The woman standing on the top step when I opened the door Sunday evening was a faded version of my memory. Her hair was carrot-red with an inch of dark and gray roots, her face lined from years of smoking and sun and God only knew what else. Only her hazel eyes were untouched by the years.
“Boyce—my God, you’re bigger than your daddy was,” she said. “Bigger than Brent too.”
Brent, standing in this very doorway, begging you to take me with you. “He was fifteen the last time you saw him,” I said. “I’ll be twenty-three—”
“Next month. I know.”
I inclined my head once, at a loss for what was supposed to happen next.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
I stood back and she walked into her former home, glancing one way and then the other. “It looks just the same,” she said, as though she’d expected Dad might’ve redecorated in her absence. The only modifications he’d made were installing the flat-screen and replacing a lamp that broke years ago when he punched me and I landed against the table it sat on.
Trailing her fingers over the sofa, she stared at the square of less-soiled carpet where Dad’s chair had been before I lit it on fire in the yard. Mrs. Echols, watching from her corner window, had called the volunteer fire department on my mini-inferno, but by the time the first truck pulled up that chair was a smoldering bunch of coils and charred wood. I hosed it down with the extinguisher I kept on hand in the garage and the first responder called off the emergency, noticeably disappointed.
I followed her into the kitchen, where Pearl’s laptop, notebook, and a couple of textbooks covered half the tabletop. She pointed to one. “Dynamics of Marine Ecosystems? Are you—”
“That’s my roommate’s stuff.”
Her mouth tightened, lips a flattened line. Her eyes shifted toward me and away, and she cleared her throat. “I hadn’t really meant to do this right off, but I’ll be needing my bedroom, of course. Since it’s my house now.”
From the constricted feel of my jaw, I knew my face mirrored hers. “Well. That didn’t take long.”
She flinched. “I don’t intend to kick you out, Boyce—this place is yours too. I just didn’t think you might’ve rented a room out to some stranger so quickly.”
She didn’t understand that she was the stranger. How could she not see it?
I stole a glance at the clock on the microwave and shot Mateo a text to tell him I wouldn’t be over for supper. In three hours Pearl would be home from work, and I wanted this settled before then. “Let’s get this over with,” I said, reaching into the fridge to grab a beer. When I gestured to her, she nodded and I grabbed another one. “I know what you’re entitled to legally, but I’ve built a life here without being aware you were going to come back and take it from me.”
She lowered her bottle. “I told you I don’t mean to take anything—”
“Then why are you here? If that’s the truth, leave.”
We stared across the table until her eyes shifted away and she said, “I left here with a trash bag full of nothing. While he built that business, I lived in this trailer day in and day out, cleaning his clothes and cooking his meals and raising his babies and abiding his slaps and punches when everything I did wasn’t good enough. It was hell.”
I counted to three in my head, fist clenched so tight around the bottle in my hand I was surprised it hadn’t cracked. “I’m well aware of what it was. You left me and Brent here in it.”
Her eyes welled. “What else was I supposed to do? I had no education, no job, no money of my own—”
“Brent would’ve helped you.”
She dashed a tear away. “He couldn’t do anything to help me—he was just a boy.”
“Yeah. He was. But he stepped up and became both parents to me that night, just like you knew he would.”
“Whatever you think of me now, I tried. For years, I tried. I earned my due, putting up with that man for sixteen years—”
“Brent put up with his shit for longer. So did I. My brother’s due—your son’s due—was a hole in the ground after years of looking after a child he got saddled with raising while he was raising himself.”
She burst into tears and ran for the bathroom, and my head fell into my hands. I felt like an asshole. An asshole who’d kept that shit bottled up far too long. I’d never looked at my home or Wynn’s Garage as compensation for two-plus decades of taking shit from my father. Neither would have ever measured up. I saw these things as part of the life I’d built for myself. And now she was taking that, whether she admitted it or not.
Five minutes later, she returned to the kitchen. “As I said, you are welcome to stay.” She was holding some kind of hair apparatus that belonged to Pearl. It had been in the bathroom. “But your roommate”—she air-quoted—“has to go. Are you even charging her rent money?”
I learned a long time ago that feeling powerless made for rash decisions. The only way to reduce the risk of doing something asinine in such a situation was to take your power back before that moment when you reacted without weighing up your choices. Instead of answering her, I asked, “Am I expected to keep running the garage I thought was mine?”
Her chin jerked up at the change of subject. “Your father should have told you we were still married. That wasn’t my fault.”
I ran a hand over my jaw like I was mulling things over. “Maybe you’re right. But my ignorance is about to be your problem, because unless you know how to pull a transmission or change a spark plug, that garage’s income comes to a halt tomorrow, seeing as this is not only a community property state but an at-will employment state.” Thank you, Mr. Amos, for passing on that info. “And I’m about five seconds from I quit.”
It took her a moment to absorb what I’d just said. She exhaled heavily, her chin falling a notch. “What do you want?”
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Me: She’s here. She wants her room back, so I moved your stuff to my room and I’m taking the sofa. I’m sorry. I feel like shit about this.
Pearl: DON’T feel bad on my account. I’ll sleep on the sofa. I got used to it. I’ll be fine. Are you okay?? How is it? It must be weird.
Me: Weird, yeah. I don’t know her. She looks familiar but she left before I turned 8 for fuck’s sake. Brent was only 15. He was the age I am now when he died.
Pearl: Oh Boyce. ?
Me: I told her you were my roommate and she’s fine with it. Also you’re sleeping in my bed and I’m taking the sofa. PERIOD.
Pearl: Okay.
Me: Okay then.
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