Page 29 of Worth the Trip

Big Dawg advise.

I shook my head.

Me:

Find a hobby.

His response came immediately.

Malcolm:

Advocating for labor rights is my hobby

Me:

You begged for M&Ms.

Malcolm:

Blessings found me. We established this.

A laugh slipped out.

Mama glanced over from the sink. “What?”

“Malcolm.”

She nodded. “That explains enough.”

I locked the phone without opening the emails.

They’d still be there tomorrow.

Instead of heading out immediately, I stepped onto the back porch and sat down. Sunday evening moved through the neighborhood like it had no interest in impressing anybody. Somebody cut grass several houses over, kids yelled down the street, and a dog barked like it had discovered an enemy nobody else could see. Normally, I would’ve already been mentally inside Monday, reviewing practice adjustments, thinking about personnel, calculating how much film I could get through before bed.

That evening, I let Sunday keep its own name.

Willow Run next weekend.

Thursday through Monday.

No whistle before sunrise. No reason to open my laptop unless I decided to. No player waiting for an answer I couldn’t delegate, and no problem demanding I proved I was useful by solving it first.

I wasn’t entirely convinced I knew what to do with that much unclaimed time.

But I was willing to gather some evidence.

The tires crackled over Nana’s oyster-shell driveway Thursday evening as the sun lowered itself behind the marsh, gilding across the water and every blade of cordgrass it touched. Her screen door swung open before I turned off the ignition. She stood beneath the porch light in a pale-blue housedress, one hand resting against the frame and the other shading her eyes as though she hadn’t been tracking my car from the moment I crossed into Willow Run.

Some places waited for you to announce yourself before welcoming you back. Nana’s house had always known I was coming.

“There go my baby. I was fixing to send somebody out looking for you,” she called as I stepped from the car.

“I’m early, Nana.”

“According to that clock you live by. Mine said you should’ve been here before I started missing you.”

“I called when I left Self Ridge.”