AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Boxes packed up with my belongings surround us—my Avengers poster, rolled up along with my other posters. My comic books. My action figures I kept hidden in my closet. My clothes. My CDs. My PlayStation Dad bought me last year after having to cancel on our father son campin’ trip with my friend Kyle and Jake and their dads.
It’s all wrapped up and put away. Gone. My room is no longer my room.
“He promised!”
“I know.”
“He’ll come back for me.”
She pulls away and cups my cheeks, rubbing my tears away with her thumbs.
“I hate you,” I tell her in a thick, wet voice, snot and tears makin’ a mess of me.
And she says quietly, seriously, “I know.”
“This is all your fault.”
She nods. “I know you think that. I can take it.”
“I’ll never forgive you.”
“I can take it,” she says again, but this time, the words are said to the ceiling.
After spending all afternoon unpacking boxes and settin’ up our new house, Momma takes me to Chickie’s for an early supper—a ’50s style diner she said she used to hang out at when she was a teenager with the best chocolate shakes.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she tells me.
Because the weather’s cleared up, we walk.
I’m glad. Her new car smells like feet.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” she says as we walk alongside the glittering road.
I shrug.
She sighs.
I don’t always remember to give her the silent treatment. Sometimes it’s really hard to stay mad, but I feel like if I act like this is okay and that I’m not mad, it means I’m turning my back on Dad. And I promised never to do that.
Wyatt men never turn their backs on family.
That’s what he told me once. His daddy left him when he was just a kid—he was something called a deadbeat. Dad said it made his momma real sick, for years, and then he lost her too.
“He had no business calling himself a man. We don’t abandon our families. Ever. Even when shit gets tough, we stick through it. We Wyatt men don’t give up, ya hear me? Promise me, son. Promise me.”
So I did.
And he promised me right back.
Which is why I know he’s coming back, despite what Momma says. She’ll see. He’ll be back.
A car passes by, and Momma holds me off to the side. When it’s gone, and we continue walking, she says, “You excited to start school in a couple weeks?”
I grit my teeth and shake my head.
She knocks our arms together. “You’ll make new friends straight away. I just know it.”
“How?” I say, before I can stop myself.
