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I’d rather step off the roof of my dad’s garage than go back there.
Shaking off the maudlin thoughts, I light up a cigarette and let my steps lead me down the main street and out of the small city center, toward the river. The smell of water and grass hits me, working its way past the tobacco smoke, stirring up something in my chest I thought long dead, something jagged that lances through me, making me falter and stumble.
Memories. Stacked up on this one place, old and recent, of dad’s rantings and the pain of his fists, the sound of the river in winter when, swollen by the rains, it rushed by, the imagined smell of Mom on old photos I found and stashed away, the hope she’d come back some day. The loneliness, the fear, the fucking sadness.
Stop it, I order myself, make myself drag bitter smoke into my lungs and hold it there, choking the memories before they got their hooks deeper into me. Stop right there.
My feet stop, too, and I let out the smoke, forcing the emotions out of me, trying to clear my mind. I’m on the road leading out of town. On my right, that’s Luna’s house. A bit further down the road comes the Kavanaugh’s home and then... then mine. What used to be mine. What used to be a home.
Been there once or twice since dad went to prison to grab a few things. Place creeps me out. I can’t sleep there, can’t stay inside those walls. But I can’t avoid it forever.
I need to grab some more clothes, mine are all torn up and filthy. I also desperately need to do laundry, but unless I do my washing in the river like the good old days, I’ve run out of ideas. Stacy, the grocer’s wife, used to help me with that but she’s been avoiding me lately, no clue why.
Need to get over the fist squeezing my chest, the bile rising in my throat and convince myself to stay here. Sleep in a bed, within four walls, lock the door so nobody can ambush me while I’m dreaming my bad dreams.
I should pay the bills, get back the water and electricity. Make up my mind that thi
s is where I’ll live. How else am I gonna make it through the Summer?
Again I think of Winter and clench my jaw. Can’t be bothered with long term plans, remember? Let it go.
But the house still pulls at me from the distance. It’s quite the walk to work, and no buses run this way, but I could make it work.
If only I had dad’s truck, things would be so much easier, but I had to sell it quickly and secretly when dad was sentenced for attacking me to pay off the house bills and get me through a few months until I landed a job. Truck wasn’t mine, of course. My dad tried to kill me, but none of his possessions came to me—not the truck, or the house.
Slowly, I make my way toward the river, taking the dirt road through the fields, cursing when I stumble over loose stones and clumps of grass. It’s been a while since I came this way. Months. The key is hidden under the cracked plant pot by the right-most window. I fumble for it, then throw my half-smoked cigarette to the ground, grind my heel on it, and unlock the door.
I step inside.
The house is a mess, drawers lying on the floor, the sofa cushions thrown all over the place, papers and clothes everywhere inside the bedrooms, boxes of things spilled over. I wander like a ghost through the rooms, my breath coming short.
The police ransacked the place, looking for clues, for proof that my dad murdered my mom and the other, unknown woman whose skeleton was found not far from here. I found the ax that was probably used to kill them in dad’s shed, found a leather jacket that may or may not have been what my half-brother Merc saw that fateful night when Mom died.
No proof. That’s killing me, not knowing. Doesn’t matter if dad spends his remaining life in prison for trying to kill me, that’s not... not the issue here.
I rub at the long scar marking my chest and left shoulder, where dad stabbed me. Going for the heart.
I could have told him he never stood a chance. My heart’s black and rotten, dead for a fucking long time. Too late to restart it. Too late to kill it, too.
One thought keeps going through my head as I stand at the door to my old bedroom. Gotta get out of here, can’t stay a damn second longer.
But I make myself stay. Grinding my teeth, I walk into the room, kneel and pull the carton box from under my bed. Slamming it onto the bed, I sit beside it and lift the lid.
A silver chain with a swan pendant sits on top of bunch of old photos and letters.
Mom’s pendant, found with her bones, a match for the swan I had inked over my heart. And the letters I found after dad was arrested and thrown into prison.
The photos I’d found before, in a tin box in the shed, and had kept them a secret from dad. You never knew how he’d react to anything, so I’d learned early on to keep quiet around him, not ask questions, not show emotions.
Not ask about mom.
Looping the chain between my fingers, I spread the photos and papers on top of my unmade, smelly bed, and draw an unsteady breath. There she is, smiling. When I first found the pics, I spent a good hour crying. I hid from dad, of course, so he wouldn’t use me as a punchbag because I was being a pussy. He didn’t need any more excuses.
I was ten, then, and could barely remember her face, but one look at the photos and I recognized her, along with an avalanche of little memories that cut like knives.
Mom holding me in her arms.
Mom singing me to sleep.
