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She wakes up gasping, as if she was trapped in a nightmare. Ironic—because that’s exactly how I see this move, this new beginning.
It’s a way to wake up from a nightmare.
“Sorry,” I murmur, my voice scratchy from lack of use. “You asked me to wake you when we were close.”
Mom sits taller, craning her neck to look around us. She won’t see much. It’s been the same view for the past hour—nothing but empty fields of dead, dry grass on either side of us.
“Damn, Harlow.” She wipes the drool from her bottom lip and pushes her dark hair away from her eyes. “How long was I out for?”
Most of my features came from my mom. We have the same pointed nose, same boring brown eyes, same wavy caramel-colored hair. The major difference between us is (thankfully) our height. My mom barely registers at 4’11”. My dad—an ex-D1 college basketball player who stands at 6’5”—says that it was Mom’s height that first caught his eye. And then later, their height difference caught everyone else’s.
I guess that proves they were an odd matchup to begin with.
“Harlow?” Mom says, and I glance over at her as she repeats, “how long was I out for?”
I stop myself from apologizing once again. “A few hours.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to keep you company and?—”
“It’s okay,” I cut in. “You need your sleep.” Besides, we’ve kind of gotten the hang of the whole ignoring-each-other’s-presence thing. I wouldn’t want to ruin our streak.
We stay silent for the rest of the drive, the only sound in the car coming from the soft music playing through the speakers. We pass nothing until we get to a faded roadside sign welcoming us to Rowville, and I almost jump out of my skin when the GPS gives its first spoken direction in over an hour.
The closer we get to our destination, the more evidence of life I see. There are small houses set far back from the main road, some moresigns, and then, in the middle of nowhere, the GPS tells us we’ve reached our destination.
“Should I pull over?” I ask, peering at the rearview to gauge Dad’s reaction. The only thing I can make out is his cap and red beard. Behind him, my uncle sits behind the wheel of his RV—a carbon copy of his older brother, minus the beard.
“No, it’s okay,” Mom mumbles, pulling out a printout from her bag. She scans what looks like a hand-drawn map and written directions, before she adds, “Take the next left.”
The next left is a gravel road about a mile long that ends at a Y intersection. I stop the car just before having to make a choice, and behind us, Dad’s eighteen-wheeler groans to a halt, the familiar sound of its brakes echoing in my eardrums.
Mom’s looking at the printout again, and all I can think is… if we go one way, what the hell’s in the other? “Left again.”
I turn left, and finally, a house, surrounded by nothing but straw-colored pastures, comes into view. The driveway is merely the road that we’re on, and the house… the house is kind of beautiful. At least from the outside. Two stories, all white with faded black shutters bracketing the many, many windows, and—my favorite part—a porch that takes up the entire front of the house.
I almost smile.
Almost.
But that would be too easy.
Without a word, I open the door and step out, then immediately regret it. I’d been in the air-conditioned car for so long that, for a moment, I’d forgotten we were in Texas. During summer. And it was hotter than Satan’s asshole out here. “Holy shit,” I mumble, just as Dad hops out of his truck, now parked beside the house.
Hand up to block the raging sun, I watch him walk toward me with a smile so wide it makes me wonder how he learned to fake it so well. “What do you think, Low?”
He stops beside me, throws an arm over my shoulders as we face the house. I sweep my gaze at our surroundings and spot something I didn’t notice before. About a quarter mile away is another house,similar to ours, and I guess that explains what’s on the right of the intersection. But it’s what’s behind the house that grabs my attention—a tree line that extends as far as the eye can see. “I think I’ve found a new place to hide,” I mumble, just loud enough for only him to hear.
Dad sighs, his awareness shifting to Mom getting out of the car. My uncle Roy gets out too, his focus moving from the house to us—a family so torn apart we can’t even communicate anymore. “Looks good, Marcella,” Uncle Roy states, but Mom is already halfway to the front door…
…and all the way checked out of reality.
Then, with one foot on the porch steps, she halts, whipping her head from side to side, trying to find the source of a sound that has us all frozen. “What is that?” she asks, even though we all know.
We used to hear it every single night, for hours and hours on end. I’d wake up to it most mornings. Fall asleep the same way. For my family, there’s no mistaking the sound of leather bouncing on concrete, over and over, again and again.
“What thefuckis that?” Mom mutters, and then she’s off, rushing toward the sound.
“Fuck,” Dad spits, dropping his arm from around me and going after her.