all, and yet the relief is heavy. Gripping the steering wheel, I sit idle at the highway mulling over a direction.
My eyes lift to the grey mist smoking through the mountains in the distance when a thought occurs to me. I click the signal and floor the gas, every mile I tread getting a little easier, every thread of wind whipping through my hair filled with bittersweet release. I lift my phone and hit play. The opening lyrics to “Keep on Smilin’” by Wet Willie, lulling me into a state of peace I haven’t felt in years. I may be leaving, but I’m taking all of them with me. Gunning the car, I shoot toward the highway thankful, thankful to have felt, and experienced love in every degree, for the gift of knowing it, for every memory I’m taking with me. For the love I had and lost, and the burning reminders surrounding me, charred into me, telling me that no, I’ll never be that woman who can let go of the past, but I can take it with me.
With Sean’s music filling the air, Dominic’s buzz at my fingertips and feet, I pick up speed over the county line, just as the sun peeks back through the clouds. And then I’m flying. The wings on my back, I decide belong to me. And with them, I free myself.
Eight months later…
“What’s he going on about now?” Marissa asks, sliding the register closed with her hip. I glance over my shoulder to see she’s looking up at the TV before turning to warm up the coffee of the man sitting at the counter. “Will there be anything else?”
“No. Thank you,” he says, failing to catch my eye as I lay down his check. It’s his third time coming in this week. He’s handsome, but I know better. I’m nowhere near ready—one day.
One day.
Maybe.
The second time I left Triple Falls, I gained something I never thought I’d have again, faith.
It’s contradictory to love in the way it doesn’t destroy you. You can have a little of it or a lot, but it can’t tie you up in knots. Faith is a healer, and it gives birth to hope. And hope is my next step, but I rest easy in faith.
“Cee, two sunny,” Travis, our short order cook calls as I retrieve the plate and deliver it to the older man propped on the stool. He nods toward the television unwrapping his silverware. “Turn that up, will you?”
I glance at the TV to see it’s another presidential address. The second in the last week from our new elect last fall. He was sworn in as the youngest president ever to take office.
“Jesus, it’s like two thousand eight all over again, our money isn’t safe anywhere,” the man says, shaking his head. I grab the remote and turn up the TV before I cash Mr. Handsome out, laying his change and receipt on the counter. Briefly, I think of Selma, and a smile crosses my face. Except I don’t bother to steal from this owner, it’s my name on the paychecks.
Oh, the irony.
“Just more bullshit. More promises that won’t be kept.”
Billy, a grumpy regular who’s tapping ketchup on his scrambled eggs, grunts out his agreement. “I don’t like the look of him. I can tell he’s a crook.”
Laughter erupts from me. “Is it his suit, his haircut?”
Billy looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head, and I shake my laughter away and refill his coffee as he thumps his sugar packet with his finger, one, two, three times. I swallow the sting it causes and speak up as I pour, “You know, we’re still a young country, as in two-hundred-and forty-plus years young versus others a thousand or more years old. Maybe, one day, we’ll get it together.”
Mr. Handsome nods, eyeing me reflectively. “Never thought of it like that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just a messenger,” I whisper, mostly to myself.
“He’s a quack,” Marissa says, and this time I do burst into roaring laughter. She gives me the side-eye. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.” I glance up at the TV at the new president discussing the newest shitstorm on US soil. In the past six months, unbreakable banks have gone under, federal judges have been fired, and President Monroe has cleaned out his entire cabinet and replaced ninety percent of the White House staff. In essence, he cleaned house, and nobody likes change. I like to keep an open mind. Briefly, I read his assurances in closed