Page 62 of Wanted

Evening sunlight streams into the window through the open curtains. I position myself on the edge of the bed closest to the warmth, letting the rays caress my face. Tapping the contact from the list, I tilt my head back and close my eyes. Then I bring the ringing phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Who is this?” she barks as if my greeting offended her.

I gently clear my throat. “It’s me. Frankie.”

“No, it isn’t. Frank is sitting right here.”

“It’s Frankie, your daughter.”

“Oh, Frankie.” Her gravelly voice grates on my nerves.

“Who is it?” my dad asks in the background.

“IT’S FRANKIE,” she shouts in my ear.

With a wince, I pull the phone away.

“Where you been?”

A loose thread on the bedspread gives me something to fiddle with. “I’m still in Minnesota.”

“I thought you were moving with your husband, but he called looking for ya.” The sound of her sucking in a lungful of smoke is clear across the line. “What happened to that?”

“It didn’t work out.” I pace the floor in front of the window as vindication slithers through me. I told my parents before I left I didn’t think I should marry Dillon, but I allowed them to talk me through the doubt with pretty words about new beginnings and shared responsibilities. I think all my parents saw was an opportunity to double my income, and therefore, be able to provide them with bigger handouts.

“Didn’t work out? How nice for you,” she says with a sarcastic bite. “Sometimes the hard decisions are the right ones.”

She’s absolutely right. Just not in the way she thinks.

I can’t say the physical result of throwing myself from Dillon’s car was easy, even if the decision appears to have been the right one.

“Are you coming back?” My dad coughing in the background nearly conceals her question.

Closing my eyes, I will away the images of them the last time I saw them. Their declining health is a burden that never belonged to me, yet the guilt keeps coming. The choices they made stripped me of mine for too long.

It’s one thing to have an ailing parent, but it’s another thing entirely to have spent your childhood begging, pleading, and crying for them to turn their life around, and they didn’t.

“I’m not coming back,” I say, the resolution solidifying inside my heart.

Whatever happens here, whether I stay with Jude for one more day or six more months, I don’t plan on leaving Fairview Valley. This place is my new home.

“Why the hell not? They just turned the lights off this morning.” Whatever her cell phone battery is at is all she has until that shuts off too. The panic will really set in when she can’t get ahold of her dealer.

“You have to pay the bills, Mom.”

“Your dad needed his medication this month. They don’t give us any damn time to come up with the money.”

She means whatever substance he’s choosing to abuse. His drug of choice changes based on how much money he has and what he can get his hands on.

“The bill comes at the same time every month.” I sigh. We’ve had this discussion on repeat for the past ten years.

“I know that,” she snaps. A lengthy drag of her cigarette stalls the conversation. “Think you can lend us a little something?”

“Mom, I’m not in town.”

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