Page 64 of Avenged

“Bora, Bora. I’ll join Jada.”

He chuckled.

“I just need a ride to the auto parts store,” I told him.

“That, I can easily do; let me grab my keys.”

He went back inside, and I took the battery and the cardboard and put it in the back of his pickup. When he came back out, Violet followed him.

“Truck says you're going to get the battery,” she said, and I nodded. “Can you stop by Mandy and Leena’s while you’re out? I’m waiting for my Pell Grant check.”

Money. She was as worried about it as me, and I hated it. I didn’t want her to have to think about those things. As it was, I barely had enough before payday for the battery and was going to have to use the emergency credit card I had to pay for the driver’s ed classes I wanted to sign her up for today. I wanted to thank her and prove that I believed in her, too.

When I turned back to the pickup, Travis had the passenger door held open for me again, as he always did. It was such an old-fashioned move, but it also made my heart flip. As I brushed by him, my body sprang to alert. I mumbled a “thank you” and then buckled in. When I looked up because he still hadn’t shut the door, he was staring at me. “What?”

He stared again before shaking his head, shutting the door, and climbing in the driver’s seat.

We stopped at the auto parts store first, and instead of talking to me, the guy behind the counter talked to Travis, but it made my heart happy that Travis didn’t let him get away with it. Travis just looked at me and shrugged. I was ninety percent sure he could have answered the guy’s questions, but he didn’t.

When we were back in the pickup, he said, “That always irked my mom, too. How can anyone just assume a woman doesn’t know as much as a man? Hell, don’t they watch that female garage show?”

I realized, with a start, that Travis had never once made me feel less. Less than him or anyone else. Whether that was because he was raised by a single mom or because he was just that kind of man, I’d never know for sure. But it made me want to reach over and kiss him. Just thinking it caused my body to go right back to the feelings our one kiss had aroused. Could it even be considered one kiss? It had felt like twenty kisses wrapped up in one moment of frozen time.

The last couple days had stretched out that same way, feeling like more than one day had been lived in each one. Like my life was slowing down just so I could hold on to each of these moments. Maybe that was why it had felt like twenty kisses instead of one. I’d stretched the time out in some time-warping way like Doctor Strange.

We stopped in front of Mandy and Leena’s. The termite tent was down, and there were construction trucks parked in the driveway and along the street. There was the sound of sawing and hammering coming from the open doorway, regardless of the fact that it was Sunday. Randy was working his crew round the clock because he felt bad his folks hadn’t noticed the termites earlier.

I knew what that felt like. Guilt. Guilt at things that weren’t entirely your doing but that you’d had a hand in creating anyway.

Travis nodded toward the house. “I’m just going to check with Randy, while you get the mail, so we can give Mandy and Leena an update.”

I nodded, taking my key and heading down to the locked mailbox. I grabbed the mail, trying not to get grease over everything, and took it back to the pickup. I leafed through the stack gingerly, seeing Violet’s check and saying a silent prayer to the money gods. As I flipped it to the next letter, my heart stilled. It was my name on a letter from the Cheshire Correctional Institute.

My hands shook as I tore open the seal. It was a rare day indeed when I got a letter from the jail. From our father. From the man who’d gone off the rails after his wife had died and left his two daughters to fend for themselves. The man who’d lost everything in the wrongful death suit Ana Perez’s family had won. In the five years since the end of the two trials and his move to Cheshire, I’d only heard from him twice. This would make it the third. Three letters in five years, and never once had there been an apology. Not a word of remorse or guilt. I felt more guilt than he did.

I had to take a deep breath and close my eyes before I could focus on the words, and even then, they still wavered in my shaking hands.

Dear Jersey and Violet,

I have good news. The parole board is going to be presented my case in July. I need you to come and testify on my behalf. You’ll be getting a notice from them.

I can’t wait to see you both.

Dad

My stomach lurched and rolled, and the pain that accompanied it ricocheted across my back at this new stressor. My body hunched inward on itself. I pulled my knees up against my chest, feet on the seat, resting my head on them.

There was no way the parole board was going to let him out after only six years—if you counted the time he’d served in our local jail, awaiting trial. There was no way he could be let out now. Violet was only sixteen. I’d lose my temporary guardianship. She’d have to go live with him. We hadn’t filed any of the paperwork for her to be emancipated. We hadn’t thought we needed to. She’d be forced to live with him, because Dad wouldn’t like it any other way. He’d want to prove they were a family. He’d want to thumb his nose at everyone who’d looked down on him, on everyone who’d taken his world away.

That’s how he felt. He’d made it clear every time we’d seen him during the trial. That’s why the jury had awarded Ana Perez’s family as much as they had in the civil suit, because Dad had shaken his fist and declared the world out to get him by taking everything he’d earned instead of showing remorse for taking Ana’s life. He’d really been the villain in the story. Truthfully, his anger had really stemmed from having the love of his life taken from him too early, but it didn’t change anything. Even remembering the father who used to smile and tell jokes and make Barbie houses out of leftover scraps from the shipyard didn’t change the ugliness he’d shown in court.

Knocking on the window jerked me back to where I was. Travis was looking in at me. He opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, face full of concern again for the hundredth time in the course of just a few days.

I didn’t have words yet. I couldn’t open my mouth to say any of it. I didn’t want to speak it aloud and make it true. There was no way I was telling Violet this. No way. Not if I could go before the parole board and tell them the truth. Tell them Dad hadn’t changed. But…had he? I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen him since the civil suit had ended. I needed to know. I needed to see for myself before the parole board hearing. I needed to know what I would say.

My silence made Travis frown even more, and he took the grease-stained letter from my hand and read it before I could stop him. Before I could stuff the words back in an envelope and shred them—no burn them—out of existence.

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