One
Grady
“There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Maybe if you were nicer to her, she’d take you back,” my father says, for not the first nor tenth time.
“Again, Dad, I left Brenda. Not the other way around. I don’t want her to take me back.”
What I want is to see my daughter. Brenda won’t give me that without a battle since I didn’t give her everything she thinks she deserved in the divorce. Which would have been everything I have.
Dad wants the same—more time with Paige—even if it means putting up with my ex-wife. He doesn’t like her any more than I do.
“Well, maybe if you were nicer to her, she’d let you spend more time with Piglet.”
“Only if, by nicer, you mean giving her more money,” I mutter, looking out the front window when I hear a vehicle approach.
It’s late afternoon, the light beginning to die its daily death. Summer is coming, and soon, this time of day will be full of that bright orb we worship so much in the Pacific Northwest.
For now, we only dream of dry and bright as we fight the depression the gray, damp weather brings to so many of us. It never bothered me. My mom told me once that if we waited for the rain to stop, we’d never get anything done. I guess I embraced that.
“Is she still letting you have her over the summer when we come to visit?”
“That’s the deal we made. My attorney is adding that time to the revised custody agreement as a yearly nonnegotiable visitation.”
“Lawyers. Bunch of bloodsucking assholes,” he mutters before continuing his tirade about how he got screwed over by one, once, when he was trying to buy property in Eastern Washington.
The car passes my driveway, an older sedan with a dented front bumper and broken headlight, then pulls into the short one next door. My brow furrows as it sits idle in front of the garage.
“Are you listening, Grady?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say distractedly. “Someone just pulled up to the Jackson house.”
“Juliet?”
“No, she’s still in Milan,” I say and shift to get a better view as the garage door opens and the car pulls in. “Besides, she wouldn’t be caught dead in a car older than a few years. And this one was rolled off the line decades ago, at least.”
The garage door shuts after the car is fully inside. A few minutes later, a glow comes from a light being turned on inside the house.
“Call the sheriff,” the old man says.
“I’ll try to get in touch with Juliet, first,” I tell him, scowling at the house across the way that is supposed to be empty. Or, at least, mostly has been since Irma Jackson died last year. She was the perfect neighbor.
A sweet old lady who took pity on me after I left Brenda. Irma made sure my refrigerator was always full of home-cooked mealsand my cookie jar was always full of my daughter’s favorite treats.
Even though she was my mother’s best friend, she never asked anything of me. I kept her lawn mowed and her apple trees pruned anyway. It was the kind of peaceful give and take you hope for with neighbors. Especially living outside of a small coastal town. Ours are the only houses this far down the rural road. We kept an eye out for each other. We were family.
Now, Irma’s granddaughter, Juliet, owns the house, but she hasn’t lived in it since we were teenagers. Technically, she lives in Portland, but her office is mostly hotel rooms around the world.
“Be careful,” he says, losing some of his normal grumpiness in favor of concern.
“I will, Dad. Talk to you soon. Say hi to Mom for me.”
Juliet doesn’t always answer quickly, since she’s often halfway across the globe. But I type a text to her, then grab the two salmon burger patties that I had prepped before Dad called to make sure I’m still alive. We normally talk every few days, but it’s been a busy week, and time got away from me.
Stowaway is a quiet town, other than when the summer tourists move in. As one of only three EMTs and firefighters the county has on payroll for this area, summer is the only time I’m very busy.
