea,” Roxy said, drying her eyes. “The stories we could tell.”
Mae rested her head on Roxy’s shoulder, smiling. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’m starved.”
“Me, too,” Roxy said. “And I can’t wait to see what Jerry’s done with the place.”
Less than a month after being incarcerated, Ted Seymour had been found dead in the West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility’s laundry room, a homemade shiv lodged in his kidney. As it turned out, rather than leaving his worldly possessions to his only family—an estranged son who lived in Colorado and who hadn’t spoken to the man in over thirty years—Shifty had willed everything, including the truck stop, to Jerry. Despite his questionable IQ and lack of social skills, Jerry had taken to business ownership surprisingly well, though Mae heard he spent most of his time in the diner’s kitchen, where he’d revived some beloved Appalachian recipes like leather britches and skillet cornbread.
“Who would have thought?” Mae mused. “Jerry’s Petro and Go.”
“I’ll get this one strapped in,” Clyde said, taking Rosalee. To Belvia, he added, “I got your order.”
Belvia grinned. “Hell yeah.”
As the two walked away, discussing the pros and cons of hundred-proof moonshine, Roxy watched them go with a small smile. She glanced at Mae. “You never did tell me how you came up with the name Rosalee, by the way.”
Mae smiled, too. “We named her after ma and Clyde’s sister, Rose.”
“Rose and Desiree,” Roxy murmured, her voice bittersweet. “Rosalee.”
“Yeah,” Mae said, swallowing. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. That night, why were you so afraid to talk to the police?”
The question seemed to catch Roxy off guard, and she cringed, glancing down at her stilettos and kicking absently at the snow. “Just some buried shit I didn’t want to dig up,” she finally said. “Used to be married. In another life.” She gazed out at the surrounding woods. “He was a bastard. The beating kind. Didn’t think I’d ever get out alive.”
Shocked, Mae waited for her to go on.
Roxy shook her head as if remembering. “But one day, I did. Ran off, changed my name, and got a new life.” She eyed Mae with an arched eyebrow. “A shitty new life, but a new life, feel me?”
Mae chuckled. “I feel you.”
Roxy continued. “Man had connections in law enforcement. That night with the trucker …” She pursed her lips. “It was the first time I’d been scared in years. I mean really scared, babe. And not of that Bible thumper, either. If my ex found me because of some police report …” Her voice trailed off. “Let’s just say it wouldn’t have ended well for me.”
“Oh, Rox,” Mae murmured. “I didn’t know.”
Though her expression remained pained, a grin curved Roxy’s thin mouth. “Turns out the bastard got hit by a bus a couple years after I left him. He’d been deader than Abe Lincoln all this time.” She laughed. “Of all things. Hit by a bus.”
“Holy hell,” Mae said.
“I know. Found out when I gave my statement.” Roxy’s grin faded a little. “Karma’s a sly old bitch.”
Mae studied her, realizing the guts it must have taken to set the record straight. “You didn’t know that when you talked, though. That was brave as hell.”
Roxie cleared her throat. “I couldn’t let Jerry go down because of me. I just … couldn’t.”
Mae smiled. “I wasn’t surprised you did the right thing.”
Roxy waved her gloved hand, but the thickness of her voice belied her emotions. “Stop it. You’ll get me crying again.”
“I mean it,” Mae said, looking at her. “You’re a good person. You were a good friend to my ma.”
Once, Mae had believed there was no loyalty on the lot. No friendship. No bonds. There had only been begging for scraps alongside your fellow stray. But she’d been wrong. The loyalty had been there. The love. She’d just been too busy surviving to see it.
“Dammit,” Roxy said, her voice quavering. She pulled Mae into a fierce hug. “You done all right, kid. You really did.”
Mae hugged her back. “Thanks, Rox.”
After a long moment, Roxy pulled away, dragging her thumbs under her mascara-smeared eyes. “Now look what you went and made me do.”
Mae laughed and patted her satchel. “Want me to fix you up for old time’s sake?”
Chuckling, Roxy shook her head. “Nah. I ain’t trying to impress nobody no more. My old lady loves me just the way I am.” She gazed at Belvia, who was crouched in front of Clyde’s rig, pointing at something while talking to him, her red Santa hat standing out boldly against the white backdrop. “Come on. Our lives are waiting for us.”
The statement was a simple one, but it was profound, and Mae found herself holding back tears of her own. “I’ll be there in a minute. There’s something I gotta do first.”
Roxy looked at her with a sad smile but nodded. “Sure thing, sugar.” She squeezed Mae�
��s hand, then let go. “See you in a few.”
Mae watched her walk away, her ankles wobbling like a newborn colt as she navigated the uneven ground in her heels. Laughing quietly, Mae turned to Desiree’s grave and crouched.
“Hey, Ma,” she said, brushing snow off the tombstone’s inscription so she could run her finger over Desiree’s name. Her voice came out in a whisper. “I miss you. So much.”
The only response was the rustle of naked tree branches nearby as the winter breeze wove through the woods. Swallowing, Mae closed her eyes for a moment and turned her face to the sky, letting snowflakes fall on her warm cheeks. “I have a daughter now. She’s so beautiful. I can’t believe she’s mine.” Unable to stop them, tears escaped, and she returned her gaze to the gravestone, her fingertips resting on Mother. “She’s only eight months old, but I can tell she’s going to be smart. So smart. And Clyde.” Mae smiled. “God, you’d die all over again if you knew how handsome he was. And he’s so good to me. He showed me the world, Ma.” She smiled at the slight exaggeration. “Or, at least, some of it.”
Behind her, the sound of his laughter rose in the air, mingling with Belvia’s and Roxy’s, and Mae’s heart felt a little more whole. A little less empty. “He’s not a white knight. Not like you always wanted for yourself,” Mae said, giving the tombstone a look that said Now, hear me out. “But he’s just what I needed. He didn’t save me, Ma. We saved each other.”
As if in approval, the wind gusted, whistling through the tombstones and caressing Mae’s tear-stained cheeks.
She pulled the folded pair of faded Guess jeans from her satchel, gazing down at them a moment, the memory of the day Desiree had bought them for her blooming like a familiar, favorite flower. Mae could still remember how outraged Desiree had been on her behalf. How heartbroken. So desperate to help her daughter fit in. To cheer Mae up the only way she knew how. It was such an insignificant memory in the grand scheme of Mae’s life, but it was one of the best.
She placed the jeans atop the headstone and rose. “Goodbye, Ma.”
With that, she turned and walked away. Roxy and Belvia had already loaded up, and Clyde waited for her by the passenger’s door of his rig, looking rugged and handsome, his arms crossed over his chest and one hip leaned against the fender. She smiled through the tears. It was bittersweet, leaving her ma behind. Mae had the feeling it would be the last time she ever visited the cemetery, and part of her heart would remain here with Desiree’s bones forever. The knowledge filled Mae with sadness but also joy. It was time to lay the past, this town, and, most importantly, her mother to rest, and the only way to do that was to roll on. After all, as Roxy said, their lives were waiting for them, and Mae didn’t want to miss a thing.
Mother Trucker (Crownville Truckers Book 1) Page 20
