“The thing about Portis’s stories,” Starr said, “is once he got going he started to believe them himself. I mean, he’s waving his arms around and giving us all these details about the aliens’ eyeballs being oblong and how they could implant thoughts into his head, and how thankfully he had not been anally probed.
“Even in his desperation Portis didn’t want anyone to think he might have been compromised,” Starr went on. “That’s how deep his homophobia ran. He said, ‘I cannot speak for Trout, but I know for a fact that there was nothing ever shoved up my ass at any point.’”
“Wow,” said Bobby.
“Classic Portis,” said Starr. “Anyway, by the end we were all laughing so hard we forgot to be mad.”
I cracked up in the booth. It was good, clean laughter from right beneath the ribs. The kind that feels like a valve releasing. My sister looked at me and exhaled.
“Portis Dale,” she said, and shook her head.
“I forgot the part about the probe,” I said.
“Are you kidding? That was the best part.”
“Unreal,” I said.
“I hate these circumstances,” Starr said. “But it is so good to see you.”
“I know,” I said. “It is.”
“I don’t laugh like this with anyone else.”
“Me neither.”
“So, I’m going to bring this up now,” she said. “Because I don’t know when else to do it.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“No uh-oh,” Starr said. “Just an idea.”
“All right,” I said.
“We’ve got to get back to Portland tomorrow,” she said. “I can’t stand being away from Tanner and we’ve both missed too much work as is. I’m going to buy the tickets tonight and I thought you might want to come with us. Just fly out and stay for a while and see if you might like it enough to move.”
I pushed some fries around my plate. I knew what she was going to offer before she opened her mouth to say it.
“We’ve got the guest room,” she said. “And Bobby just put in a second bathroom. So that could be yours.”
“I even promise not to shit in it,” he said.
“That’s true,” Starr said. “I have him on record there.”
“We can cover a plane ticket,” he said. “And if you want we can come back in the summer for your little rice burner. We can drive it to Portland, or you could sell it for cash.”
“Our district has one of the top high schools in the state,” Starr said. “They get all kinds of awards. And the community college is right down the road. It’s like two minutes from our house. Bobby and me have already talked about it and agreed to pay for your first few classes if you’re interested. I thought I might take one myself. Maybe we could take one together.”
“Tell her about the other thing,” Bobby said.
“Oh,” Starr said, and snapped her fingers. “The college has this great wood shop program.”
“Woodworking,” Bobby said.
“Woodworking,” Starr said. “They run a little store out of the school where they make all their own furniture and sell it cheap. You’d be a shoo-in for that with all the work you’ve done for Jeff Pickering.”
I didn’t like Bobby suggesting I sell the pickup, he should have known better than to raise that prospect, but the deal itself was very, very good. I’d have to tell Starr I had dropped out of school, which would be an uncomfortable conversation, but I could get my GED out west and that would probably do—especially if I signed up for some of those college classes in the fall. I was interested in that community college. In that woodworking program.
I sipped from my milk shake and let myself imagine what life might be like in Portland. I thought about how nice it would be to spend a Friday night at the movies with Starr. To be there to watch Tanner grow. To live in a city a million miles from northern Michigan and to have a chance to go to college. To have my own bedroom. My own bathroom, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t like the rain, but I thought it had to be better than the cold and Starr never stopped talking about how nice the summer was.
I looked at Starr and for a moment I thought I was going to say yes. I thought I was going to say yes and then go ahead and tell her everything else while I was at it. Jenna. Shelton Potter. Carletta in the trailer and how this time I thought she was gone for good. I thought I was going to tell it all, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell Starr anything because all I could do was sit there and cry.
I cried because I wanted to go to Portland but knew that I could not. I couldn’t go to Portland and I definitely couldn’t tell Starr why. The second I said I thought Mama was dead she would be on the phone with Granger and more than anything I was not yet ready for Mama to be found. I was not yet ready to trade my fear for the stone hard weight of certainty.
Chapter Twenty-One
I told Starr I’d e-mail her every day, even if I had to drive into work on my day off to do it. Starr said that sounded good, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was devastated I wasn’t coming and hurried to get into Bobby’s truck before she broke down right there in the Elias Brothers parking lot.