Page 52 of Done

After she got dressed, we hopped in my truck and headed down the main highway. My fingers nervously thrummed the steering wheel as musicplayed on the radio. The lyrics made me think of my parents and the hole they left in my heart, even though they had been gone for so long.

Then I looked across the front seat of my truck and thought about Jesse and Max. Jesse had said her goal was to buy the house on the hill, but there were days I’d throw a match on that house and watch it burn in pleasure. Other days, I wanted to layunder the shade street out front and dream of the possibilities it held.

“Easton?” Jesse smiled but her voice was wary as we turned into the long driveway. “What’re we doing here?”

“You said it was your dream to buy this house one day,” I shrugged.

“Yeah but…” She never finished her thought, just took a deep breath and waited as I parked in front of the wrap-around porch.

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

Opening my door, I hopped out and jogged to her side, opening the door and helping her out. She took my hand and we walked to the front of the truck, leaning on the hot engine and looking up at the old white house. I tucked my hands into my pockets, and cleared my throat, trying to get the courage to talk as the emotions bubbled up inside my chest.

“What’s going on? Easton, I’m not ready for this. I can’t afford it yet, I can’t…”

Once again she drifted off in thought, walking slowly toward the porch that, from the main road, looked picturesque. But up close, it was flawed and needed work. It wasn’t the perfect color of white, the boards were warped, and the nails had started backing their way out, making it unsafe to walk up to the front door.

“It needs some TLC,” Jesse mused. “Paint and my handy dandy hammer.”

“Ha,” I reached for her hand, leading her around to the back of the house. The grass hadn’t been mowed in a few weeks, so the path to get back there was tickling our ankles. “It needs a lot more than that.”

“Does someone live here?”

I shook my head and swallowed, memories flooding back as we rounded the final corner. When we had a better view, Ipointed at the back of the house and Jesse looked up and gasped, nearly falling to her knees.

“We take care of it. It was West’s turn to mow but he has someone else do it because he hasn’t stepped foot on this property since that night. It's my turn next, so I'll probably do it this week or next.”

“This is your house,” she breathed, her chest visibly expanding as she tried to suck in more air. “This is where you lost your parents?”

While the front side was something off a postcard, the back of the house held the true horrors of that night. It was black, with the look of ash and hot spots splattered all over. Through the years, we had cleaned up around the house, but other than the firefighters that eventually pulled my parents from the wreckage, no one had stepped foot in the main part of the house. Even the sheets I slept on that night were still on my bed closer to the front of the house.

“I told myself I wanted to be your hero, that I wanted to make all your dreams and goals come true. Including the one you wrote in that notebook that you said was silly. But I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I’m not sure what will ever become of this house. All I know is my brothers and I keep it looking nice so that people coming into town never know what happened here. This house is a disguise but also a way of keeping hold of our parents and the memories we made here.”

Tears were streaming down Jesse’s face, not for the house, but for me. For the sadness I had unleashed onherall day. The loss of my parents, the house I grew up in, the reason I was who I was.

Not only that, but she had shared her own loss. Not only the loss of her parents, but also the loss of the person she thought she’d share forever with—Clay. Max’s father, who went from being her partner to being a complication. He left her alonewhen she was already lonely, and inserted himself only when it was good for him—and it never involved Max.

“We’ve both been alone, but not really,” she smiled.

“Yeah,” I rubbed her knuckles with my thumb, soothing her emotions the best I could. “Not really.”

We didn’t say anymore. She had Max and her mom for a while. I’ve had my brothers and my grandparents. We also had the memories, that even after all the years that had passed, were burned into my brain.

Silently, we walked back to the truck and I took her home, just in time for her to get into her own car and go get Max. I had told her I was going to head home, but before I got to the turn to my house, I decided to keep going straight toward Fiddler’s, hoping if I called Miles, he’d meet me up there for a beer.

“Miles just left,” Blue said as I took a stool at the bar. She put a glass on the bar top and filled it with my favorite draft without me even having to ask.

“Left?”

“With the Murphy twins.” Blue rolled her eyes and sighed. “I wish they would find some other bar to get drunk in and trash.”

I groaned, thinking about how much trouble those two were. It explained why Miles didn’t answer his phone when I called, too. The poor guy was busy being a taxi driver.

“Oh hey, did you ever find your book?” Blue asked, tapping on the bar in front of me.

“My book?”

“The one you were in here looking for a while back.”

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