How he died.
My grandfather went on a late-night ride on his motorcycle and got into an accident.She never said exactly what part of the crash caused his death, but I know that one of the few rules she insisted my dad follow was to always wear his helmet while riding.The same went for my brothers and me when we took out our bicycles or a set of roller skates.
She wasn’t mean about it.
Mom would walk up to me, cup my face in her hands, and press a kiss to my forehead.Then, she’d whisper, “I love this head more than anything in the world.I don’t want to see anything bad happen to it.Please, wear a helmet.”
Who can say no to that?None of us ever did.
So, here I am, trying to jazz up a boring black helmet, crafting it into something Warner doesn’t just feel obligated to put on.
Instead, I want him to be excited about it.
“Who am I kidding?He’s not a demon-lady kind of guy.”I tap my pencil on the paper.
Then, it hits me.So obvious that I laugh at myself.
I know what kind of guy Warner is.
He’s a wolf.
An hour later, the design is sketched, and the outline is painted on a helmet I picked up from the motorcycle shop in town.I wasn’t about to ask Warner for his and have him ride unprotected while I worked.Plus, this way, I can keep it as a surprise.
Just as I’m mixing paints to get the perfect shade of amber, Cyndi Lauper’s voice fades away, and I can hear the click of the cassette tape coming to a stop.The poppy beat of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was apparently the last on this playlist.When a younger version of my mom introduced it, I wasn’t surprised.I can only imagine how that song spoke to her—a girl homeschooled in a small Colorado town by a recluse of a mother.
I groan out a stretch before standing up to pick my next round of music.The tapes clack as I finger through them.There doesn’t seem to be any particular order.I’ve listened to maybe a third, and I’ve heard everything from an adolescent version of my mother introducing ’70s ballads, all the way to a late-teens Mom jamming out to the ’80s glam rock.Her intros get better with time, but they’re nowhere near the smooth delivery she has on her current morning show.
Since there’s no point in looking, I close my eyes and pick a tape at random from the side of the box I haven’t dipped into yet.
With the next round of music cued up, I move back to the kitchen table and my paints.
“Good morning, University of Denver.Well, good morning to those of you who aren’t still asleep, hungover from last night’s Sigma Tau Delta rager.”
Smooth.Practiced.Engaging.This is more like the mom I know today.That, plus the mention of her alma mater, throws me off.
“Rumor has it that a few members of our illustrious football team were spotted streaking across campus around midnight.So, this one goes out to them …”
Jermaine Stewart’s classic “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off” fills the cabin, but I’m still too befuddled to enjoy the humorous choice.
This is not the recording of a preteen girl holed up with her boom box in a tree house, playing at being a radio DJ.This is my mom in an actual studio.The one she had a part-time job at when she was in college.
But I know for a fact that the summer after high school, Selena Gunner packed up her truck, left Pine Falls, and never came back.And if what Mom told me is true, Grandma Minnie only came up to Denver on the days each of her grandchildren were born.She stayed long enough to give Mom a crocheted blanket before she turned right back around.
So, how did this recording end up in Minnie’s cabin?
Could Mom have mailed it?Maybe as a strange kind of olive branch?
I stand to pace the main room of the cabin as I think.
No.Mom definitely said she didn’t contact her mother until she was pregnant with Abram, and that was after she graduated.
An idea occurs, the possibility of it sending an uncomfortable shock of denial through me.But I have to know.
I pause the tape and flick the settings over to FM.Static.I scan through all the channels, and I get nothing.Same with AM.
But that’s what I expected.I only hoped differently.
After carrying all my music around in a smartphone for so long, the boom box seems overly heavy as I lug it out the back door.Bruce lounges on the porch, soaking up the sun, and barely gives a twitch as I hurry past him.
