“Surprised she still runs,” I say, taking in all the details. Triangular vent windows, shiny chrome details, and thick stripes of red and white paint down the side. “Thing’s over thirty years old.”
“Runs like a top.” He tosses the divorce papers onto the passenger side. “Where you staying? I have plenty of room at my place.”
Hard pass.
“A hotel.”
I haven’t booked one, but I’m sure there’s something in my new budget of twelve dollars a night nearby.
“Meet at my place tomorrow morning then. Eight?” He pulls a cellphone out of his pocket, clicks around on the screen, then faces it toward me. “That still your number?”
My heart stops. “You have a phone?”
“Had to adapt to the modern world in some ways,” he admits. “I’ll text you the address.”
I look back at the screen. My name and number. I wish he didn’t have it. It would sting less if he still only believed in postal worker-driven communication. If the reason he didn’t call after all these years was because he didn’t call anyone.
“You never called.” I don’t know why I say it—I told him not to call. But for years I wished he would. Wished my phone wouldring from an unknown number, I’d answer, and his voice would say,Let me come back, Rue Conway.He’d tell me his need for us was stronger than his need to be anywhere else. That call never came, I moved on—from the wish and him.
The quiet lasts the eight years he’s been gone.
“You never came to get me,” he finally says.
It hangs there, once again, both versions of the story truer than I want to admit. Even though I didn’t have the postcards, I don’t know what I would have done with them if I had. I was so hurt and mad he wasn’t with me, raising Bennie, there’s a chance I would have thrown them away. If I didn’t know we were still married, I might not have done a damn thing, and we’d be sitting in this same parking lot.
“I’ll bring the letter,” Cap pipes in.
I say nothing, getting in my car and gesturing for Cap to do the same.
“Rue,” Nash says through my rolled-down window. I look at him—really look at him. Really let it sink in that I’m here with the man I loved more than any other. Who blew in and out of my life like a feather in the Fontain summer wind and turned me into a woman I barely recognized for a single season. “It’s good to see you.”
I hate him for saying it.
“Then sign the papers.”
Instead of letting him respond, I peel out of the parking lot only to find myself in anticlimactic bumper-to-bumper traffic. In my rearview mirror, Nash doesn’t hide how funny he finds that, making me fume the whole way to the marina.
“I like him,” Cap says as he gets out of the car. “See why you got married.”
It’s my turn to grunt.
He slings his tank of oxygen over his shoulder then taps the side of the station wagon with his cane. “See you in the morning, kiddo.”
I barely let him close the door before I hit the gas, once again letting burning rubber serve as my salutation.
I am completely unhinged by this day.
After scouring the internet for a cheap hotel, I end up at one that costs $232.65 for the night, nearly crying as I pay.
In the room, I go straight for a hot bath, grabbing my phone and trying to forget I’m down to $135.83.
There’s a text from Reese I read first.Mom said I’m supposed to give you a break, but we all know you’re a high-strung maniac so I’m sending you an update. Everything is good, Bennie is happy, Mom had a slight headache today and yelled at me for offering her water.
I pause, laughing slightly. I sink a little lower in the tub while my heart sinks a little lower in my chest. Mom has a brain tumor that we’re all trying to fix with water like a dead plant.
She also made me book us a hotel down there for next week. If we were still real sisters, I’d feel bad for how stressed that must make you, but since we aren’t, I paid for two nights with a smile on my face. Spoke to the neurologist and we can get Mom into surgery in 10 weeks. Mid-August. I told him to pencil it in, and we can discuss after you’re done being Jack Sparrow. Oh. The store’s website is antiquated (funny, right?) so I’m having a guy look it over. He owes me. Bennie wants me to tell you hi and she’s having too much fun to talk. Don’t respond, I have meetings the rest of the night. But seriously, what’s it like to be the dirty secret of the family?
There’s so much to unpack in that text that my head spins until it hurts. Only family can cause such a distinct kind of pain without even being in the same room, city, or state.
