Flint
The worst part of small-town living is that you can’t avoid anyone.
Ever.
Avoidance isn’t usually my thing—I prefer to face a problem head-on—but my problem is that I want to bang Maisey Spencer, and I can’t.
Seeing her when she picks June up from practice or comes to the team’s games doesn’t make it better. Seeing her drive past the gatehouse a few mornings and evenings a week doesn’t make it better. Running into her having dinner with new friends at Iron Moose or walking into Opal’s house on book club night and accidentally overhearing her commiserating with friends over feeling like she’ll never be a good enough mother doesn’t make it better.
Not seeing her doesn’t make it better. Not when every morning, I wake up, peer up the driveway, and squint to see if I can catch any motion at the house.
Which I can’t see from the gatehouse.
Never been able to. Won’t ever be able to.
Reality—and geography—doesn’t work that way.
But I still look.
And Ihearher. I hear saws. I hear hammering. I hear boards being tossed on one another.
Telling myself that she’s just as unavailable emotionally as I am doesn’t help.
Teaching and coaching her daughter every day doesn’t make it better.
Trying to work up being mad that she missed Tony’s funeral doesn’t help. Watching her put all the effort into being a good mom, hearing stories about times she was happy here with him as a teenager, and knowing that Tony was cut out by most of the rest of her family has made me acutely aware that there’s always more to a story than anyone thinks there is.
And watching Maisey putting everything in place to fix all the things that he never got around to because he didn’t think any of them were important on anold hobby ranch?
Getting quotes on lumber to reinforce the barn. Fixing the well. I know she started rewiring the original cabin on the land that was converted—poorly—into a guesthouse. Replacing the oven in the main house. Sealing the windows. Replacing the door and locks on the bunkhouse once she realized how easy it would be for Earl to break in.
Fucking hot.
And here I am again, once more thinking I’m in the clear as I dash back to the school at the start of soccer practice to grab the colored jerseys that I left in the locker room, when I hear her voice ringing through the air in the outdoor staff alcove near the back entrance.
“I don’t know, Mom. Ask your guard,” she’s saying quietly right around the corner from me.
I slow and stop short when I should pivot and go around the long way to get into the school building.
Ask your guard?
That’s not a normal thing to say to normal moms.
“I checked the tracking. It was delivered last week. I don’t know why they haven’t gotten it to you—Mom. You realize the more jokesyou make about me putting shivs in your packages, the less likely you are to make parole early?I am not helping you with this.Stop it. Junie and I have a new life, and she doesn’t need more drama.”
Oh, fuck.
This isn’t real, is it?
She didn’t just say that.
There’s no way she just said that.
I angle closer to this wall, out of sight of the alcove, and hit my phone while I keep listening.Maisey Spencer mom prison, I type.
“Yes, I want you to come here. There’s an adorable cabin a little ways from the house that I’m fixing up just for you, and you know Junie—”
She cuts herself off with a sigh while my phone brings up absolutely nothing relevant.
