2
Audra sat in her car,gripping the steering wheel so tight her fingers were numb. Her father's run down single wide stood less than ten feet away, its broken storm door on the front hanging off its hinges at an odd angle, the front door behind wide-open. Trash, old car parts, and a broken-down lawnmower dotted what was left of his yard, the rest completely overgrown with weeds. The plastic trailer siding was chipped and as broken as the man who lived insideit.
She'd promised herself she’d never come back here, certain there wasn't a force on this earth that could make her step foot on hisproperty.
But she'd been wrong. She'd been sowrong.
There was one thing she'd failed to take into account when making that promise and it was one she didn’t want to think about, let alonecomprehend.
But the horrible truth hammered away at the flimsy barriers she’d put up around her heart, replaying the phone call and the funeral over and over and over in hermind.
Tears pricked her eyes and she reached across the console to skim her fingers over the tightly wound fabric of the tri-folded American flag propped in her passenger seat. The same flag that had been draped over her brother's coffin a few daysago.
Pain punched her heart and her fingers reflexively clutched the corner of theflag.
Jeremy wasgone.
Dead.
Her invincible big brother had been taken out by an explosion in a foreign country in some remote village in the desert no one has ever heard of, fighting for a cause she didn’t thinkexisted.
When she'd gotten the news they'd shipped Jeremy’s belongings back to their father’s house instead of hers, she’d rushed to the base and confronted a specialist in HR who looked like he’d watched Patton every day on his lunch break. She’d been half way through berating him for the military’s ineptitude with her brother’s stuff before Spc buzz-cut had her removed from theoffice.
At least Jeremy’s First Sergeant let her know her brother’s service dog, Trigger, who’d been injured in the blast had been sent safely back to the states to live out his days in a lovinghome.
The thought of her dad laying his hands on anything meaningful to Jeremy made bile burn the back of her throat. The man ruined everything he touched. He’d beaten their mother nearly to death before she took off, abandoning her children to Dale’s alcoholic rages. If Jeremy hadn’t hit his growth spurt at such an early age, she had no doubt in her mind he would've beaten them both to death. But tough times tend to make people grow up fast, and Jeremy and Audra were noexception.
Audra took a deep breath, grabbed the door handle before she lost her nerve and got out the car. Her sandals crunched across a mixture of crumpled trash and scattered gravel on her way to the set of rickety steps leading up to the open front door. She gained the top step and the smell of rotting food and mildew hit her fullforce.
Choking, she yanked the edge of her collar over her nose, attempting to put some barrier between herself and the stench. "Dale?" She hadn’t called him dad since secondgrade.
No one answered her, but the sound of a TV playing from the back of the trailer reached her ears. Audra called out louder, "Dale."
He still didn't answer. Her luck he was passed out drunk on his bed and she'd have to wake him up, something she'd learned at a very early age was hazardous to her well-being.
Through the open door, she saw the tattered and torn couches from her past, the same pale green she remembered, only with stains and holes that didn't used to be there. The walls had yellowed from smoke and the fan was missing a blade, making it squeak with each drunkenturn.
She did not want to go inside, but saving Jeremy’s belongings from their father was more important than her wants. She had to goinside.
Audra forced one foot in front of the other, crossing the threshold onto what used to be gleaming white and navy linoleum. She didn't bother calling out again, she’d just be wasting her voice. Audra squared her shoulders and marched through the living room/kitchen area, stopping in the open doorway of her father's bedroom. The scene that lay out before her held everything she expected: blaring TV, a stained mattress on the floor and enough liquor bottles to fill a dumpster on thefloor.
The only thing missing wasDale.
Audra let out the breath she'd beenholding.
She did as thorough a search of the trailer as she could without contamination and then tried to slide open the back patio door, only to find it sealed shut. But through the dirty glass she saw exactly what she'd come here to find – the big black box containing her brother's belongings fromoverseas.
Audra rushed out the front door, past Dale’s rusty pickup truck and around the side yard, mindful of snakes and whatever else may be hiding in the knee-highweeds.
Jeremy’s box lay on its back at an odd angle, as if someone had thrown it instead of setting it down with the loving tenderness it deserved. There was a master lock on the front, keeping the lid inplace.
Maybe luck was on her side – maybe her father had gone on a joyride with some of his friends and she could take Jeremy’s belongings and escapeundetected.
She grabbed the sturdy handle on the end, tipped the box upright and drug it across the backyard, struggling with its weight, but knowing Dale may return any second gave her the added strength she needed. By the time she reached her car and opened the trunk, sweat plastered her shirt to her back. She yanked it into her car, slammed the trunk closed, and then slapped the dirt off her hands and turned to glare at her father'strailer.
A small part of her wished he was here. She could have railed at him. She could have cursed his name. She could have told him she was glad he’d skipped Jeremy’sfuneral.
But more than anything else, she felt immenserelief.
