Page 85 of Infinite

“Hi, Matthew,” I reply.

Brent’s drunk. The tangy smell of Wild Turkey seeps across the space with his sharp exhale. He never married. Neither did Parker, who, like Brent, is only standing because the wall is holding him up.

Both give me the once-over, as if barely recognizing me through their haze. I pass them and Sully, and his wife, Jerilyn, holding his hand, while her free one strokes her pregnant belly. I nod to her. She was nice enough to invite me to their wedding. I sent a gift, but declined the invitation.

I keep walking, my head neither high nor bowed. I try to avoid eye contact with Parker. He’s on wife number four and it shows in every wrinkle on his face. Davey crosses his arms, his long hair covering his eyes as he leans forward. It doesn’t quite conceal him. I know he’s watching me. But like most of my family, he doesn’t say anything.

I was the black sheep of the family long before I left. Nothing’s changed. If anything, there’s another coat of midnight dark wool covering my hide.

Momma waits at the end of the hall speaking quietly to Reverend Ellis. She abruptly quiets when she sees me.

“Hello, Becca June,” Reverend Ellis says, smiling kindly.

“Hello, Reverend,” I reply. “Thank you for coming.”

He places his hand on my shoulder. “I’m here for whatever you need, child.”

I tilt my head respectfully and turn to my mother.

The frigid temperature in the hallway drops several degrees when I look at her. She’s not scowling. People are watching, after all.

I want to cry and it has nothing to do with my father. In my absence, my mother became old, small, and frail, and I couldn’t help her.

My heart clenches. I try to be kind, wishing it wasn’t so much of an effort and praying that awful feeling spreading like wicked wildfire across my chest will cease its torment.

“Hello, Momma,” I say, bending to kiss her cheek.

She clutches my face gently, a gesture of tenderness she’s never demonstrated before. It’s brief, but it’s there, a minute effort that took a great deal from the woman who gave me life.

I take that moment and tuck it away, deep within that space in my heart reserved just for her. She may not like me, and I may never have meant as much to her as I would’ve hoped, but she’s still my Momma and I love her.

“You look well,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice strained and delicate enough to barely be more than a wisp of air. “You do too, ma’am,”

I meant what I promised myself all those years ago, that I’d never return to this house again. But my father is dying. By the way everyone has gathered, today might very well be the day.

That little piece within my heart I reserve for my mother always hoped she’d reach out to me in kindness. It prayed she’d someday find the courage to tell me that I’d made it, and that she was proud. But that would have gone against my father’s wishes. Sick or not, she believes he rules and decides for the family.

It hurts. In many ways, I remain that little girl in the dining room packed with people, desperately trying to connect with a woman more concerned about what others would see than with the child who desperately needed her.

“Thank you for coming,” Momma says. “He’s been waitin’ on you to arrive.”

He has . . .

I follow her inside their bedroom. This was a place I’d only ever seen from the hallway. We weren’t allowed in my parents’ quarters. To them, it was sacred, not a place for nosey children with dirty hands and tendencies for destroying things.

One Christmas, my cousins and I dared each other to go into the room and retrieve one item as proof they’d been fearless enough to enter. Kirk made it out with my mother’s silver hair brush. It was the same brush Daddy beat Kirk with when he caught him. He’d never officially adopted the boys when my uncle and aunt passed, but he disciplined them as he saw fit.

Dark, parquet wood covers the floor. More paneling covers the walls. The room is huge, the four poster bed near the window practically swallowed by its massiveness.

I look in the direction of the bathroom. I don’t see my father buried beneath the thick burgundy and gold paisley comforter. But, apparently, he’s there.

“He can’t get up anymore,” my mother says, guessing correctly that I didn’t see him. “The medicine the doctor gave him robbed him of his appetite and he’s lost some weight. But he’s there.”

“Is that Becca June?” A hoarse and unrecognizable voice calls to me from the confines of the bed.

I knew he’d call me by my full name. Still, the name pokes through me, swimming through my veins like a river of glass.

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