“It’s like a little clubhouse and we can build one right in the living room with some chairs and blankets.”
Emma was intrigued. “Can you show me?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
Twenty minutes later we were all relaxing in the makeshift living room fort. Emma and I were lying on our backs and staring up at the yellow blanket that served as a roof while Colin enjoyed some tummy time between us. Roxie sat guarding the entrance, our ever faithful sentinel.
“I like it in here,” Emma whispered.
“I do too,” I whispered back.
My phone rang. I’d been keeping it close, just in case I needed to dial 911 in a hurry, though I was pretty sure Roxie would go ballistic if anyone actually tried to get into the house.
I felt a flood of relief when I saw the caller was Nash.
“How’s the drive?” I asked him.
“Long. Dull. How’s my boy?”
I glanced at Colin. “He’s fine. He’s trying to lift himself up.”
“Tell him I miss him.”
“I will.”
There was a long pause.
“I miss you too, Kat.”
My eyes closed and a fleeting second of happiness surged through me. It was exactly what I’ve been wishing to hear from him. Some hint that there was more to us than a practical arrangement. My heart wanted me to respond, to tell him how much I missed him too. I wanted so badly to feel his arms around me, to hear the comforting thud of his heartbeat as I rested my cheek against his chest after we finished enjoying each other’s bodies.
My eyes opened. I couldn’t say it. Not now. Saying it would expose me to a potential level of hurt that I wouldn’t be able to bear. Because Nash knew nothing of the most important story I had to tell and how I’d been hiding from it for so long, lying for so long, I wasn’t sure how to do anything differently. He wouldn’t understand. Nash had little patience or forgiveness in his heart for duplicity of any kind. Nash assumed I was upstanding and honorable because I’d never given him any reason to believe otherwise.
No, of course he wouldn’t understand. I was on my own.
“I guess I’ll see you later tonight,” I said.
I thought I heard a sigh of irritation on the other end. “I guess so.”
“Drive safe.”
“Bye, Kat.”
Emma sat up in the little structure we’d created and stared at me. “Mommy, are you crying?”
I swiped at my eyes. “No, Ems. There’s no reason for Mommy to cry.”
The drive was monotonous, the miles and landscapes bleeding into each other. I’d been driving for more hours than I cared to think about and now I was somewhere in Nevada, a dry, brown segment of the state. The scenery reminded me of Phoenix, the place I was born and hadn’t returned to in over a decade.
A rest stop exit beckoned and my bladder demanded some relief so I pulled off the highway and toward the squat building that housed bathrooms and vending machines.
The trucker who’d just finished using the facilities acknowledged me with a quick nod. I took care of business, tried to extract a soda from the broken vending machine, then paused to take in the barren landscape. The long drive was playing havoc with my thoughts. When I wasn’t brooding over bad memories I was bothered by my earlier call with Kat. There was a tone in her voice, like something was wrong. She sounded sad, distracted. I knew her well enough to detect the change. Usually Kat was full of words and questions but this time she’d been quiet, not even responding when I told her I missed her. I hadn’t said it with the intention of applying pressure. I’d said it because she’d been on my mind so much, almost as much as Colin, and I thought she’d be pleased to hear it.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she wanted to keep me at a distance after all.
I ended my break and climbed back into the truck. The sun was starting to hang low in the sky. I’d started this journey fourteen hours ago and this would be the last leg of the trip. I was making excellent time and expected to be back in Hawk Valley before eleven p.m.
A yawn fought its way out. It wasn’t my brightest idea to tackle this exhausting trip on three hours of sleep. The last time I made the drive I’d had no sleep but then I was running on shock and adrenaline. Now I was just weary and wishing for home.
Home.
Funny how I’d resisted thinking of Hawk Valley as home during the years I’d lived there. I thought of it as my father’s town, my father’s home. I convinced myself I didn’t belong to the quirky little place that seemed suspended in time at the foothills of the mountains. I belonged to it now. I just wanted to get back there and kiss Colin good night. I wanted to hold Kat and try to figure out where her head was. I knew where my head was. Somehow this trip had made it clear. There was nothing casual about what we had, not for me. I didn’t want her to be my friend and fuck buddy. I wanted her to be mine.
Once I was back on the road my thoughts veered in a less cheerful direction. During this trip I’d been thinking too much about bitter topics. The things that happened between my dad and me. And Heather. The messy conclusion that possessed a Greek tragedy quality. But it hadn’t ended with Heather running out of the house and my brutal words to my father.
After that night he was so remorseful it was almost pitiful. He bought all my favorite foods, stayed home every night in the hopes I’d say more than two sentences to him, opened his wallet to buy way more crap than I’d actually need to bring to college. The truce between us was tense but at least it existed. He hugged me on the day I left for college and I let him.
Heather had resigned from her job. I didn’t see her around and didn’t care to. We must not have been as invisible as we thought while making out on a blanket at the park because someone had seen. The rumors reached me and I refused to confirm or deny them. In fact I refused to participate any conversation that included her name.
Heather was more than just some girl I’d messed with. She might have ended up meaning something to me.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I would have just fucked her and tossed her aside to go chase something better a thousand miles away. Either way my most significant memory of her now was what she looked like lying naked on my father’s bed. I couldn’t forgive her for putting that in my head. She left me some voicemails of the ‘blah blah never meant to hurt you’ variety until I blocked her number. On graduation day I thought I caught a glimpse of her blonde hair on the edge of the crowd but when I looked again she was gone.
Once I was in Oregon I didn’t think about her much. I had plenty to keep me busy. There was no shortage of girls around and sometimes I’d meet one I kind of liked. But I was finished with being careless with girls’ feelings. I finally knew how it felt to be discarded and I didn’t want to inflict that on anyone. I tried out a few relationships and discovered I wasn’t good at them. They accused me of being closed off, detached, unwilling to let go, unable to let anyone in. They said I was a stone cold motherfucker who had nothing to give. I didn’t argue. And still I refused to talk about the furious fire that burned inside of me, how it led me to seek out violence even though I despised violence. I would never cause hurt just for the pure hell of it. But the sight of anyone being mistreated, especially a woman, set off a chain reaction that ended with my fists.
There was therapy. There were support groups. Court ordered anger management. But it was all a waste of time because there was no mystery behind my actions. Every outburst had been preceded by a situation that in my mind was tied to the murder of my mother.