she grabbed me by the wrist, her touch gentle but firm. Insistent.
I said nothing.
Finally, she said, “It’s good to see you.”
I breathed my relief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I missed you,” I admitted. “I missed everything about this place.”
She stroked the back of my hand. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“I wish you hadn’t come back.”
“I know.”
“You’re too good for this place.”
I shook my head. “This is my home. You’re my home. That will always be enough.”
“You should never have just enough.”
“I don’t want anything more.”
“Look at me,” she whispered.
I did. I had to. I couldn’t say no.
Her grip on my hand tightened as my gaze again found hers, and, as she searched my face, I could see that even in those three months, even in that short amount of time, she’d aged. There was no flash behind her eyes. The lines around her mouth looked deep. Her hair was dull as it fell onto her shoulders. She had been grieving, the same as me. And I knew then that while she had hoped I could make something of myself away from this place, and she’d spoken true that she had wanted me to become something my parents had never been, the real reason she had sent me away was so she could grieve. So I wouldn’t have to see her when she was lost. She had been thinking of me, yes, but for her own selfish reasons.
A shadow crossed her eyes for a moment, but then it was gone. Her breath caught in her throat as she choked out a watery laugh.
“What?” I asked her quietly.
“I see him in you,” she said, her voice atremble. “God, those eyes….”
I didn’t stop myself then as I gathered her up in my arms, this tiny woman who was a shell of her former self. She was stiff against me, startled at my brazenness. It was awkward at first, but then I felt pieces of her that had come loose start to break away, and she collapsed against me and shook, clutching at my back with her hands. Pulling, clawing.
I held her, for a time.
I pulled up in front of Little House, switching off the truck. I sat there, staring
up at the house, for an unknown length of time, willing myself to go in, telling myself that enough time had passed, that Big Eddie would no longer be a part of Little House, that he’d no longer be infused into every corner, every nook and cranny of the house he’d built. I told myself that I’d moved on. Those three months in Eugene where I’d let myself go, where I’d drank to the point of blacking out as much as my body could stand it, where I’d wandered rather than attending class.
I didn’t have the heart to tell my mother that I’d already been flunking out of the U of O, even only after three months. I couldn’t tell her about the rathole of an apartment I’d moved into off campus. I wouldn’t tell her about the nameless men that I’d brought to my bed almost nightly, more for the touch of something human than the sex. I wouldn’t tell her how feeling skin against mine was the only way I maintained my sanity—the soft trail of a tongue at the base my spine, a quickened breath in my ear as someone thrust above me.
I couldn’t tell her how I had obsessed over the accident. I couldn’t tell her that I’d called Shirley who worked as dispatch for the sheriff’s department. She and I had gone to school together, and she was sympathetic. I’d gotten a copy of the police report on my own, its contents telling me nothing more than I already knew. Shirley was able to get me scene photographs, showing my father’s truck upside down in the river at mile marker seventy-seven, showing his tire marks on the road and gravel, the scarred boulder down at the river’s edge that had struck the left front tire of the truck, breaking the axle and causing the truck to flip. It also showed a second set of tire tracks on the road, but noted no other debris was found. The river would have washed away any paint transfer as the truck stayed upside down underwater, the tail end sticking in the air at an angle.
I read my own statement that had been provided, and my mother’s, both of us saying Big Eddie had no enemies, that everyone worshipped the ground the man had walked