Sour Notes, page 14
He drained his glass and held it up in the air. “I have some of the same weaknesses as him, so I’m not sure about that.”
I thought about that for a minute. “You’re around Russ’s kids, right?”
“Not the same, Little Mac.” He drew a finger in the condensation on the bar. “Russ is good with them. Sarah too. They deserve it.”
I watched the men in the back throw darts. “I’m surprised they got together. Never thought of them as a couple.”
Blake smiled a sad smile. “Dean probably gets credit for that too.”
“How so?”
“After he died, we were all lost. And you left, so Sarah didn’t really have the band to go to. The three of us spent a lot of time together, and Russ finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. It was funny because he was so nervous trying to come up with the perfect costume for their first date.”
“Costume?”
“Yeah, it was a Halloween party.”
Halloween? That doesn’t make sense. Sarah spent much of our senior year dreaming about going to UNC Charlotte for college, back to the city where she’d grown up. Back to where her lifelong friends were. We had talked about it endlessly. I wanted to go be a rock star. She wanted to return to Charlotte. Xander… well, Xander wanted anything that wasn’t his current life. I’d assumed she hadn’t left because she was dating Russ. But if their first date wasn’t until Halloween, why was she still in Millerton then?
Blake slumped toward the bar, his words becoming increasingly slurred. He was simply too drunk to remember what had happened seventeen years ago correctly. He wasn’t going to be any more help that night.
I stood and pulled out my wallet. With a glance at Blake, I remembered Sammy’s warning that he wasn’t going to let him drive. I paid for both our beers and helped Blake to his feet. He swayed but managed to stay upright as I guided him to my car. He needed to go home, and I could get him there. It felt like something Dean would have done.
26
My fingers slipped over the trophies on Dean’s shelf, tracing the outlines of the statuettes. A plastic boy in a crouch with the ball tucked under his arm. Another with a bat over his shoulder. One with a basketball in hand, preparing to dribble. Most valuable player. Most improved. Captain. Most points. Most tackles. All proudly displayed on those shelves.
As a kid, I would lie in bed with a book in hand as Dean sat hunched over his desk, struggling through his homework. I pretended to read, but really, I stared across the hall through his open door at those trophies taunting me with his successes.
I pretended they didn’t matter to me and mocked them, calling them a bunch of cheap trinkets just to irritate him. Mostly, I had resented them. Awards didn’t come to average students like me who blended into the background. Not excelling at sports or academics or much of anything.
The only awards I ever got were participation trophies, and I hated those. They screamed average. Unimportant. Not like the superstar jocks.
In my angst-filled youth, I thought that was all of him. A jock. A dumb jock. How many times had I thought those words, not just about Dean, but his friends too?
I’d never really looked at Blake and thought of him as anything else. Never paid attention to the bruises. Or thought that maybe he hung out with his friends and played so many sports because he was scared to go home. Maybe he picked on kids smaller than him because that’s all he knew.
But Dean figured it out. Every adult in Blake’s life failed to protect him, but his teenaged friends found a way. No most-valuable-player trophy marked the simple act of sleeping on a friend’s sofa in order to keep him safe.
What else had I missed because of my self-absorbed thoughts?
My eyes moved to the pictures on Dean’s wall. A baseball team here. Football team there. Junior high wrestling team, a sport I had forgotten he’d even done. The boys stood shoulder to shoulder, serious looks on their faces.
For the first time, though, I noticed the more candid photos in frames. A celebration of a win. Teammates in a huddle. A group of boys fishing on a riverbank. Not posed but smiling faces and twinkling eyes. And Dean’s arm was draped over a friend’s shoulder in more than a few. He was at the center of the group, supporting them all. How many other sofas had he slept on, doing something uncomfortable because it helped someone? How often had he done that for me?
I crossed back to my room, grabbed the scrapbook off my desk, and settled onto my bed. I opened the book to the beginning then flipped slowly through the pages, really seeing them for the first time. Understanding what they meant.
Dean and I at three or four years old, playing with blocks on the den floor as sunshine flooded through the window. On that beautiful day, he could have been outside, but we were together inside. Had he stayed with me to keep me entertained after I had an allergy attack?
In a picture from a few years later—we were maybe eight or nine years old—I was sitting in the tire swing while Dean and Russ pushed. All three of us were laughing.
A shot at the river showed Dean holding up a fish he’d caught. Russ and Blake were sitting near him with their own lines cast in the water and cheering for him. In the background, I leaned against a tree with a book in my hand, watching them from a distance.
Dad and Dean stood in the yard, working on the tractor together, both wearing overalls, with grease smeared over their faces. I sat on the front steps, watching them.
Dean, wearing a baseball uniform, leapt through the air to jump on the home plate. Russ, Blake, and others were waiting to celebrate his home run. Mom and Dad stood cheering, beaming proudly. I sat on the bleachers with my arms crossed and a scowl on my face.
Did Dean push me away? Or did I retreat? For every time he hid a snake in my bed, he’d also scooped me up and carried me home to find my inhaler. And because of a stupid accident, I’d never had the time to figure it out and tell him.
I leaned back on my bed and closed my eyes. Visions of the accident-scene photographs flickered through my mind. The twisted metal. The boot prints in the mud. The shattered windshield. The blood-splattered seats. The dangling graduation tassel.
27
“Can I ask you a question?”
Dad’s eyes fluttered open and focused on me. I had found him awake when I came down for breakfast and settled into his room. We talked about the usual surface things, beating around the edges, before I plunged into the thing that had haunted my dreams through the restless night. “Was Dean easier to like?”
He snorted a laugh. I guessed the question wasn’t among the ones he expected. “I loved you both. You know that.”
“Not what I asked.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. When he answered, I had to lean forward to hear him. “You were so different.”
“I take that as a yes.”
He breathed deeply. I was afraid he’d slipped back to sleep, but after a moment, he turned his head and opened his eyes again. “I was never a good student. Hated reading fancy books and never wanted to go to college. Never figured I needed it. After my father passed away, though, and I took over the farm, I saw how much I should have paid attention. Yield per acre. Crop prices. The cost of seed and fertilizer and diesel. Whether borrowing money for a new tractor made sense.”
He shifted in bed and pointed to his water glass. I held it for him while he sipped from the straw. When he’d had his fill, he continued. “Dean was like me as a kid. He loved the dirt and the equipment and working outdoors, but he wanted to play through life rather than study. He was more into friends, girls, parties, and sports than he was into academics. So I figured I would teach him the business without him thinking of it as book learning. The way my daddy had done me.”
“And you didn’t think I needed that.”
He chuckled. “Lord, no. You read more books before first grade than I have in my whole life. And then you got into music and would sit in your room scribbling in your notebooks, writing songs, and jotting down notes. It was just dots and lines to me.”
I laughed at that. “Yeah, they were to me, too, at first. I could hear notes and play them back, but when a music teacher showed me a sheet of music, it seemed very weird.”
He nodded. “When I was in the Army, they taught us Morse code. Your written-down music was like Morse code to me.”
I’d never thought about how they were similar. “I guess they’re both languages in a way.”
His eyebrow rose as he thought about it. “I guess so, but different. Morse is give-me-the-facts stuff. Too hard and slow to make something magical out of it. But, in your hands, music was poetry like that Robert Frost guy we studied in high school. Or that Poe guy. I didn’t understand any of that stuff or get all the meanings, but I knew it was beautiful. And hearing your music was like that. Poetry. I didn’t totally get it, but I knew it was something special.”
An ache built in my chest. I never knew my father to read poetry, much less appreciate it. I’d always assumed he thought it was a waste of time. I leaned forward in my chair so that we were closer. “It didn’t bother you I didn’t want to be a farmer?”
“Not at all.” He reached out and gripped my hand with his weak fingers. “I wanted the same thing for you I wanted for Dean—to be happy.”
“So you didn’t resent my leaving?”
He adjusted his blankets. Ever since I could remember, I noticed he took his time answering questions. Like he was thinking of each word before he said it. “Not the leaving. Just the way you did it. Not saying your goodbyes before you took off about broke your mama’s heart.” He looked down at his fingers and spoke, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “And mine.”
I couldn’t stand seeing his eyes water, so I stared out the window instead. “I couldn’t…”
But the words wouldn’t come. How could I explain that I’d been so self-centered—no, self-absorbed—that I couldn’t even understand how my actions would hurt others?
“I know.” He shifted on the bed. “I was always trying to teach Dean that you didn’t have to always be so head-on. If he wanted an answer, he asked. If he disagreed, he argued. If he had an opinion, he shouted it.”
I’d always envied Dean’s confidence. He could talk to anyone, stand up for himself, and have his own opinion. He didn’t worry about alienating people, because everyone liked him.
Dad continued, “But you were different. You didn’t try to change others’ minds.”
“Nice way of saying I avoided conflict.” I looked down at my shoes. “It seems easier to let things be. Let people think what they want. I didn’t have Dean’s fearlessness. He didn’t care what others thought.”
“Sure he did. That’s why he always wanted to deal with them straight away.” He looked over at me. “He told me how he wished he had your ability to go slow. Not to be so fired up to respond so fast.”
I flopped back in my chair. “He admired that?”
“Sure.” Dad grinned. “He was always getting into some pickle because he leapt headfirst into some mess without thinking. Always screwing something up or making things worse because he didn’t figure out the repercussions before they happened.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I could always see disaster looming. Especially in his pranks and dares.”
“But it wasn’t always a disaster, was it?”
No, no, it wasn’t. Dean could always come out on top.
He said, “You thought Dean was invincible.”
I nodded, tears welling.
He sniffled. “Me too, son.”
We sat in the silence for several minutes, listening to the clock in the front parlor tick and birds outside sing. After I thought he had gone to sleep, he said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t better at telling you how proud of you I was.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, son, it’s not. I didn’t know how to talk to you about the things you liked. I should have figured it out.” He turned toward me, his eyes glassy and unfocused. “Don’t be like me, son. Don’t wait until you’re on your deathbed to tell people what they mean to you.”
I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I grabbed his hand instead and squeezed. His fingers tightened gently over mine. We stayed like that until his soft snores filled the room.
28
After pancakes for breakfast with my mother—this time without suggesting I didn’t want all that food—I picked up the fallen branches under the maple tree and added them to the brush pile in the open field behind the barn. Each fall, we would burn that pile and roast marshmallows over the flames. Dad would spread the ash in the fields and till it under. “Good for the crops,” he would tell us.
With the morning chores completed—and I had to smile to myself at the thought of doing chores again—I headed off to my daily jam sessions. First with Xander. Then with Harrison. Maybe I would get the three of us together before I left. Almost like a full band.
Too much of my guitar time had become about work, so it was fun to just relax and play. With those two, it was just music—not work.
When I reached the end of our driveway, though, I saw that I would be delayed. Sarah’s old Ford Explorer was parked on the gravel beside the mailbox. Her arms crossed, she leaned against the hood like a sentry. She wasn’t blocking my exit, but she might as well have been.
I stopped, rolled down the window, and asked innocently if she was having car trouble.
Her reply was a terse “Waiting on you.” She didn’t seem angry or upset, but her tone was firm.
When I got out of the car, she spied the guitar in my backseat and asked, “Are you going to the park to see Harrison?”
Instead of answering, I asked, “Do you mind?”
“Yes.” She uncrossed her arms. “And no.”
I hesitated. Was she rescinding her permission? “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“I told you yesterday. Don’t hurt him.”
“And I said I wouldn’t.”
She looked down the road, squinting as if she saw something coming. She had something more she wanted to say, but I would have to wait for her to be ready. It had been a long time, but I still knew how she thought.
She turned back to me. “Do you have any idea how much hurt you left back here when you disappeared?”
Her tone the day before had been angry, but this was different. Unexpected. It threw me off-balance. “I thought I did. I’ve learned in the last two days that I hurt everyone worse than I thought.”
“Your parents were devastated. They had already lost one son. And then suddenly, they had lost both.”
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
“And Xander. You were his lifeboat in school. He retreated into his house. He wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t talk to me. I tried. I really did.”
Xander had implied she had abandoned him, but her story was more plausible.
“And me.” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Did you know Russ and I went down to Asheville looking for you? Asked the street musicians if they’d seen you, knew how to find you. Some of them were friends of yours. They were as shocked as we were that you left the way you did.”
“I’m sor—”
She waved her hand in the air. “Harrison is waiting back at the house. He asked to borrow my car so he can drive down to the park to meet you. I just want to be clear. If you hurt Harrison the way you hurt me, I will never forgive you.”
I retreated a step. “Does that mean you’ll forgive me for the first time?”
“No.” She turned her back and walked toward her car before slowing to a stop. Without looking at me, she said, “You haven’t asked for forgiveness.”
“I’m trying to right now.”
She spun on her heels and tapped her foot. “I’m waiting.”
“I am sorry. Please forgive me.”
The foot kept tapping. “I don’t think you mean it.”
I looked up at the sun, squinting. Was I really sorry for leaving? Or, at least, for leaving as I did? How could I explain? “I don’t think I deserve forgiveness.”
Her foot stopped, and her face softened slightly. Not much. She needed more. I owed her more.
“When I left, I thought I knew everything. That my father didn’t care about me.” I told her about finding the scrapbook and the conversation I’d just had with Dad.
“What else?”
I hung my head. “I always thought of Blake as an entitled jerk. I never wondered why. Then I find out Dean knew what he was going through. Russ knew. Last night was the first conversation I ever really had with him.”
“He told us all about it this morning.” When I raised an eyebrow in surprise, she continued. “He was worried he said something he shouldn’t have.”
“About what his father did?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t usually talk much about that, but he’s mostly come to terms with it. As well as anybody ever does, I guess.”
“Then what?”
She didn’t help me, so I puzzled through the conversation. The only other thing that stuck in my mind was his comment about when she and Russ started dating, but why would she care that I knew that? “Was it the Halloween thing?”
She wrung her hands and looked back over her shoulder before nodding at me.
“Yeah, I wondered why you were still here. I mean, I thought you were going to college.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“But why not?”
“You can be so dense sometimes.” She grunted in exasperation. “Remember I told you Harrison got his driver’s license this spring?”
My mind raced, trying to piece that information together. Halloween. Driver’s license. Sixteenth birthday. In the spring. March. Which means…
As realization sank in, the sounds of the birds faded, daylight dimmed, and the muscles of my body froze. My voice sounded far away as I finally asked, “Harrison isn’t Russ’s son, is he?”
Her arms dropped to her sides. She tilted her head back to look into the sky and loosed a long, slow, nervous breath. “Nope.”
I thought about that for a minute. “You’re around Russ’s kids, right?”
“Not the same, Little Mac.” He drew a finger in the condensation on the bar. “Russ is good with them. Sarah too. They deserve it.”
I watched the men in the back throw darts. “I’m surprised they got together. Never thought of them as a couple.”
Blake smiled a sad smile. “Dean probably gets credit for that too.”
“How so?”
“After he died, we were all lost. And you left, so Sarah didn’t really have the band to go to. The three of us spent a lot of time together, and Russ finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. It was funny because he was so nervous trying to come up with the perfect costume for their first date.”
“Costume?”
“Yeah, it was a Halloween party.”
Halloween? That doesn’t make sense. Sarah spent much of our senior year dreaming about going to UNC Charlotte for college, back to the city where she’d grown up. Back to where her lifelong friends were. We had talked about it endlessly. I wanted to go be a rock star. She wanted to return to Charlotte. Xander… well, Xander wanted anything that wasn’t his current life. I’d assumed she hadn’t left because she was dating Russ. But if their first date wasn’t until Halloween, why was she still in Millerton then?
Blake slumped toward the bar, his words becoming increasingly slurred. He was simply too drunk to remember what had happened seventeen years ago correctly. He wasn’t going to be any more help that night.
I stood and pulled out my wallet. With a glance at Blake, I remembered Sammy’s warning that he wasn’t going to let him drive. I paid for both our beers and helped Blake to his feet. He swayed but managed to stay upright as I guided him to my car. He needed to go home, and I could get him there. It felt like something Dean would have done.
26
My fingers slipped over the trophies on Dean’s shelf, tracing the outlines of the statuettes. A plastic boy in a crouch with the ball tucked under his arm. Another with a bat over his shoulder. One with a basketball in hand, preparing to dribble. Most valuable player. Most improved. Captain. Most points. Most tackles. All proudly displayed on those shelves.
As a kid, I would lie in bed with a book in hand as Dean sat hunched over his desk, struggling through his homework. I pretended to read, but really, I stared across the hall through his open door at those trophies taunting me with his successes.
I pretended they didn’t matter to me and mocked them, calling them a bunch of cheap trinkets just to irritate him. Mostly, I had resented them. Awards didn’t come to average students like me who blended into the background. Not excelling at sports or academics or much of anything.
The only awards I ever got were participation trophies, and I hated those. They screamed average. Unimportant. Not like the superstar jocks.
In my angst-filled youth, I thought that was all of him. A jock. A dumb jock. How many times had I thought those words, not just about Dean, but his friends too?
I’d never really looked at Blake and thought of him as anything else. Never paid attention to the bruises. Or thought that maybe he hung out with his friends and played so many sports because he was scared to go home. Maybe he picked on kids smaller than him because that’s all he knew.
But Dean figured it out. Every adult in Blake’s life failed to protect him, but his teenaged friends found a way. No most-valuable-player trophy marked the simple act of sleeping on a friend’s sofa in order to keep him safe.
What else had I missed because of my self-absorbed thoughts?
My eyes moved to the pictures on Dean’s wall. A baseball team here. Football team there. Junior high wrestling team, a sport I had forgotten he’d even done. The boys stood shoulder to shoulder, serious looks on their faces.
For the first time, though, I noticed the more candid photos in frames. A celebration of a win. Teammates in a huddle. A group of boys fishing on a riverbank. Not posed but smiling faces and twinkling eyes. And Dean’s arm was draped over a friend’s shoulder in more than a few. He was at the center of the group, supporting them all. How many other sofas had he slept on, doing something uncomfortable because it helped someone? How often had he done that for me?
I crossed back to my room, grabbed the scrapbook off my desk, and settled onto my bed. I opened the book to the beginning then flipped slowly through the pages, really seeing them for the first time. Understanding what they meant.
Dean and I at three or four years old, playing with blocks on the den floor as sunshine flooded through the window. On that beautiful day, he could have been outside, but we were together inside. Had he stayed with me to keep me entertained after I had an allergy attack?
In a picture from a few years later—we were maybe eight or nine years old—I was sitting in the tire swing while Dean and Russ pushed. All three of us were laughing.
A shot at the river showed Dean holding up a fish he’d caught. Russ and Blake were sitting near him with their own lines cast in the water and cheering for him. In the background, I leaned against a tree with a book in my hand, watching them from a distance.
Dad and Dean stood in the yard, working on the tractor together, both wearing overalls, with grease smeared over their faces. I sat on the front steps, watching them.
Dean, wearing a baseball uniform, leapt through the air to jump on the home plate. Russ, Blake, and others were waiting to celebrate his home run. Mom and Dad stood cheering, beaming proudly. I sat on the bleachers with my arms crossed and a scowl on my face.
Did Dean push me away? Or did I retreat? For every time he hid a snake in my bed, he’d also scooped me up and carried me home to find my inhaler. And because of a stupid accident, I’d never had the time to figure it out and tell him.
I leaned back on my bed and closed my eyes. Visions of the accident-scene photographs flickered through my mind. The twisted metal. The boot prints in the mud. The shattered windshield. The blood-splattered seats. The dangling graduation tassel.
27
“Can I ask you a question?”
Dad’s eyes fluttered open and focused on me. I had found him awake when I came down for breakfast and settled into his room. We talked about the usual surface things, beating around the edges, before I plunged into the thing that had haunted my dreams through the restless night. “Was Dean easier to like?”
He snorted a laugh. I guessed the question wasn’t among the ones he expected. “I loved you both. You know that.”
“Not what I asked.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. When he answered, I had to lean forward to hear him. “You were so different.”
“I take that as a yes.”
He breathed deeply. I was afraid he’d slipped back to sleep, but after a moment, he turned his head and opened his eyes again. “I was never a good student. Hated reading fancy books and never wanted to go to college. Never figured I needed it. After my father passed away, though, and I took over the farm, I saw how much I should have paid attention. Yield per acre. Crop prices. The cost of seed and fertilizer and diesel. Whether borrowing money for a new tractor made sense.”
He shifted in bed and pointed to his water glass. I held it for him while he sipped from the straw. When he’d had his fill, he continued. “Dean was like me as a kid. He loved the dirt and the equipment and working outdoors, but he wanted to play through life rather than study. He was more into friends, girls, parties, and sports than he was into academics. So I figured I would teach him the business without him thinking of it as book learning. The way my daddy had done me.”
“And you didn’t think I needed that.”
He chuckled. “Lord, no. You read more books before first grade than I have in my whole life. And then you got into music and would sit in your room scribbling in your notebooks, writing songs, and jotting down notes. It was just dots and lines to me.”
I laughed at that. “Yeah, they were to me, too, at first. I could hear notes and play them back, but when a music teacher showed me a sheet of music, it seemed very weird.”
He nodded. “When I was in the Army, they taught us Morse code. Your written-down music was like Morse code to me.”
I’d never thought about how they were similar. “I guess they’re both languages in a way.”
His eyebrow rose as he thought about it. “I guess so, but different. Morse is give-me-the-facts stuff. Too hard and slow to make something magical out of it. But, in your hands, music was poetry like that Robert Frost guy we studied in high school. Or that Poe guy. I didn’t understand any of that stuff or get all the meanings, but I knew it was beautiful. And hearing your music was like that. Poetry. I didn’t totally get it, but I knew it was something special.”
An ache built in my chest. I never knew my father to read poetry, much less appreciate it. I’d always assumed he thought it was a waste of time. I leaned forward in my chair so that we were closer. “It didn’t bother you I didn’t want to be a farmer?”
“Not at all.” He reached out and gripped my hand with his weak fingers. “I wanted the same thing for you I wanted for Dean—to be happy.”
“So you didn’t resent my leaving?”
He adjusted his blankets. Ever since I could remember, I noticed he took his time answering questions. Like he was thinking of each word before he said it. “Not the leaving. Just the way you did it. Not saying your goodbyes before you took off about broke your mama’s heart.” He looked down at his fingers and spoke, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “And mine.”
I couldn’t stand seeing his eyes water, so I stared out the window instead. “I couldn’t…”
But the words wouldn’t come. How could I explain that I’d been so self-centered—no, self-absorbed—that I couldn’t even understand how my actions would hurt others?
“I know.” He shifted on the bed. “I was always trying to teach Dean that you didn’t have to always be so head-on. If he wanted an answer, he asked. If he disagreed, he argued. If he had an opinion, he shouted it.”
I’d always envied Dean’s confidence. He could talk to anyone, stand up for himself, and have his own opinion. He didn’t worry about alienating people, because everyone liked him.
Dad continued, “But you were different. You didn’t try to change others’ minds.”
“Nice way of saying I avoided conflict.” I looked down at my shoes. “It seems easier to let things be. Let people think what they want. I didn’t have Dean’s fearlessness. He didn’t care what others thought.”
“Sure he did. That’s why he always wanted to deal with them straight away.” He looked over at me. “He told me how he wished he had your ability to go slow. Not to be so fired up to respond so fast.”
I flopped back in my chair. “He admired that?”
“Sure.” Dad grinned. “He was always getting into some pickle because he leapt headfirst into some mess without thinking. Always screwing something up or making things worse because he didn’t figure out the repercussions before they happened.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I could always see disaster looming. Especially in his pranks and dares.”
“But it wasn’t always a disaster, was it?”
No, no, it wasn’t. Dean could always come out on top.
He said, “You thought Dean was invincible.”
I nodded, tears welling.
He sniffled. “Me too, son.”
We sat in the silence for several minutes, listening to the clock in the front parlor tick and birds outside sing. After I thought he had gone to sleep, he said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t better at telling you how proud of you I was.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, son, it’s not. I didn’t know how to talk to you about the things you liked. I should have figured it out.” He turned toward me, his eyes glassy and unfocused. “Don’t be like me, son. Don’t wait until you’re on your deathbed to tell people what they mean to you.”
I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I grabbed his hand instead and squeezed. His fingers tightened gently over mine. We stayed like that until his soft snores filled the room.
28
After pancakes for breakfast with my mother—this time without suggesting I didn’t want all that food—I picked up the fallen branches under the maple tree and added them to the brush pile in the open field behind the barn. Each fall, we would burn that pile and roast marshmallows over the flames. Dad would spread the ash in the fields and till it under. “Good for the crops,” he would tell us.
With the morning chores completed—and I had to smile to myself at the thought of doing chores again—I headed off to my daily jam sessions. First with Xander. Then with Harrison. Maybe I would get the three of us together before I left. Almost like a full band.
Too much of my guitar time had become about work, so it was fun to just relax and play. With those two, it was just music—not work.
When I reached the end of our driveway, though, I saw that I would be delayed. Sarah’s old Ford Explorer was parked on the gravel beside the mailbox. Her arms crossed, she leaned against the hood like a sentry. She wasn’t blocking my exit, but she might as well have been.
I stopped, rolled down the window, and asked innocently if she was having car trouble.
Her reply was a terse “Waiting on you.” She didn’t seem angry or upset, but her tone was firm.
When I got out of the car, she spied the guitar in my backseat and asked, “Are you going to the park to see Harrison?”
Instead of answering, I asked, “Do you mind?”
“Yes.” She uncrossed her arms. “And no.”
I hesitated. Was she rescinding her permission? “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“I told you yesterday. Don’t hurt him.”
“And I said I wouldn’t.”
She looked down the road, squinting as if she saw something coming. She had something more she wanted to say, but I would have to wait for her to be ready. It had been a long time, but I still knew how she thought.
She turned back to me. “Do you have any idea how much hurt you left back here when you disappeared?”
Her tone the day before had been angry, but this was different. Unexpected. It threw me off-balance. “I thought I did. I’ve learned in the last two days that I hurt everyone worse than I thought.”
“Your parents were devastated. They had already lost one son. And then suddenly, they had lost both.”
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
“And Xander. You were his lifeboat in school. He retreated into his house. He wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t talk to me. I tried. I really did.”
Xander had implied she had abandoned him, but her story was more plausible.
“And me.” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Did you know Russ and I went down to Asheville looking for you? Asked the street musicians if they’d seen you, knew how to find you. Some of them were friends of yours. They were as shocked as we were that you left the way you did.”
“I’m sor—”
She waved her hand in the air. “Harrison is waiting back at the house. He asked to borrow my car so he can drive down to the park to meet you. I just want to be clear. If you hurt Harrison the way you hurt me, I will never forgive you.”
I retreated a step. “Does that mean you’ll forgive me for the first time?”
“No.” She turned her back and walked toward her car before slowing to a stop. Without looking at me, she said, “You haven’t asked for forgiveness.”
“I’m trying to right now.”
She spun on her heels and tapped her foot. “I’m waiting.”
“I am sorry. Please forgive me.”
The foot kept tapping. “I don’t think you mean it.”
I looked up at the sun, squinting. Was I really sorry for leaving? Or, at least, for leaving as I did? How could I explain? “I don’t think I deserve forgiveness.”
Her foot stopped, and her face softened slightly. Not much. She needed more. I owed her more.
“When I left, I thought I knew everything. That my father didn’t care about me.” I told her about finding the scrapbook and the conversation I’d just had with Dad.
“What else?”
I hung my head. “I always thought of Blake as an entitled jerk. I never wondered why. Then I find out Dean knew what he was going through. Russ knew. Last night was the first conversation I ever really had with him.”
“He told us all about it this morning.” When I raised an eyebrow in surprise, she continued. “He was worried he said something he shouldn’t have.”
“About what his father did?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t usually talk much about that, but he’s mostly come to terms with it. As well as anybody ever does, I guess.”
“Then what?”
She didn’t help me, so I puzzled through the conversation. The only other thing that stuck in my mind was his comment about when she and Russ started dating, but why would she care that I knew that? “Was it the Halloween thing?”
She wrung her hands and looked back over her shoulder before nodding at me.
“Yeah, I wondered why you were still here. I mean, I thought you were going to college.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“But why not?”
“You can be so dense sometimes.” She grunted in exasperation. “Remember I told you Harrison got his driver’s license this spring?”
My mind raced, trying to piece that information together. Halloween. Driver’s license. Sixteenth birthday. In the spring. March. Which means…
As realization sank in, the sounds of the birds faded, daylight dimmed, and the muscles of my body froze. My voice sounded far away as I finally asked, “Harrison isn’t Russ’s son, is he?”
Her arms dropped to her sides. She tilted her head back to look into the sky and loosed a long, slow, nervous breath. “Nope.”
