Page 27 of Second Chance

“Yeah,” he said weakly. It had been a rough week. We buried his mother. When it came to parents, Chris got the short end of the stick. Not in the love category. They loved him something wicked, but they had been older when they had their miracle child. Janice, his mother, was diagnosed with breast cancer, but it was his father passing away from a heart condition in his sophomore year that surprised us all. His momma seemed to give up after losing the love of her life and passed at the end of our junior year. He wouldn’t be eighteen until the end of the summer and he needed a place to live. Magnolia took him in.

“She’s gonna love you, man,” I teased, pushing at his shoulder. My grandmother already did love him like another grandson, probably a better one than me. I’d been using her home to practice the guitar, often bringing Chris as my excuse to my dad. Chris would sit and chat with her while I played in a room upstairs.

“You know I love you, man.” His voice was sad, though he tried to add humor. Underneath the joking, there was a hint of truth. I was like the brother he never had, and he was the same to me. I trusted him with my secrets—the guitar, my dad’s abuse, and my need to run away. “I’ll owe you forever for this.”

“Quit being a sap,” I joked, but I appreciated the words. “You won’t owe me anything.” He might have been one of the only people to say he loved me in my youth. That would mean everything to me.

“You’ve already given me everything I’ll ever need.” His voice turns serious and I feel that old lump cutting off my airway. He’s done this before—thanking me for letting him date Mati and keeping the friendship strong between the three of us. “She’s everything to me and she’s all I have now.”

I want to remind him he has me, too, so he doesn’t need the doomsday attitude, but he knows the truth. I’m not sticking around this town. The second I get the chance, I’m leaving.

“You’ve got a golden ticket out of here,” he told me once. He had faith in me like no other. Not my father who hated my singing or my mother who didn’t know my plan. Mati might have believed in me, but I didn’t share my dream with her. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, it’s just that Chris understood this secret better. He wasn’t trying to talk me out of anything or ask me to change my goal. He wanted me to run with it and run I did.

Finally, I exit the car.

“Who’s there?” Magnolia bellows through the double screen door.

“Magnolia? It’s Denton.” One door swings open, and a little woman I hardly recognize as my grandmother crosses onto the porch. Her small frame looks like it’s folded, and she walks with a cane, a tap, tap, tapping as she covers the wooden planks of the covered porch.

“Denton? I once had a grandson named Denton. He disappeared about thirty years ago.” Her scratchy, shaky voice withers as she speaks. I can’t see her eyes behind her pop-bottle sized lenses to know if she’s teasing me. Somehow, I don’t think she is.

“It’s only been twenty-seven,” I offer weakly.

“Twenty-seven? Well, that was practically yesterday then.” She snorts. I’m not forgiven but she isn’t angry. I step up to the stairs and she watches me like a hawk with those magnified eyeglasses.

“You look just like him,” she mumbles, and I stop. I don’t want to look anything like him. “You’re crossing that grass with enough swagger to make a rockstar jealous.”

“I was a rockstar,” I mutter.

“I remember.” She stuns me as I step up to the decking and stare down at her small stature.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Hug me.” I might break her if I embrace her, but I reach out and wrap my arms around her bony shoulders.

“Hmm…you smell like him, too.” I pull back abruptly, noting she patronizingly pats my back.

“I don’t smell like him.” He smelled like whiskey and sweat.

“He smelled full of shit. And your excuse for staying gone for so long stinks like it, too.”

“I haven’t given an excuse,” I mutter, but her hearing is clearly still sharp.

“Exactly,” she responds. We stand in silence other than the crickets humming in the yard. Then it hits me. She means the fact I don’t have one. I don’t have a reason why I never called or came to visit her. While my father might have been an excuse to stay away, he wasn’t a reason to skip a phone call.

“Well, get in there. It’s gonna be rough.” She throws out the words like we’re going to work the fields around her house. Her once thriving farm isn’t working any longer, and I suspect a realtor is just waiting to gobble up the property. Someone got their hands on a portion near town and turned it into a subdivision.

I hold the door for Magnolia and follow her inside. The moment steals my breath. It’s as if I’ve entered a time warp. The place looks the same, sort of. Floral furniture fades to almost no flowers in the pattern. Worn wood floors attest to years of footprints. Browning wallpaper curls near ancient wood molding. Floor-to-ceiling windows brighten corners. Surprisingly, the place smells lemony, and I wonder if the cleanliness comes from my sister.

Magnolia points up the staircase and I realize she can’t make the journey. Last I remember, her room was on the first floor beside the kitchen.

“We would have put her in the parlor, but she wanted to be in her room. Says she can see the mountaintops from up there.”

I climb the staircase, the creaking beneath my feet making me leery I might break one. Each crackle sends a prickle over my skin. My mother’s room is at the end of the hall and I continue to feel like I’m being sucked into a vortex. A window before me threatens to pull me into another dimension. I reach her door and knock.

“Come in,” a weak voice invites me. I enter and freeze at the picture before me. With the curtains pulled, the thick blanket, and the frail woman under it, death fills the room.

“Kip?”

The call of my father’s name nearly brings me to my knees. She thinks I’m him.