Page 3 of What I Should've Said

I pull my cell out of my purse, hoping to get some confirmation from Google Maps, but I have zero bars of service. No doubt, my cell provider saw no reason for service out here because…no one is out here.

It’s been a while since I’ve been here and my memories are hazy, but the bridge does look familiar, even though the color isn’t right. And if I squint, I swear I can see a small sign sitting beside it that I think reads Red Bridge.

With no other option, I haul my suitcase behind me as I head toward the yellow beacon in the distance. Dry dirt kicks up with each step I take, and by the time I reach the bridge, my black boots look brown, and my jeans are thinking about retiring to a Utah ranch.

Truthfully, they’re my best friend Lillian’s black boots and jeans, but that’s an issue for another day. Right now, the town sign is transporting my mind straight back to twenty years ago.

Welcome to Red Bridge, it announces in big red letters. The smallest town in Vermont: Where everyone is someone and home is right here.

Right after my father passed away—after he’d battled an aggressive brain tumor for a year—my mother decided we were going to move away from this small town and start a new life in New York, and that sign is the very last thing I saw the day we left. I could barely read on my own at the time, but I can still hear my twelve-year-old sister Josie reading it aloud through her tears.

My grandmother Rose wasn’t happy about our leaving, but Eleanor Ellis, my mother, has always been a determined kind of woman. Maybe you have to be when you’ve buried both your youngest daughter and a husband before your thirtieth birthday.

But when Josie turned eighteen, she finally had a choice. She left New York and moved back here, despite our mother’s complaints. To this day, she and our mother aren’t on speaking terms, but it was like this town and our history with it were in Josie’s blood. Like she didn’t feel like she belonged anywhere but here. And for the past fourteen years, this is where she’s been.

Or, at least, I hope that’s still the case, because she’s the whole reason I got on that Greyhound and headed here. My whole life was in New York, and I walked away from it—had to walk away from it.

I check my cell again, hoping for enough service to GPS myself to Josie’s house, but half a bar isn’t enough juice to power anything but the time. So, I continue walking, hoping I’ll spot civilization at some point.

But the more I walk, the farther I feel like I’m going from actual humans.

I know the town is small, but where is it? Did they move it?

The late July sun beats down on my back, reminding me that even Vermont gets hot, and a small part of me wonders if I’m going to die out here alone with only a Louis Vuitton suitcase filled with my best friend’s clothes beside me.

I stop halfway across the bridge to catch my breath and watch the river flowing beneath it.

Everything about my life feels trapped in the flowing, bubbling, swirling water. Like I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m still moving forward at ten miles per hour.

Tires crunch on dirt and rock in the distance, and my head whips around to find the culprit. An old, vintage Ford pickup in a pristine shade of baby blue with chrome accents that glitter in the sun drives toward me.

Proof of life!

Without thinking, I start waving both hands in the air and try to flag down the unknown driver. Yes, I’ve listened to far too many crime podcasts to engage in this kind of reckless behavior on a normal day, but the boob sweat and three-inch helmet of frizz that’s now sitting atop my curls is anything but standard.

As the truck moves closer and closer without slowing, I realize this is a real red-wire, blue-wire kind of dilemma. The only thing that’s going to stop it is a risky move by me. I imagine this is what Bruce Willis felt like when they were trying to defuse the bomb in Armageddon.

Time is dwindling.

The truck is closing the distance.

And I cut the proverbial wire and put myself in the road. Directly in front of the moving truck.

A beat of time lifts my heart into my throat before tires skid across the dirt, and the truck comes to a shaky stop about a foot away from my body. A cloud of dust rushes forward and swirls around me like a tornado.

When we’re finally close enough to see each other, the driver’s eyes lock with mine, venom and disbelief within them. Guilt and shame form a friendship in my chest, shaking hands and sharing smiles and leaving me feeling like a buffoon.

“I’m sorry!” I exclaim toward him, lifting my arms in apology at his huge, unmoving frame. His tanned knuckles tighten reflexively around the white steering wheel.

Cautiously, I walk toward the driver’s side door. His window is rolled down, and the soft sounds of an oldies sixties song my father loved to listen to when Josie, Jezzy, and I were just kids trills from the speakers.

The man in the driver’s seat, however, is soundless.

I feel seventy shades of awkward, but I swallow past my discomfort and try to cut through the tension with an apologetic knife. “I’m really, really sorry. I just… I was just trying to get your attention and—” I stop midsentence when his blue eyes move across the dashboard to meet mine. The malevolence in them would silence anyone.

“And you thought it was a good idea to throw your body in front of my truck?” he questions with a deep, husky voice of honey and sandpaper all at once.

My stomach lurches and pitches to one side. I loathe upsetting people, even strangers, and yes, I imagine Freud would have something to say about that.

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