The more I stood there in her little corner of the house, the more I thought about seeing her break.
Evelyn couldn’t fix this.
Chapter 10
Evelyn
For the rest of the way, Parker didn’t allow me to sit in my thoughts for too long.
Sometimes a song would take me back to a specific memory. I would get lost in it, lamenting a different time when my life didn’t feel suffocated by grief.
“What was your mother like?” Parker asked as he flipped on the indicator light and merged into the right lane, leading us off the exit.
I was taken off guard by the question at first, then my feelings morphed into relief. No one had asked me about my mother in a while. Celeste had been the only one who could recall memories with me. Most people who knew her avoided speaking about her because they probably thought I couldn’t handle it. But I wanted to remember her.
“My mother was the kindest person I knew besides my sister. She was always doing something for somebody, whether it was cooking, laundry or just sitting beside them when they were sick. Everyone knew they could depend on her.” Even though I wanted to speak of her, I still felt the pain of her loss like it was yesterday. My chest tightened. “Mama loved cooking and would invite people over for Sunday dinners. She always showed up forher community. I used to tell her I wanted to be just like her when I grew up, and she would always say, ‘No, I want you to be just you. Be better than I ever was.’ I feel like our neighborhood was never the same after she left us.”
Parker reached over the console to squeeze my hand again. This time, I saw it coming, and I let him. His comfort felt foreign, yet the slight roughness of his palm felt nice against my skin. I hadn’t been comforted by another person in some time. It felt foolish to find solace in a stranger, but I was starved for any type of relief.
“Tell me about your sisters. I heard you on the phone with them earlier,” I asked, deciding it was time to change the subject.
With the mention of his sisters, he cracked a smile.
“My twin sisters are Aja and Janae. I’m sure y’all will be quick friends once we get to Oakland Ridge. I’m older by five years, even though at times they seem like the big sisters. Aja has a tough exterior, but she’s soft on the inside once you get to know her. Janae is most like our mother, quiet at times, but at the right moment, she’s all sass and wit. Both of them are way smarter than I could ever be, graduating at the top of their class with honors.”
I can feel the pride radiating off of him. “You all must be close. I can tell how much you love them.”
His smile dimmed. “We’re close, but we could be closer if you asked them.”
He tapped along to the music on the steering wheel as he continued, “I had a falling out with my parents, my father mostly, before I left for New York. He didn’t support my decisions. So it’s been tense between us for some time now. I wanted to fight fires and save lives, he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. This will be my first time setting foot back in Oakland Ridge in a decade.”
Parker, from what I’ve seen so far, was just a good guy. He spoke so highly of his family despite his father being unsupportive of his career choices. Hearing him speak about his sisters chipped away at a wound that had yet to heal. I could hear the pain and disappointment in his voice when he spoke of his father. I knew that going back home couldn’t be easy for him, yet he was doing it for a total stranger.
The guilt I felt was mounting to new heights, and I just wanted to shut down. I didn’t want to feel anything else. The past few days had taken too much out of me.
We arrived at the shabby motel off the side of Route 1 around two in the morning. Both of us were bone tired. The topic of our families had left us both distracted by our thoughts.
“Well, this is it,” Parker said through a yawn. The exhaustion showed clearly on his face. A light sheen of sweat coated his deep mahogany skin. His brown eyes were sunken, and it looked like he was struggling to keep them open. “Let’s go inside and get us some rooms and rest for the night. We have about three more hours until we reach Oakland Ridge.
We exited the car, pausing only to stretch our stiff limbs. The motel looked like the kind of place where bad decisions were made. But I guess when you’re running from a crazed killer, you can’t be picky. Parker held the door for me, and I stepped into the lobby.
Behind the reception desk, a bearded man, half asleep, sat with a barely lit cigarette hanging from his lips. The wallpaper looked like it had once been vibrant with colors, showcasing hummingbirds, but now it was peeling and corroded from the smoke. Tiles on the floor were cracked, and, in some places, held together with duct tape. Parker and I shared a commiserating look before approaching the desk.
Parker cleared his throat, and the man jolted awake, saving his cigarette in the last minute before it hit the floor.
“Yeah. What do you want?” The man said curtly, his eyes ping-ponging back and forth between us.
“We’ll take two rooms for one night, and we’ll pay in cash.”
“One room.” The man huffs out as he kicks his feet up on the desks and reaches into his pocket to light another cigarette.
I bounced nervously from one leg to the other as Parker argued with the man in a hushed tone.
The last thing I wanted to do was share a room with Parker. He didn’t need to hear me screaming from the nightmares that troubled me every night. There was still too much he didn’t know about that day, and I wasn’t ready to explain it. I don’t think I’d ever be ready to tell the whole truth.
Whatever this man was saying wasn’t going over well with Parker, and he slammed the cash down on the counter and turned around to face me.
“That guy ain’t got the good sense God gave a rock.” Parker scratched the back of his neck nervously, his southern lilt coming out with his frustration. “There’s only one room available tonight, and there aren’t any other motels around. I wouldn’t trust myself to drive much further. I’ll sleep on the floor, and you can take the bed.”
