I shoved away visions of our affair’s fallout. It was all too much. I was used to being persona non grata in town after vandalizing everyone’s precious church, but I didn’t want that for Rachel or her kids, didn’t want anything to happen to them if I could help it.
The air smelled like spring when I stepped outside a while later. The neighborhood was waking up. Garage doors opening, cars backing out. Kids trundling down the sidewalk, backpacks hoisted on shoulders, a few dog barks. I threw a couple of looks at Rachel’s as I crossed to Dad’s but didn’t see anyone. I guess I’d eventually get used to not looking at her house, but it wouldn’t be today. Not tomorrow either.
Dad was snoozing in his chair, white hair in disarray, hand on the remote. I turned off the TV and started breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice, more coffee. It was our routine for me to come over for breakfast and normally dinner. It wasn’t that Dad couldn’t look after himself—he could for the most part. Constant supervision was a ways off yet. The plan Keli and I had worked out was I’d move into my old room once things became more unmanageable. And when I couldn’t give him the full care he needed, well, we’d stumble across that bridge when we came to it.
The smell must’ve woken him, because he shambled into the kitchen not long after the bacon hit the pan. “Morning,” he said, pouring himself coffee. “Gonna be a beauty today.”
“I think so.”
“Who won last night?”
“Yanks.”
He grunted. “Should go down for a game this summer. Be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure. You feel up to something like that, we’ll do it. Maybe for your birthday? Only a couple weeks away.”
“Don’t remind me. Oof. Getting old sucks, but the alternative isn’t any better.” He thought for a moment. “Yeah, a game might be a good present. We could take Keli, Mark, and the girls.”
“Don’t think Mark will want to tag along, Dad.”
As I transferred eggs and bacon to our plates, I watched the processing in his features. A slow realization that it wasn’t three years ago and Keli and Mark were no longer bound in holy matrimony. “Oh right, Kel probably wouldn’t want him to come.”
“The girls and Kel would love it, though,” I said. He nodded.
We ate in silence. The silence ate at me.
This house used to be loud. Four kids, two parents, a dog at one point. Always someone coming or going. Dad worked for twenty-five years as a security guard for the paper mill in town, the first fifteen of them night shifts. He’d come in around the time we were headed out to school, always a smile for us, a question about what was happening that day, before ambling off to bed. Our mother worked as a stenographer at the courthouse. She not only typed in shorthand but lived it too. Almost all her interactions were abbreviated, boiled down to the bones of what she needed out of a conversation. And beneath everything was the bedrock of her faith. Trust in the Lord, she’d say, and you’ll never want for anything.
Our older brother, Cory, could quote scripture and turn his faux innocent gaze on our mom like a heat ray, while Kel and I could recite old episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and had sword fights in the garage. Our youngest sister, Emma, could tell you the velocity of NASA rockets leaving the atmosphere or what a person’s body weight was on the moon. She stargazed and dreamed and had the kindest heart I’ve ever known. She was too good for this world, and that’s why she was no longer in it.
I glanced down the hallway to my old bedroom and sighed. Someday not too far off, I’d be sleeping in there again, door open so I’d be able to hear Dad get up in the middle of the night when he rose, thinking he was late for work. Back where I started life. Caught in a loop on the Loop.
When we were both done eating, I collected our plates and started doing the dishes, eyes mostly on Rachel’s place up the street. After a bit I began glancing at the landline attached to the wall beside the stove, willing it to ring. Maybe she’d seen me walk over here, just like the time a few days after the kiss when suddenly the phone had jangled and Dad answered, then handed it to me.
Can you meet me? To talk? The tone of her voice had sounded like she was asking for the moon.
It was raining when I stepped into the little café in the neighboring town of West Forge. I hadn’t asked why she wanted to meet twenty minutes away. You don’t have to when your neighbor kisses you in her kitchen, then calls you at your father’s a few minutes after you walk in the door.