that meant staying here. Working here. Living here. The luxury of my hours with Dylan was a dream. A beautiful dream. But it was time to wake up.
“Hey there,” Kevin said, glancing up from his game.
“Just checking in on the storm damage,” I said. “You need me to do any work?”
“We got a shit ton of fallen trees in the back lots. One of the trailers nearly got crushed. We’re going to need a chain saw.”
“We don’t have one in the tool shed,” I said, jumping with great relief onto the idea of work. Physical hard work would clear out my head. Get me right. If nothing else, it would fill up the empty hours.
“Yeah, I’ll need you to go into Cherokee and rent one. Come back in the morning and I’ll get you some cash.”
“Thanks, Kevin,” I said and walked back out the door, the bell tinkling all the same. Coming, going, it didn’t matter. I found the consistency comforting. I paused in the doorway and thought for a second that I should ask him about Dylan. What he knew about us. But in the end it didn’t matter.
There was no more us.
I walked back through the trailers with the families, where a few people were clearing branches out of their driveways or away from their cars. Tiffany was in the playground with her kids picking up branches, or at least she was picking up branches. The kids were in a stick sword fight.
“Stop it now, kids,” she said. “Someone is going to get hurt.”
“Hey,” I said as I walked by.
“Hey,” she said, pushing her long hair off her face. She seemed startled to see me. Like she hadn’t expected me to come back. “You’re here!” She wore men’s work gloves that made her wrists and arms seem so fragile. More fragile than the sticks she was carrying. “You weathered the storm someplace else?”
“Yeah, a friend’s. It was bad here?”
“Scary. A little,” she said. “Kids were freaked out, but Phil was here and he kept us all in the bathroom. Made it seem safe.”
I absolutely tried not to react, but my eyebrows hit my hairline anyway.
“No one is all bad, Annie,” she said, her eyes blazing, her lips pinched. She looked sour and mean and old. Older than she should. A million years older.
“Some people are bad enough,” I said. I thought of how I’d used Dylan, lied to him and pulled him into my misery. That was something bad enough that the good—the pleasure and the kindness—was invalidated. “Bad enough that the good shit doesn’t matter. We both know that.”
I would never have had the courage to say those words to her before. To stand there, holding her eye contact until she flinched away.
“I’ll be here,” I said. “When it’s bad again.”
Her cheeks were bright red and the kids were watching us, the ends of their stick swords dragging in the dirt.
“Mom?” the boy asked, stepping forward like he would use that stick to stop me.
“Hey, baby?” Those familiar words in a man’s voice made me start. Made longing open up in my stomach like a giant pit. But it wasn’t Dylan. Dylan wasn’t going to be calling me “baby.” Not for a long time. If ever.
It was Phil, coming across the road to the playground. “You ready?” he asked. He smirked at me, his eyes taking in my pajamas and hoodie. The slippers Margaret had given me. He made me feel naked, despite all my clothes. That’s what guys like Phil specialized in, making a woman feel vulnerable.
I straightened my spine and stared right back at him.
“Yeah,” Tiffany said with a bright smile. “Let’s go, kids. Daddy’s taking us out for dinner.”
The kids dropped their sticks and ran back to the trailer. Tiffany tossed her own sticks in the big pile she’d made on the far side of the slide.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, watching this strange scene of family happiness. The rot underneath it. Yes, it was safety and dinners now, but Tiffany knew it was going to turn again and this man would raise a hand to her. Or to her kids.
Inevitable.
Dylan was right. Some things were just waiting for us out there in the dark.
I turned away, heading toward my own trailer.
“Annie,” she said, stopping me. Panic laced her voice. Her eyes skittered over my shoulder to the rhododendron. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Tiffany!” Phil yelled and Tiffany ducked her head and headed back to her own trailer. The blue muscle car waiting beside it.