When I reach the back door, I slip back inside, unnoticed, and go straight to my room. I’ve been so stupid. Why did I think I could ever compete with girls like that? Hadn’t I learned that love never worked out for me? Hadn’t I learned that I wasn’t the keeping kind? I’d gotten caught up in a fairy tale of happily-ever-after. I should have known that no one does forever with me.
The cotton dress sticks to my clammy skin, and tears stream down my face. I grab my suitcase out of the closet. It’s the one that brought me here and the one that will take me away. I toss my clothes in without folding them and stuff the money I’ve saved into my bag. I consider taking along some pictures of the family, but reject the idea. Starting over means starting clean. And this time I’ll do it on my terms. I’ve always been sent somewhere; now I’ll chose where I’ll go.
I scribble a note to Mama and Papa T, thanking them for their kindness. I stick the engagement ring in an envelope and scrawl Mick’s name across the front. I don’t want my foster parents to find it and realize that I’ve been dating Mick behind their backs and lying to them. They’ll think badly enough of me for leaving this way. But I have to go. I can’t stay here.
An out-of-wedlock pregnancy would embarrass and offend my respectable foster parents and their strong family values. They would insist that Mick marry me. But I know that he doesn’t want me anymore, and being married to him for the sake of our baby would be a sham. Both of our sets of parents had shotgun weddings, and I have no desire to repeat their miserable lives.
Telling Mama and Papa T what I just saw isn’t an option either. Not without tearing apart their close-knit family. Mick and Victor belong. I don’t. Leaving is the best thing for everyone.
I look in on the girls. They’re sound asleep and I kiss their soft little cheeks. Papa T’s still snoring, his chest rising and falling in slumber. At the front door, I take one last look at the good man who has been my father for the past four years and then quietly close it behind me.
Inside my car, I’m shaking so badly I can hardly start the engine.
Finally, it turns over and I drive away into the night—my heart and soul ripping apart.
Another rejection. Another loss.
Because I’m not enough.
Not enough for my father or my mother.
And not enough for Mick.
TWO HOURS AFTER LEAVING DEE’s place, I’m just as frustrated as I was when I left.
I can’t, Mick. I can’t do this with you. Not again.
Fifteen years ago, Dee was the one who had doubts…she was the one who left. And yet she now acts as ifIbrokeherheart. I wrack my brain for answers, but it’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces.
When the Welcome to Springvale sign comes into view, I gear down and my hands choke the wheel. Thoughts of Dee aren’t the only ones that torment me. If it weren’t for the Torreses, I’d never return. There’s too much pain and grief here.
I exit from the two-lane highway and hang a right at the second set of traffic lights; this route will take me into town. As much as things have changed over the years, much has stayed the same. Logan’s, the hardware store, is still on the corner. I worked there part-time as well as at Papa T’s garage. And there’s Frannie Mae’s Diner beside it. They serve the best burgers I’ve ever tasted. At the end of the block is The Barber Shop with an old-fashioned barber pole out front and Jimmy’s Five and Dime, which has managed to stay in business despite an influx of big box retailers in nearby towns.
Locals tend to stay loyal to their own. I have a street named in my honor and a double-patty burger at Frannie Mae’s called the Big Mick. There was a write-up about that burger while I was a rookie on the Miami Heat. It was years before I lived that down. Hell, Victor still razzes me about it.
It’s Sunday, just after noon, and the stores are closed. The center of town is dead quiet. When I reach the residential area a mile later, I see signs of life. Large yards littered with toys and bikes. I stop to greet a group of boys playing a game of ball hockey in the road. They crowd around my car, but I don’t mind. We shoot the breeze about the Bulls, and they complain about me quitting. Thirteen-year-olds can’t fathom that there’s more to life than money and fame. I didn’t come to terms with that until Papa T got sick.
We bump fists and I drive farther down the road, slowing as I drive past the light-blue house I grew up in. A nice couple with two little girls lives there now, and they’ve hung a tire swing from the huge oak tree out back I used to climb to escape Malcolm Peters.
The familiar icy anger creeps into my bones, and I resist the urge to punch something.He’s not in your life anymore, I remind myself. Not in any way that matters, at least. The town sheriff now resides up on the hill in a sprawling million-dollar estate and drives a Cadillac. Selling my soul to the devil was the price of freedom from my father.
I count to ten, cooling my head, and swing into the driveway next door, behind Victor’s sedan. Anger tucked away, I exit the car and walk across the fresh-cut lawn to the white house with the sloped gray roof and spindle porch railing that I still think of as my safe haven. I don’t bother to knock, knowing the door is always unlocked when someone’s home. The cop in Victor doesn’t like it, but Mama T tells him to leave his big city ways in Chicago.
I step inside and a feeling of nostalgia surrounds me. Every crack and creak tells a story. I can understand why Papa and Mama T would never let me buy them another house.
“Uncle Mick’s here!”
“Uncle Mick’s here!”
Maria’s kids, Justin and Danielle, bound out of the kitchen toward me and contort their little bodies around my legs. “What are you troublemakers up to?” I ask.
“Waiting for you,” Justin, age five, answers with a grin that exposes a front gap.
“Hey, where did your tooth go?”
“To the Toof Fairy’s castle. I got free dollars ’cause it’s my first one.” Justin pulls the three wrinkled dollar bills out of his pocket and proudly hands them to me.
“Wow!” I say, admiring the loot and reach for my wallet to add a twenty. Maria would accuse me of being indulgent, and I am. But I’m the uncle and that gives me license to spoil them.
