Page 39 of Sterling Stone

“You ever need anything . . . ” He exhales softly. “I’m always here for you.”

We pause another beat, one matching the skip in my chest.

He’s here for me?

Then Stone nods once, releases my hand, and steps back, calm, composed, cracking the tension between us.

“Y’all drive safe.”

Instantly, I want to reach for his hand again.

Instead, in my head I whisper, Goodbye, Samson.

13

[Taxi]

If I thought Aunt Trudy was going to let my strange interactions throughout the day with Stone slide, I was wrong.

Her keen motherly sense didn’t miss our continued glances and locked stares. Or the way he doted on me, checking that I had enough to eat or another drink or even that damn cupcake.

Sweet potato cupcake, an extraterrestrial favorite.

His brother Sebastian explained how Stone suddenly had a craving for the dessert after a trip to Knoxville in the spring, and the curmudgeon baker has been trying to perfect the cupcake as an alternative to pumpkin ones during the summer months.

“Want to tell me what’s going on with you and Stone Sylver?”

A while back, Trudy sold the larger home where she raised a handful of kids, opting for what she calls a cozy cottage with two bedrooms and a single bath. The house is actually a single-story ranch with a small kitchen she had refinished with white cabinets and blue accents.

“Now that I don’t have children buzzing around, making messes, I can have a white kitchen.”

There’s a strangeness in being here. As in, this is Trudy’s home, yet not home. Not the house I stayed in when Trudy took in me, Sedona, and Jolene. That house felt grand with a spacious yard and outbuildings. The rooms were crowded, but the house overflowed with love.

Trudy’s original farmhouse was large, almost rickety, and not to be confused with the Wallace Farmhouse, which was a dilapidated house off the highway outside of town and eventually purchased and restored a few years ago. In Trudy and Carlton’s former home, the floorboards creaked, the back door needed an extra shove to close, and one bathroom or the other was always taken, yet the house was full of love. Love for my two sisters and our younger cousin of sorts, and any other teen that filtered in and out of their place.

One of those teens was Simon’s father.

This new place is sweet but unfamiliar, causing that unsettled sensation again. The reminder I don’t belong here.

With Simon present, the second bedroom is his, so it will be sofa city for me. “Nothing to tell,” I lie, flinging a bedsheet over the cushions.

Aunt Trudy hums somewhere behind me, knowing when I don’t tell the truth.

While Trudy might not have been my mother, biologically or otherwise, her motherly instincts often surprise me. Like how she knew when I was missing Mama as a child and didn’t fault me when she had much to find fault with my mother. Trudy allowed me to grieve the loss, as if Mama had died, because that’s what it felt like.

The truth is, Mama abandoned me and my sisters, refusing to allow us visitation.

She didn’t want us to see her in her new adventure.

Reality eventually seeded inside me. I’d been left behind.

Trudy and Carlton made every attempt to make me feel welcome in their home, and I did. But I also didn’t. I kept myself guarded, afraid that one day they’d realize I came from someone who’d done a bad thing. Then, they’d turn me out.

I left before that could happen.

Headed off for art school and my own adventures. Real ones.

I’m quiet for a second while I tuck the sheet around the cushions and slip a pillow into a case. And all the while, Trudy waits behind me, giving me space that she’ll eventually invade with good intentions.