Page 2 of The One Who Got Away

I just wanted Lincoln.

Ever since our paths crossed two years ago, it had been one perfect impossibility after the next. Impossible that the hottest guy at Rhoades High wasn’t a dick like all of his jock friends; the standard, forgettable male that clogged the halls. Impossible that we both loved Bukowski, Plath, and Nirvana. Impossible that his kisses could bring me to life and make me forget all the reasons I wanted to get out of Rhoades, which was as soon as the ink was dry on my high school diploma.

I put both my hands on my mother’s shoulders just as Josie’s voice came rumbling through the door. “Let’s do this wedding thing!”

“I’m happy, Mom,” I told her firmly. “And I can’t wait to be Mrs. Lincoln Carraway.”

She leaned in, her forehead pressed against mine. I could have sworn I saw something flicker in her crystal eyes, but it flitted away before I could catch it. “Then I’m happy.”

She hustled off to make sure everything was going off without a hitch. Lincoln’s mom had wanted to hire a wedding planner, reserve the fanciest event venue in Raleigh, and make it the event of the year, but we kept it small and intimate. I didn’t want to make it about what was expected because I was marrying a Carraway. I wanted it to be about me and Linc. And when I took a few sobering breaths just in time for my dad to rap on the door, I’d even managed to curb my annoyance at his sour mood throughout this whole experience.

Dad was standing in his full police chief regalia. Naturally, he wore his standard ‘I’m about to bust some heads’ expression. He’d nailed it on his face since the day I told him Lincoln and I were getting married.

I breezed over to him and decided to bury the hatchet. He was here, ready to walk me down the aisle, even if he didn’t approve.

I kissed his scruffy jaw and whispered, “Thank you, Dad.”

I stepped back, fully expecting him to be red-faced and awkward, but the only thing I saw was that the kick-butt look had been drained in favor of complete and utter sadness. It rippled through his features as he opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, like the words were too heavy. Too painful.

Robert Wilkes III didn’t shy away from shit. And even in that moment, I watched him dig deep and his eyes, the color of the woods behind our house, hardened like winter.

“Catherine...he’s gone. Lincoln has called off the wedding.”

~

My Dodge Neon shuddered to a stop at the corner of Fort Run and Greene Road. Sure, I pressed the brake pedal a good couple of hundred feet back, just in case this was the time it decided to let out a strangled gurgle and die. It would be just my luck that my Frankenstein-like car, a good ten years past its expiration date, would pick today of all days to throw in the towel.

Luckily for us both, it inched forward when I eased my right foot off the brake. I should have been grateful, but I pounded on the steering wheel, like it was somehow its fault for our current GPS coordinates. Like I didn’t know, without the robot woman’s assistance, that my destination was just ahead.

I was almost home.

If you believed the brochures and the cheery sign I passed a few miles back, Rhoades, North Carolina was the hidden gem of the state. If you blinked, you’d miss the rolling fields, construction equipment, and pick up truck-lined driveways that looked like every other itty-bitty town in the eastern nook of the state.

“Your destination is on the right,” the automated voice prompted. She repeated it for posterity, and I tapped the X to close the app because I could see the brick house peeking out from behind the oak trees. The dread I’d been pretending wasn’t eating me up when I texted my sister and confirmed that yes, I was back in North Carolina and yes, I was coming to Sunday dinner rolled in my gut.

“Here we go,” I muttered, pulling into the driveway.

I knew every bump in the gravel. I maneuvered around the huge crater that Dad was supposed to fill in years ago. I tucked my car beside my sister’s minivan nestled next to an old tree. It looked like someone had tried to drive halfway up it, then remembered trees weren’t for automobiles. The painfully inept driver that had stripped the bark right from the mighty trunk? Yours truly, with my learner’s permit burning a hole in my pocket. It was the first and last time my father let me drive his truck.

Sunday dinner at the Wilkes followed closely behind non-voluntary church attendance. The only reason I got a pardon regarding the whole church thing was because I strategically planned my road trip from Nebraska. And since I hadn’t been in Rhoades in years, God, and my mother, forgave the slip up.

I didn’t loosen my death hold on the steering wheel at first, glaring at the peeling coating that flaked off and sprinkled onto my wrinkled tunic. With a groan, I finally let go of the wheel and futilely tried to make the wrinkles disappear before I shrugged my shoulders and flipped down the visor.

“Hey you,” I whispered, staring at my reflection. Without a swipe of makeup, every striking feature on my face seemed like a dull pencil that had been forgotten under some grubby couch cushion. My forehead was lined with every bit of stress I’d taken on since I left town. My baby blue eyes were navy, like the storm clouds had just rolled in. I skipped over the nose I used to think was too big for my face, a fault confirmed by my friendly peers. Then middle school hit and I said to hell with being nice and fitting in. That was one of a handful of things that remained the same: all black everything, from my tunic to my combat boots. I was still as lean and gangly as I’d always been, towering over most people. And without a doubt, I’d probably trip on at least two things, one of which being my own feet, before I even walked through the front door.

I snapped my visor back in place. I couldn’t stay in the car all afternoon.

I flicked my eyes towards the house. My mother wasn’t even being discreet. The curtains were snatched back and she was waving like a crazy person trying to get the attention of rescue personnel in an emergency situation.

The tears in my throat rose to my eyes as I half laughed, half sobbed and waved back. I killed the engine and took another sobering breath. Done with the idea of sticking my toe in, I threw open my door and forced myself from the car. I minded the crater, ducking around my sister’s bumper-stickered car. Everything from ‘Baby on Board’ to ‘If You Can Read This...You’re Too Close’ shouted Josephine.

Several other cars were parked precariously in the tiny front yard, and I went ahead and glued a smile on my face. Knowing Mom, one of the cars probably belonged to the mayor, here to give me the key to the city for finally coming home.

Before my fingertips could even graze the doorknob, the door was yanked open and Mom pounced.

“Catherine! Oh sweetie, you’re home!”

I’d been ready to give her a squeeze or two and extricate myself, but I stayed on the porch, in her embrace, and breathed her in. It had been six months since she’d made the trek to visit me in Omaha, not even complaining that she was always the one doing the traveling.

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