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GRADY ‘BEAU’ BEAUMONT

The house wasn’t just quiet—it was empty. A silence that wasn’t just the absence of noise, it was the absence of life. My mother’s life.

Mrs. Magill and Little Grandma had been the last ones to leave. I’d tried to be polite as I practically shoved them out the door, but now the house was quiet. Too quiet.

For the first time in over two years, I wasn’t listening for Mom’s voice to ask for water, or the rustle of sheets as she was getting out of bed to go to the bathroom. The silence should have come as a relief, but it didn’t. Instead, it felt like a boulder pressing down on me, one I couldn’t shake off.

I sat on our worn couch, staring at the darkened TV screen. My hands were clasped so tightly that my knuckles ached.

I barked out a sad laugh. Not a good thing for a wide receiver.

Fuck, how could I be laughing? My mother was gone. The woman who’d worked so hard to stay this side of sane and happy had finally lost her fight to brain cancer, and I was laughing.

What kind of asshole was I?

But tonight, I didn’t feel any tears ready to choke me, instead I felt something much worse. I felt relief.

I shot up off the couch when I realized just how evil I was. My fist hit the wall beside the crucifix, plowing through the drywall. I didn’t feel a thing. Pulling my hand out of the wall, I took deep breaths, trying to get my rage at myself under control. Trying to make sense of everything.

It was when I looked down at the picture that had crashed to the ground from my punch that I started to see sense. It was a picture of me and Brady. My twin brother.

I picked up the picture and looked at it. Brady and I had just turned three. One of us was sitting in a Radio Flyer red wagon, and the other was wearing red cowboy boots. My father had abducted my brother soon after that picture had been taken. I never saw either of them again.

When my dad took Brady, it was as if he’d taken all of the joy out of the house. My mom had been suffering every day since then, even before her cancer had struck. Every single day.

Year after year, my mom suffered, even before the cancer struck. Dragging me down as she leaned harder and harder on me, making no attempt to lift herself up, instead relying on me to be not one son, but two. Dooming me to failure.

I carefully set the picture of me and my brother on top of the mantle, next to my football trophy, and pressed my finger against Brady’s face.

“I miss you, Brady. Why couldn’t it have been me who got to leave? Why did I get stuck cleaning up all the shit?”

I caught sight of the trophy, and it reminded me of football and everything Coach Anderson and his wife had been doing for me. Hell, everything the whole town of Jasper Creek had been doing for me ever since Mom got diagnosed with cancer. She hadn’t wanted any in-home care. Of course she hadn’t. And there was never any thought of her leaving this house, so mostly, it had come down to me.

Except it hadn’t.

Not this time.

The whole town of Jasper Creek had rallied around me. They made sure I had food in the fridge, that I didn’t flunk out of high school, and that I still had a place on the football team. Coach Anderson and Maddie Avery were the two who pushed me the hardest. Okay, maybe Little Grandma too. They were the three who made sure I didn’t lose myself in my mother’s sickness. But it was Coach who told me that the best thing he ever did was not let his hometown keep him down. He told me that if I’d had the grades, he could have gotten me a football scholarship, but I didn’t, so that was that. Instead, he told me to do like he did. Join the Marines.

As soon as he said it, I knew Coach Anderson was right. I could feel it deep in my bones, the need to get out, to escape like Brady had. Staying meant drowning in ghosts. Leaving meant a chance at something else. At something that wasn’t an anchor.

There was only one problem, and it was a big one. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving my best friend. The thought of not having Maddie Avery down the street twisted my gut into knots. I’d had her in my life since kindergarten. When Coach talked about not letting my hometown holding me back, he didn’t understand about Maddie being the one sure thing that had always lifted me up.

She always said we lifted each other up, and I guess maybe that was true. Her life at home was ugly, no matter how much her older sisters and brother tried to shield her. We’d clung to one another as my mother’s depression got deeper and darker, year over year, and her daddy and ma got meaner and nastier every year. When it felt like we both had nothing, we had each other.

“But I’m free,” I whispered to myself. I didn’t need Maddie to lighten my load while I lifted her up, because Mom was dead. Now it would just be me helping Maddie…

“No!”

I stormed across the living room and yanked open the front door. I stared at the porch swing that we’d sat on thousands of times.

How was I supposed to walk away from her? I owed it to her to stay, didn’t I? But what if I did stay and I ended up resenting her?

“Fuck!”

I wanted out of this damned town and away from these damned memories so bad. I wanted more than Jasper Creek—I had no idea what, but I wanted more than the whispers of pity and the constant reminders of all the people I’d lost. I needed a clean slate. A different life. Something that was all mine.

Graduation was in two weeks.

I sat down on the porch swing and slowly made my decision. Now I’d just have to tell Maddie. It was going to gut me. But she wouldn’t cry. She’d pretend to be happy for me. That was who Maddie Avery was.

She was a much better person than me.

And after I left, I could never look back. Because if I did, I might forget why I left in the first place—and ruin everything we’d ever been to one another.