“It may not have lasted all that long,” I tell him, “but there was a time that, if you’d told me you could have walked on water, too, I would have believed you.”
My fingers push through my hair on my way down the stairs of a house that was never really my home. The pictures hung on the walls are all lies; stories told of a happy family that has never existed. Children who were never loved. Parents who wanted lapdogs and blind loyalty instead of whatever it is they think we’ve given them.
With Molly on my heels, I find myself standing inside the massive dining room. It feels like a lifetime ago that I last stood in this room. Graham hid away from the raised voices, the hurled insults, and the dishes used as projectiles.
He was still hiding when all of my shit was stuffed into garbage bags and I was pushed out of the front door, with my terrified girlfriend trailing behind me.
A hand rests at the back of one of the chairs, and I pull in a breath. The chairs are different now. This isn’t the same one that I kicked over that night.
They’ve probably erased any trace of me that existed in this place, just like they did with Nash.
“It’s time for you to leave,” Molly says from behind me.
My fingers tap along the wooden frame of the chair beneath them, gripping it tightly before I round on her.
“I just wanna know if you ever actually gave a shit,” I shrug. “If I hadn’t walked away from the church, would you have loved me? Or was there always some other condition I’d never be able to meet?”
“Of course I loved you, Tripp, but you denounced your Lord. You’ve covered yourself in horrible, demonic imagery,” she tells me with a shake of her head. Her lip curls as she uses her hands to gesture toward me. “You’ve mutilated the body that God gave to you. I don’t recognize you. I gave birth to a beautiful, perfect boy.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t always work out the way you want it to, does it?” I scoff. Pushing past her to leave the room, I stop, turning to meet her eyes. “You know, you’re gonna keep losing kids, and by the time you finally ask yourselves if you’re the problem, it’s gonna be too late for you to do anything about it.”
“How could you—”
Raising a hand as I turn away from her, I cut her off with a middle finger held high over my shoulder as I storm out of the room.
My jaw tightens as my feet hit the drive, my molars grinding against each other as my lips pinch tightly together. Time crawls slowly past while my feet carry me across the massive property.Every swallow feels like trying to pull a boulder through my tightening throat.
I’m two blocks away from my parents’ house when a white sedan rolls up alongside the pavement, slowing to match my pace. The passenger’s side window rolls down and as I turn to face her, my brother’s girlfriend offers me a sympathetic smile from behind the steering wheel.
Pulling open the door, I drop into the passenger’s seat and lower it into a low recline, trying to ignore the feeling of Nia’s eyes burning a hole into the side of my skull.
“Can I please bring you back to the house?”
“No,” I tell her with a shake of my head. “Just the airport.”
“Brody’s worried about you,” she tries to argue.
“Brody’s always worried about me.” I cross my arms over my chest, closing my eyes as I turn my head toward the window at my side. “I’m fine. I have people waiting for me at home. I have a cat. I’mfine.”
She pushes the gearshift into drive, but her foot doesn’t leave the brake as she heaves a sigh.
“There’s a girl in Katie’s class who’s been picking on her,” she tells me.
A curious – and maybe pissed – brow arches as I roll my head in her direction.
“She thought that this girl was her friend, but she takes Katie’s things. She teases her and she just…she isn’t nice to her. I asked Katie if she knew what she should do when someone picks on her, and do you know what she said? ‘Call Uncle T-Mo.’ Not me, not Brody or her dad;you.”
I shift as a warmth crawls through my chest, a harsh contrast to the jagged shards of ice left pumping through my veins. My arms tighten around myself, my feet pulling closer on the floor of the car.
“Your parents are horrible – and maybe it isn’t my place to say that, but they are,” she says. “I think it’s important for you to know that, even if they can’t do it, someone cherishes you; and whatever evil it is that they see in you is the same thing that makes someone else feel safe.”
“You talk B into a lot of shit, don’t you?” I ask with an empty chuckle. “Tell Katie if that little girl fucks with her again, the training wheels offer is still on the table. She’ll know what it means.”
Chewing at the inside of her cheek, Nia’s eyes dart between me and the street, her fingers tapping against the steering wheel.
“An hour,” she insists. “She would love to see you.”
“I can’t,” I tell her with a shake of my head.
