Page 54 of Resonance
“Not sure you came with one.” He rolled his eyes at me as he straightened, and Jezebel weaved between his legs. “I sleep just fine, by the way.” Most of the time. I rapped my knuckles against the wall. “This was my folks’ place. All of that your way of saying you’re disappointed?”
“Nah. It’s very you, somehow.” For a second our eyes caught again, then Owen’s brows rose as he diverted to something over my shoulder. “Wow, is that your family?”
I turned to study the old black-and-white photograph framed on the wall. “Yep. My mom’s side. They were sharecroppers in West Tennessee back in the day.”
Owen drifted closer, studying the photograph intently.
“My grandma.” I pointed out the youngest girl hugging the rail post of the tiny cabin. “My great-grandma and great-grandpa.”
Owen’s warm breath fell across the back of my hand as he leaned closer. “I can see you, just a little bit in the eyes. Your parents died a while ago, yeah?”
“Yeah, five and seven years.”
He hummed thoughtfully and stepped back. “I favor my mom.” His gaze softened with what I thought was a tinge of sadness.
“You have much contact with her?” I knew Owen had been raised by some combination of grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Ru had told me he’d been passed around a lot.
He fiddled with the pendant he always wore around his neck. The gold had worn off or chipped in places, and it looked as if there’d once been a pattern of rhinestones ringing the medallion. Only one remained along the lower curve. The rest of the sockets were black and empty. “Some. Sorta. I mean I’m Facebook friends with her, and we message each other once or twice a month usually.” He wrinkled his nose. “She’s kind of a mess. Like your brother, sounds like. Moves around a lot, rarely hangs on to a job for more than a few months. My dad is similar, but he’s a trucker. Lives on the road mostly.”
I reached out and brushed my finger over the pendant. “What’s the story behind this?”
A glimmer of a smile curved Owen’s lips. “It’s silly. So when she turned me over to my grandma—and look,” he said, lifting his hand like he was trying to ward off something—sympathy was my guess—as he continued. “She was messed up on drugs and really fucking young back then, and I get it. She couldn’t take care of me, and she did what she thought was best. My grandma and aunts and uncles were great to put up with me.Aregreat. Like, I’m not a sad fucking orphan story or something.”
“Never said you were and never would.”
He nodded, the steel in his jaw telling me that was important to him. “Anyway, when she dropped me off, I was obviously a kid, didn’t really understand what was going on. And she was my mom, good and bad, you know? You don’t know that it’s not normal, really, for a mom to sleep for days or to learn how to get your own breakfast when you can barely reach the fridge. She was really fun sometimes, too. Awesome singer. She’d make up these silly songs and we’d laugh so hard.
“But anyway, when she dropped me off at Nina’s, I had my suitcase with me, a bunch of clothes and stuff, but I wanted something of hers. She always wore these really pretty earrings and necklaces. Now I see them for the cheap shit they were. But again, I was a kid, and the shiny effect is real.” He tilted his head and chuckled to himself. “Still is kinda in play, really.Anyway, I wanted these hoops she was wearing with little tassels, but she said I wouldn’t be able to wear them, so she gave me her necklace instead.” He squeezed his eyes shut abruptly, and I had to resist the urge to run my thumb over his cheek. “None of this is making sense.”
“It makes perfect sense to me.”
“Funny what you hang on to, right? Even when you don’t need it anymore. It becomes this superstitious thing, like without it you won’t remember.”
I thought of his tattoos and my notebooks and fought the urge to swallow. “Sure is. Tell you what, though. Anyone who doesn’t want to know you or be around you? Fuck ’em, then. They don’t deserve to anyway.”
Surprise flitted across his features, along with amusement, and he smiled gently. “That’s my take, too.”
“Ahh, look at that. We agree on something.”
“We agree on a lot of things.”
“Yeah? What else?” I leaned against the wall and folded my arms over my chest.
“Like… The Eagles, and that the best veggie dogs are from Cornwallis’s, but the best overall dogs are from Heavenly Dog. Oh! And the best barbecue is the no-name place off Wedgewood.”
“You hungry?”
“Maybe a little, yeah.”
I lifted my chin in the direction of the kitchen. “C’mon, then. I’ve got some vegetable beef stew. You can’t eat just a bear claw for dinner.”
“Haven’t you ever heard not to feed strays? They’re likely to keep coming back.”
The coyness in his expression loosed a tendril of heat in my stomach, and I brushed past him, muttering, “That’s what the secret drawbridge is for.”
“I knew it,” he stage-whispered from behind me.
Chapter 19