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The atmosphere changes a little after we dry ourselves, and by the time we start pulling on last night’s clothes, something unfamiliar settles in the space between us.
I clasp her hand one last time as she reaches for the door, pulling her into my chest and burying my nose in her still damp hair.
“Thank you,” I whisper, fighting the urge to argue when she nods and pulls away.
As we promised each other, the fun ends the second we step into the hotel hallway and the door closes behind us.
We’re silent as we leave the hotel and make our way to my vehicle. I open the door for her, and as tempting as it is to slide right between her legs like I did at the bar last night, I maintain control of those urges.
She has to clear her throat before thanking me, but I can’t let myself read anything into it.
The drive back into Lindell proper is also silent, neither of us bothering to find anything on the radio.
Traffic is slow, our shower putting us right on the edge of people getting out and heading to the Sunday morning service at the Baptist church.
I try not to read anything into the way Madison props her elbow on the window and covers most of her face. I doubt she’s embarrassed to be with me, but maybe she realizes what I did at the first wave from one of the townsfolk as we slow to let them cross the road at the stop sign that people have no doubt already been talking about us.
I’ve always hated the way small towns like this lend no form of privacy. Your achievements are talked about just as loudly as your failures, and there’s never any shortage of conversation once people think two people are dating.
It probably would’ve been better to take Madison home last night rather than the hotel. I have no doubt the clerk, regardless that it wasn’t someone who I recognized, told no shortage of people that we got a room there. There’s no privacy in Lindell. There never has been and there never will be.
“What are you doing?” she asks, the first words spoken since we left the hotel.
“Going to go pick up the boys from Dad’s,” I tell her.
“You’re not going to take me home first?”
“It’s on the way.”
“And he’s going to know exactly what we did last night,” she argues. “Just tell him you picked me up from somewhere else.”
Heat and hatred for this imaginary person fills me to the top of my head, my ears growing hot just from thinking of it.
“I will not tell him you stayed with another man. He’d want to kill whoever it was for not making sure you got safely home.” Anger laces my words, but I’m finding myself incapable of controlling my feelings right now, which irritates me even more.
“Another man?” she scoffs. “I went out with Adalynn. You could say I stayed the night with her.”
“Adalynn would get you home.”
“Maybe I was still asleep when she left to open the bakery this morning?”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to argue with you, Madison. He won’t have a clue. He’s never been that observant.”
She huffs, irritated herself, but I ignore it as I turn onto one of the older streets in town.
My dad’s little two-bedroom house is the very one I grew up in. There’s no longer a rope swing in the front yard because of the storm that uprooted the tree when I was in high school, but the memories of my mom pushing me on it as a little boy remain.
The pain of losing her is like a wound that I don’t think will ever heal. I know it eats at my father as well. Neither of us were there to protect her that day. I was in Detroit, too busy with work and the boys to bother coming home that weekend for Kalen’s wedding. Dad was at the store because people rely on him to be open when he says he’ll be open.
“You okay?”
I look down at the warm palm resting on my forearm before giving her a soft smile.
I look out the window at my parents’ home. I haven’t spent much time here since coming back to Lindell. It hurts too much. I asked Dad about it once, wondering how he could face the emptiness, and he was quick to tell me it wasn’t empty to him. The walls were bursting with memories and her laughter. They had thirty-five amazing years together in this home, and being here only brings him peace.
“I miss her, too,” she says.
I nod, knowing if I tried to speak about my mother I’d probably embarrass myself with how emotional it’ll make me.
