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“I like your tree,” he said, nodding at our miniature Christmas tree.
I smiled. “Thanks.” We’d cut it down ourselves. It was a little lopsided and we didn’t have a lot of decorations, but we had a string of white lights and I loved them. Somehow, even our small, dingy trailer looked pretty in the glow of those twinkle lights.
We were quiet for a minute before he spoke. “Tenleigh, I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but if you do…”
“My mama? You mean what’s wrong with her?”
He nodded.
I pulled the blanket more tightly around me, finally feeling warm. The wind whistled mournfully through the trees outside.
“My daddy brought her here when she was pregnant with Marlo. He left when I was three days old. Walked right out the front door of this trailer and never looked back.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not for me at least. I never knew him, and after what he did to my mama, I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Is that what…” Kyland paused, seeming to be searching for the right words.
“Made her the way she is?” I shook my head. “No. I mean…maybe it made her worse, I don’t know, but my mama, she’s always been up and down…delusional sometimes. The doctor in town who prescribes her medication says she has a depressive disorder, but I’m not sure. It seems like a little more than that and he doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about anyway.” It was weird to talk about this with anyone except Marlo. But I found that the words flowed more freely than I would have thought and part of that was because of the way Kyland was listening so attentively, empathy in his eyes, but no pity.
“My mama met my daddy at one of her pageants,” I went on. “She used to be a beauty queen—her big claim to fame was the Miss Kentucky Sunburst win.” I gave a short, humorless laugh. That damn pageant that was the highlight of Mama’s life. “Anyway, my daddy was working as part of the lighting crew and they fell madly in love. Or at least that’s what my mama says. She came from a good family, but when she told them she was pregnant and running off with a tattooed boy from a small mining town, they disowned her. She’s tried to contact them over the years, but they won’t even take her calls.” I shook my head. “He moved her here, worked at the mine for a couple years, decided a wife and family didn’t work out so well for him, and hit the road. That was that.” I brushed my hands together indicating what my daddy had done with us: brushed off, brushed aside.
“What happened with your mama and Edward Kearney?” he asked.
Oh. This subject was harder. I sighed. “They started having an affair when I was eight and Marlo was eleven. He told her he was going to leave his wife, take care of us, move us into his big house in town. My mama, she thought he was some sort of savior.”
“Are you sure that’s true? I mean, if your mama sort of has a skewed—”
I shook my head. “That’s what he told her. This trailer is small, the walls are thin.” I looked at him pointedly.
His eyes widened. “He came here?”
“Yup. All the time.”
He ran his hand through his hair, his lips pressed together. “Jesus. What a fucking pig.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.
“He liked it, I think. Coming here. I could see it in his eyes. It gave him some sort of weird thrill. He’d leave money on the table before he left.”
Kyland made another disgusted sound in his throat.
“Anyway, this went on for a couple years. He used my mama like she was a whore. She thought he was in love with her.” I shook my head again. “One year, my mama dragged us into town to confront him and his wife. The three of us walked eight miles to his house, knocked right on his front door. She refused to be talked out of it. I was so humiliated.” I looked to the side, running my index finger along my lower lip, the despair of that moment coming back to me. I didn’t want to meet Kyland’s eyes.
Kyland remained quiet, waiting for me to continue.
“Edward, he came to the door, and when my mama told him why she was there, he spit on her.” I turned my eyes to Kyland’s. “He spit on her,” I repeated. “And then he slammed the door in her face. His son Jamie… you know Jamie from school, right?” Kyland gave a nod. “I saw him watching from an upstairs window.” It’d made the shame that much worse. It was why I avoided him at school. I refused to even make eye contact.
