I think tomorrow might be Sunday. I itch to run to Maine, throw out my cell phone and all my belongings, and just take offuntil no one could reach us. Where maybe, just maybe, we could be safe or at least live in the illusion of safety.
I know better though. I know that running is nothing more than an artifice crafted by the writer’s desk in my brain.
I watch as Christian peels out of the driveway with anger on his face that things didn’t work out the way they should have. Perhaps he directs some of that anger at himself. I observe as Arlo’s sisters disband with their bats that I now want to make. I need my own Lucille if I’m going to hide away.
I thought, naïvely so, that the only thing I had to worry about when I left Georgia was the ashes of Eric’s body. But that isn’t what happened, not at all.
I left a world that chased me hundreds of miles up the coast—problems I didn’t even know existed. If Gram were alive, she’d be on the phone with the entire town, somehow making Christian’s father kneel at her feet with apologies on his tongue. But Gram isn’t around anymore, and the only saving grace I have is the one fact that might save this entire situation.
Christian’s lack of a signature on Lark’s birth certificate.
I’ll need a lawyer if I stay.
If we run, I’ll need a whole new identity.
Who am I kidding? I can’t run.
Numb, I blink a few times when I hear my name being called.
“Hey, there you are.” Robin’s freckled face comes into view as he focuses on me with concern.
“Robin?” I swallow, trying to wet my dry throat, though nothing in this world will ever be right after this moment.
“I heard what happened.” He captures my face in his warm palms, and as though I just needed that one soul connection, everything I stuffed away barrels forth with the speed of a freight train.
I’m a natural disaster in jeans, and I sob. My eyes blur as Robin pulls me into his arms, his familiar smell comforting as I bury my face in the crook of his neck.
He smells like home, like the cookies Gram used to make after Sunday service. He smells like the orange juice we always had for breakfast with those cookies. He’s my anchor in this world that just keeps throwing me wrenches I can’t fix, that I can’t work through.
The hurdles are becoming too high, too close together, and all I can do is stumble over and over again as I struggle to get up. Yet, like the drama queen I am, I lie down in the grass.
Now, I’m down on the ground, peering up at a pristine blue sky, and all I see are Arlo’s eyes. I see the love we could have had, the life we could have created, and here I am fighting against old money that I have no real chance of winning against.
I sob for Gram, for Eric, for losing a relationship I had just accepted, and I sob for the life I want, but doubt I can have.
“Hey.” Robin tries to pull me back, but I’m not having it right now.
It’s my time to mourn what could have been, what should be.
“Wren, you are being dramatic,” Robin tells me in a harsh tone, pulling me out of the pit of despair I dove into headfirst. I like it here, it’s home now. The doormat reads, “All ye who enter are doomed.”
Or however that saying goes.
“I’m not.” I flick away the stream of tears before shoving Robin. I take pleasure in the way he thuds on those stones with a flinch. Serves him right for pulling me out of the cesspool that is my mind.
“You are, now chill.” He kneels before me again, not at all disturbed by my actions. “Woman. First of all, there is no way his father even has a case.”
“You don’t know that. It’s like going up against the Illuminati,” I whine, though now I can feel the chill of my butt on the stone. It’s unpleasant. I hate it.
“It is not. Now relax and go have a glass of wine. Kenzie will be over shortly to get this all sorted.” He speaks to me in even, hushed tones, like I’m a child.
I am being a child right now.
“Where’s Arlo?” I sniffle.
“Well, the situation with Christian scared him, as it should, and he went home.”
I kick his shoulder so he lands back on the stones.
