Page 33 of Returned Mail

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Keep talking, and you won’t have to worry about tomorrow.”

His grin widens.

I shake my head and look back through the glass. The road stretches ahead. Dust follows us in a thick cloud, swallowing everything behind the convoy. For a while, the only sounds are the engine, the radio, and Mack’s gum.

“You know… my old man used to disappear.” I don’t know why I say it. Maybe because I’m tired of thinking about her, about how she still hasn’t responded to anything. Or maybe because there are more things hurting me than I'd like to admit.

Mack stops chewing, and I immediately regret it.

“What?”

I shift in my seat. “He’d leave,” I say. “Weeks sometimes.”

Mack waits.

“Military?”

“Nah. He didn’t have that excuse.” The answer comes sharper than I mean it to. I look down at my rifle.

Mack stays quiet. The truck keeps moving.

“He’d just go.”

I shrug like it doesn’t matter. Like I’m not thirty-six years old and still carrying around a fourteen-year-old kid’s anger. “No warning. No explanation. He’d disappear, then show up whenever he felt like it.”

“What’d your mom say?”

“Not much.”

“That sounds healthy.” A laugh slips out of me. Short, and humorless.

“Yeah. We were great at communication.”

Mack snorts.

I look back through the window.

“He’d come home and act like nothing happened,” I say. “Couple days. Maybe a week.” Then I stop, but Mack doesn’t push, and that somehow makes it easier to continue. “Then he’d leave again.”

The truck bounces over another rut. I brace automatically.

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen the last time I saw him.”

Mack turns toward me. “Last time?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“No idea.”

He studies me, but I keep my eyes on the road.