Page 4 of The Life She Had

Daisy

Shit, shit, shit!The words pound through my head each time my sneakers smack the road. Well, no, to be honest, it’s actually Ew! Ew! Ew! complete with schoolgirl squeaks of disgust, but no longer being fifteen, I’ll pretend it was the far more age-appropriate shit.

And just as I think that, what do I step in? A big ol’ pile of literal shit—canine—at the side of the road, which has somehow avoided melting in the rain. So now I really do have a reason for my girlish squeaks.

I made the mistake of wearing socks in my sneakers. Both are soaked, and as I run, each foot comes down with water squishing between my toes.

I dart under a cypress and brace one hand against the trunk to pull off my socks and shoes.

Uh, tree? Lightning?

Hey, a bolt of lightning might grant me superpowers. Like the ability to grab the runaway train of my life and thrust it back on track.

I’m working on it.

I sidestep onto the grass, yank off my sneakers and stuff the sopping-wet socks into the toes. Tie the laces. Loop them over my hand, and off I go. So much bet—

A pickup flies past, sheeting me in water, and all I can do is sputter a laugh. Typical. Fix one problem, and the world slam-soaks that split second of accomplishment. Oh well, it’s not as if I wasn’t drenched already.

I’m about to step back onto the road when I realize the pickup has stopped. The reverse lights flash on. Backing up to apologize? Or to soak me again? Either seems equally likely.

The pickup idles there, the reverse and brake lights candy-cane smudges through the downpour. I squint to see the truck better, but the rain’s driving too hard for that. Then both sets of lights go out, and the pickup accelerates, fishtailing in the mud before roaring off.

Okay, that was weird.

I shake it off and hit my own accelerator as I break into a run. My feet crash through puddles, water spraying, rain cascading over me, and it is glorious. The skies have opened and baptized me in a Florida downpour, making me realize how much I’ve missed this part of the world.

I lived in Florida, once upon a time. Before a tragedy brought our family of four down to three, and then two, as Mom left for Pennsylvania with me in tow. I remember waking in the city one February morning and crying as I looked out at the gray slush. The thunder of highways. The crush of people. The stink of pollution. The endless fields of concrete where once I’d gazed out at orange trees and everglades calling me to adventure.

I swore I’d come home the moment I turned eighteen. The dream of a girl who thinks such things are simple. Then eighteen comes, and that dream bleeds away with all the other childish fantasies. I’ll be a veterinarian! I’ll own horses and a kennel full of dogs! I’ll marry the sweet boy next door and raise children even more adorable than our puppies! By eighteen, I realized that dream was as likely as me becoming a unicorn-riding knight and marrying a handsome prince.

I could have come home to Florida sooner. I should have. This is where I belong, running along a hard-packed dirt road, hot rain soaking my clothing as my face turns upward to meet it. My legs burn, and my pulse races, and I am ten again, running in the downpour as someone on a front porch shouts at me to get out of the rain.

When an actual voice booms, “Get out of the rain, ya damn fool!” I think it’s the memory, but then I glance to see a skinny guy on a porch, beer can in hand, a passel of blond children craning to watch the storm.

I wave, and he laughs, and I run faster, and I am home. God, I am finally home.

Tears mingle with the rain. I should have caught that bus at eighteen. Emptied my bank account, bought a ticket and come home. So what if I had an invalid mother counting on me, all her burdens heaped on my shoulders?

My back eventually broke under those burdens. I broke. And for what? An obligation I did not owe. But at eighteen, you’re in such a damn hurry to grow up that when your mother leans on you for support, it makes you feel strong, mature, recognized. The truth is that it meant nothing except that I was young, naive, malleable.

I veer onto the property. Through the trees, I see the two-story white-clapboard house and imagine it through the eyes of old friends from my suburban life. I haven’t seen any of them in a decade, but I still drive by their social-media pages. They’re unrecognizable to me now, those girls who’d snickered at their mothers’ ordinary lives. They’ve inherited those lives, their wild dreams corralled by homeowner associations and corporate-cubicle careers.

Those drive-by viewings always leave me unsettled. I could sneer at those old friends trapped in the very lives their teenage selves had railed against. Yet their desperately happy updates cast me into uncomfortable quicksand bordered by relief and sadness and something like longing. I tell myself I don’t want their lives... but I’m never completely sure I believe it.

If they saw this house, their minds would flip the channel to one of those destroy-and-decorate shows, with rangy men wielding quips and sledgehammers, knocking down walls and ripping out floors, telling themselves they’re “fixing it up” when, really, they might as well take a wrecking ball and start anew.

This house doesn’t need that. It requires the deft lover’s touch of a carpenter who sees the beauty in its craggy old face. Each time I look at it, my fingers twitch like a pianist spotting a grand piano. The keys beneath my fingers are sandpaper and sawdust. Not a pianist, then. A plastic surgeon, gazing on this weathered and sagging face and thinking, “I could make you beautiful again.”

It looks as if the woman who lives here is already planning a little cosmetic repair, with cheap vinyl siding resting along one wall. I shudder at that—it’s the renovation equivalent of plastering on an inch of makeup over bad skin. Address the structural concerns first, and then worry about the cosmetics.

As I circle through the shrubby wetland to the shed, I keep an eye out for anything slithering through the foliage. I follow the path, mud squelching between my toes. It feels like childhood, playing in puddles and mud. I splash through a few patches of both. When a light flicks on upstairs, I duck behind the shed and watch the window. The curtains open, and the woman peers out.

She seems to be looking right at the shed. Did she spot me? Huh. That would be a problem if I were just a squatter in need of shelter. In this situation, though...?

No, this situation is very different, and I won’t accomplish my goal by hiding in this shed forever. Time to step from the shadows and say hello.

Soon. Not quite yet. But soon.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com