Angrier than I'd ever imagined I could be after years and years of thinking I'd grappled with this pain.
“You were supposed to protect me,” I whispered, “and instead you made everything worse. And when I told you what he did…”
I stopped, not wanting to even think about that preacher—that man who had strayed so very, very far from the teachings of Jesus, who had…
I swallowed hard.
Closed my eyes.
Saw my mother's face and remembered how people had always said we looked just alike…and realized they were right. That face? It was the same one I saw in the mirror every morning.
I opened my eyes.
“I've logic-ed my way into forgiveness, or at least I thought I did,” I said, laughing softly. “You know the first thing I did when I got to college was learn everything I could about cults? How they get people to do what they want…how they control you. I wanted to try to get you and the girls out. But it was pointless, wasn't it? There was never a chance.”
I laughed again.
“That one time I sent you a book,” I said, “and you just sent a picture back of it burning. Yeah…love you too, Mama.”
The wind stirred again, but the heat didn’t break; it just felt like a blowdryer, awash in sticky, suffocating, hot air.
I stood slowly, brushing my hands off on my black dress, then reached for the little mason jar of zinnias I’d brought with me. Bright orange, sun-yellow, fuchsia pink. She used to grow them in the front yard, said they were the only flowers tough enough to survive a Louisiana summer…said she wanted to raise her girls to be like zinnias.
I placed them at the foot of the headstone and whispered, “God have mercy.”
Not because she needed it.
Because I did.
The car was boiling by the time I climbed back in, the seatbelt buckle hot against my palm. I rolled the windows down, stuck my hand out, and just…sat there. I’d thought it would be a little day trip—maybe try to catch up with a few folks, swing through Lafayette, grab a beer at the old saloon where some girls from school and I had once snuck out before it all went to shit.
But I didn’t want to go home.
Didn’t want to go back to New Orleans, or to Lafayette, or to that bar, or anywhere.
And then?—
“Head east on I-10 for five hundred and ten miles,” a robotic voice said.
I jumped and looked down at my phone. It was lying untouched in the passenger seat, face up, the screen glowing. Somehow, navigation had activated all on its own, with an address I hadn’t put in for nearly a year.
Destination: Willow Grove, Georgia.
I stared at it, heart thudding nearly to a stop. I hadn’t searched for that address; hadn’t even opened my navigation app. The last time I’d been to Willow Grove, I’d told my friend Delilah Jessup that I wished her all the best, but that I probably wouldn’t be back, given that I was just about to graduate and get an assignment and start my new life.
But here it was: directions back to Willow Grove, Georgia.
Specifically, to an old, abandoned church…and the sad, lonely man who lived there. The one I hadn’t stopped thinking about.
“Very funny,” I muttered, tapping the screen to exit.
But when I did, the app flickered once and reopened itself.
“Head east on I-10 for five hundred and ten miles.”
I stared at the words, the little car on the map ready to take off. This wasn’t a command…not really. It wasn’t a suggestion either. It was more like something knew that this was what I needed.
To talk to someone who had lived closer to grief than anyone else I’d ever met.
