“I’m an expert.” Duke pats his chest proudly. “Wheeler has me makin’ ’em every damn night, so I’d better be.”
“You’re the best.” She grins up at him.
Grabbing a towel, I use it to wipe my hands. “Y’all clearly need to get a room.”
“Wehavebeen making somethingelseevery night too.” Wheeler’s lips twitch.
Mollie nods sagely from her perch at the table where she’s nursing her daughter. “It’s so good when you’re pregnant.”
“What is?” Cash says with a smile.
So many babies.
So manypeopleand families and new beginnings.
I’m thrilled for my brothers. Genuinely. When they’re happy, I’m happy.
Can you be happy, though, when you’re kinda-sorta lying to yourself? When you haven’t faced shit in years, and now all of a sudden, it’s coming back to haunt you for reasons you don’t entirely understand?
All I know is that I can barely breathe around the moon in my throat. Excusing myself, I make a quick exit.
Next thing I know, I’m in my truck and driving through the deepening darkness. My hands shake as I guide the truck to the Rivers’ side of the ranch.
When the green clapboard siding of the storage shed comes into view, a rush of heat hits the backs of my eyes.
The house I grew up in was barely a thousand square feet, with very little storage or attic space. So my dad built this little shed beside the equipment barn to serve as a storage space.
The shed is where we kept all our shit when we were growing up. Hopefully no one’s messed with it since I was here last. Why would they? Last I checked years ago, there wasn’t anything of value in the shed. Just a bunch of photograph albums, bins of our artwork from school, and other random stuff like bikes and baby walkers.
My legs feel like Jell-O as I walk across the gravel road, which has been taken over by weeds. The shed’s never had a lock, so I’m able to walk right through the door.
I’m hit by the smells of hay and must. Underneath all that, though, I can detect the faintest trace of a familiar scent.
Home.Fresh laundry and rose-scented lotion.
Yeah, this obviously isn’t the physical structure I grew up in. But this is the stuff I grew upwith. I guess that particular scent’s clung to our things the same way it clung to the house itself.
My chest cramps as memories unfurl inside my head. Mom rubbing lotion into her hands after doing the dishes. The way my stomach would growl when the smell of whatever she was cooking filled the house at the end of the day. Waking up to thesmells of coffee and fried bacon. How Mom would let us sleep with her on the rare occasions Dad was out of town. I remember how his pillow smelled like the Listerine mouthwash he used.
Tears leak out of my eyes. I don’t try to fight them. Surely that’s a step in the right direction?
Instead, I reach overhead to pull on a string. I pull it again, and again. Nothing happens.
Welp, the light doesn’t work anymore.
I turn on my phone’s flashlight and wade forward. The shed is still, warm, and quiet.
It’s also a mess, which is a relief. No one’s touched it.
I don’t spend much time browsing. Hurts too much to see the old crib Mom kept for God knows what reason, or the tarnished gold figurines of trophies that poke over the top of a nearby box. Cash was always the overachiever of the family, so my guess is those trophies belong to him.
I guide the beam of my flashlight over the undulating landscape of stuff.
So. Much. Stuff.
Then again, Mom and Dad did have five kids. They were so proud of us, and I get why they didn’t want to throw away anything they didn’t have to.
The light catches on something reflective, and I blink at the sudden flash. My stomach seizes as the familiar curves of a guitar come into focus. Reaching over a pile of oldNational Geographicmagazines, I carefully curl my fingers around the guitar’s neck and lift it up.
