Drove six hours south and walked through Earl’s front door and said, “I’m here.”
He cried. I didn’t.
One of us had to hold it together, and I’ve had a lifetime of practice.
That’s what you do for your family.
You show up, but not everyone understands that.
Driving into Sharp is a controlled demolition.
Every street is a tripwire.
The elementary school on Pecan Street where Rose taught for four years—they put a memorial bench out front with a little plaque.
I saw it my first day back and had to pull over because my vision went sideways.
The diner on Main where Rose and I used to split a plate of chicken-fried steak and gossip about men who didn’t deserve the air we wasted on them.
The church at the end of Cypress Lane where she married Lee in a white dress that cost more than my truck and a smile that lit the whole room.
I was her maid of honor.
I stood beside her at the altar in a blue dress she picked because she said it made my eyes look pretty, which was a lie because my eyes are brown and nothing makes brown eyes look pretty in a bridesmaid dress, but that was Rose.
She could make you believe anything.
I believed we’d grow old together.
Not in the romantic sense—in the way that only women understand.
The plan was always the same: she’d teach school and raise babies and live on that little piece of land Lee was going to build on.
I’d work horses and come for Sunday dinners and spoil her kids rotten and be the aunt who taught them to cuss and gave them back to their mother sugared up and wild.
We’d sit on Earl’s porch when we were seventy and drink sweet tea and talk about nothing the way we always did, because with Rose, nothing was always enough.
That was the plan.
The plan died on a two-lane highway in the rain, and nothing’s fit right since.
I need feed.
That’s why I’m driving into town—not for nostalgia, not to torture myself, just fifty-pound bags of senior horse feed because Earl’s old string is burning through it and the last delivery got screwed up.
Simple errand. In and out.
I can handle Sharp in small doses as long as I stay focused and don’t let my eyes linger on the places where she used to be.
Holcomb’s Feed & Farm Supply sits at the corner of Main and Route 12, same as it has since before I was born.
Same gravel parking lot. Same hand-lettered sign. Same bell above the door that jangles when you push it open.
I’ve been coming here since I was tall enough to see over the counter, tagging along with Earl while he picked up horseshoe nails and sweet feed and let me choose a candy bar from the jar by the register.
I push through the door.
The bell jangles.
