I don’t want to do this. I hate guns.
Marcus leans down and yells next to my ear protection, “It’s okay. It’s a lot at first, but you’ll get used to it.”
I don’t want to get used to it. But Marcus picks up the gun and holds it out to me again.
I hold it tighter, square up, and squeeze the trigger. This time the bullet hits the target. Or at least the paper. It puts a large hole in the bottom right corner of the sheet. But the terrifying part is the target doesn’t even flutter with the impact. The bullet rips through and continues into the sand pile.
There are still eight bullets left in the clip, so I aim for the center of the target and pull the trigger a few quick times. Again, the guy from the range corrects me and tells me to adjust between each shot.
Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I feel like I’m back at the convenience store, getting caught for shoplifting. My old life and my new one blending into some adrenaline-fueled nightmare.
By the time I empty the clip, my heart rate seems to have regulated. Marcus has me reload the gun and tells me to shoot the target.
It takes seven more shots, but I hit the bull’s-eye. Marcus cheers and claps me on the shoulder, and I can’t help but feel a little bit proud.
Thirty
When we pull into the garage, Valencia is working at the little wooden table where her gardening supplies are. She waves to us with gloved hands and a bright smile.
“How was shooting paper targets?” she asks.
“Nowhere near as fun as the real thing,” Marcus says. He says it in a joking tone, but all I can think is he really means it.
Valencia rolls her eyes playfully before giving him a kiss. “Well, now that you’ve gotten your testosterone workout in, you can all help me in the garden.” There are several new hydrangea plants, only a foot high, in cardboard trays on the garage floor.
Marcus frowns. “Sorry, gotta do some motion writing upstairs.”
Or he’s going to smoke a bowl to help him come down.
She frowns and turns her attention to Easton, who puts up his hands. “JT is picking me up in ten minutes.”
“I’ll help,” I say before she can scold him. “I mean, I guess it’s my own fault the old ones died to begin with, right?”
Valencia turns to me with a look of surprise. Then she reaches for the box of Miracid on the top of her workbench. She holds it out to me, showing me it’s still unopened.
“You lied about fertilizing them. But I think Gramma Sharon was right. It was a blight, and that’s no one’s fault.”
She believes me. I have no clue why I feel so relieved, but I am. Maybe because a blight would mean the plants weren’t killed maliciously.
She tosses the box on the workbench again and smiles. “I planted the hydrangeas when I was pregnant with you. It’s only right that we do it together this time.”
Valencia hands me a pair of gardening gloves and tells me to grab a shovel. She leads me out to the garden, where large paper bags have already been filled with the branches of the dead hydrangeas. She tells me she cut them all away, but we still have to dig up the roots.
“Did we ever do this before?” I ask. I move aside some of the mulch and start digging around the hydrangea stump. “The gardening, I mean.”
She laughs. “No. I never even cared about the garden until you were gone. The reason I planted the hydrangeas in the first place was because they’re low maintenance. Water them on hot days and fertilize them and they’re usually good. When you were gone, I started looking into new garden beds and bought some books.” She nods toward the backyard. “I even had raised beds and a nice vegetable garden back there for a few years.”
But now the yard is only grass.
“What happened?”
“Asshole squirrels,” she says with hatred. “Those little shits would see my tomatoes, days away from ripening, and take a single bite out of every damn one. I’d be lucky to get one tomato a year, if that. So it was either kill ’em all or get rid of the raised beds.” She shrugs, disappointed.
“So you got into gardening, and Dad got into boating?” I motion toward the boathouse.
Valencia smiles. “Well, he was always into boating. When we lived in DC—you were just a toddler then—we would all come down here on long weekends. Once, he rented a sailboat and had the captainattemptto teach us how to sail. You and Easton weren’t nearly as interested as he was, and we ended up having to end the cruise early. The next time he went alone, and I took you boys to a movie.”
“But he still put in the boathouse.”
