“I … my friend Miranda cut it for me,” I decide to say instead. “Remember the girl you met? Kathleen Cabot’s daughter?” Dad nods as he opens my door for me and takes my bag. He chucks it into the bed of the truck, next to his toolboxes, and gets in the driver’s side. The urge to add but maybe you were too drunk to remember flickers in my mind, but I keep my mouth shut.
We drive in silence for a little while, and I try not to get my feelings hurt that he’s not asking me any questions. We barely talk when I’m at school, and now that I’m going home, I thought he’d want to know everything. We’ve always had a good relationship.
“Your mother wants to see you for Christmas,” he blurts, and that’s when it all starts to make sense. Great. He’s never fallen out of love with that woman, even after all the crap she’s put us through. Sometimes, I just wish she’d go away and leave us completely alone. Popping in and out of our lives only makes things harder.
“Why?” I ask, my heart pounding. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out to find a text from Zack, replying to a pic of me in my dress last night. You’re a fucking vision. I run my tongue along my lower lip, my heart pounding as he continues to type. On my way home. You?
“She’s your mother, Marnye,” Dad says, but he doesn’t sound anymore excited about this than I am. “She wants to have a relationship with you.” I tap out a response to Zack. Yep. For the whole two weeks.
“Maybe she should’ve thought about that before she left me at a rest stop and drove off?” I ask, lifting my face up to study Dad’s. He’s staring at the road with unwarranted intensity. His brown hair is tousled and flecked with hints of gray. The man’s only forty years old, and he’s already got gray. That worries me.
“People make mistakes, Marnye,” he says, and I roll my eyes, slumping against the door of the truck.
“You’re always making excuses for her, even now. She left me at a rest stop because her boyfriend was bothered by my crying. I was three, Dad. I could’ve been kidnapped or …” There’s no point putting to words all the horrible things that might’ve happened. He knows. He drove over to her fancy new house in Grenadine Heights, and punched her new boyfriend—now husband—in the face. Dad ended up in jail for two weeks, and I stayed with Mrs. Fleming.
Hang out with me sometime? Zack sends, and then a minute later. Please. We haven’t gotten to the house yet, and I’m desperate to escape already.
“I know it’s been tough, Marnye, but wouldn’t you rather have your mother in your life some than not at all?” I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that, so I don’t say anything at all. Instead, I just lean back in the torn old seat and text Zack again.
Same. When can you meet?
There’s a brief pause and then I can see him typing.
Tonight.
I smile tightly, turn my phone screen off, and lie back, closing my eyes against the curving country road.
At least now I have something to look forward to … although I’m already wondering if trusting Zack again is a mistake.The Train Car is, quite literally, a pair of passenger cars from an old steam train that have been converted into a trailer of sorts. Each is shorter and narrower than some of the other trailers in the park, but at least they’ve got some character. When I was little, I loved living here.
Standing on the sagging front porch, I’m not so sure how I feel.
“What? A few months at that prep school and you’ve got champagne tastes?” Dad asks, smiling at me as he unlocks the door and lets us in. I’m nervous at first, but as I step inside, I see that it’s clean, and there aren’t any alcohol bottles anywhere.
“Definitely not.” I carry my bags into my room, tossing the ratty old duffel onto my floral bedspread. It’s a nice one, too, a present from Dad for my middle school graduation. He thought I could take it with me to Burberry Prep, but the packing list expressly asked students not to bring linens from home.
My room is in the second train car, right next to Dad’s, with nothing but a narrow hallway between them. The two train cars are connected by a makeshift hall of their own, metal welded together to keep out the elements, insulated, and covered in dry wall. It’s pretty cool, actually.
As I sit there, I get this surreal sense of belonging but not belonging, like maybe Dad’s right. Maybe my time at the academy has changed me a little. The person who lived here last summer isn’t quite the same person who’s sitting on this bed now. Putting both hands over my face, I lie back and just sit for a minute, taking it all in.
