Page 35 of Advice from a Sunflower

Until she started mouthing back and that only pushed me further over the edge.

It was irrational. Unprovoked. Unjust.

But hey, that’s who I am now, right? The poor divorcee who’d lost everything in an instant and set his dreams on hold to take care of his crazy mother. I accused her of closing herself off and refusing to be tied down to the place that made her feel unwelcome her entire life as if it offended me, but the truth was that I was jealous of her ability to do so. Because I wasn’t strong enough for that and I ended up getting screwed over in the long run.

“You’ve changed,” she mumbles from the passenger seat as we turn onto our street. When I look over, I notice that her head is down and she’s fumbling with her hands.

“So did you, Mouse.”

She has. But not in the negative way that my tone accused her of. She's changed in the best way possible. She set a target on the person she’d always wanted to be and took the shot.

Guess what; she hit it, dead center. While I veered somewhere off into the woods, as far away from the target as possible.

I don’t even have the truck in park before she's whipping her door open and walking toward her old front door. Walking. Not running, the way she would have in the past if I had hurt her this bad. No, the new Mouse sashays across the lawn as if to say, "Nice try, mother fucker, but you don’t get to watch me run away and cry anymore."

That's okay. There will be plenty of time to prove my point to her later.

“Where have you been all night, Bryan? Off with that woman? Eli has been asking for you,” my mother hisses from her chair when I walk through the front door.

“It’s me, Ma. It’s Eli,” I give her a half-hearted smile, knowing she won’t be able to see past the illusions in her head. I used to fight them harder, but it only makes things worse for her.

“Don’t give me that bullshit. I’m here all day with him while you’re off doing lord-knows-what. He needs a father, Bryan. I can’t raise the boy on my own…”

I head into the kitchen and crack open a beer while she continues on her rant, taking the steps up to my room two at a time before I close the door on her. She’ll go on for the rest of the night now.

For as long as I can remember, my father was a lying, cheating, useless piece of shit painted as a military hero. I used to get pissed when people told me how lucky I was to have such a brave role model who was willing to sacrifice time with his family to serve our country.

I knew better than to fall for his bullshit smokescreen. He renewed every contract that was shoved in his direction to get away from Ma and me, so he didn’t have to spend too much time looking at the faces of the people he disappointed on a daily basis.

By the time we moved to The Hollow, I’d given up fighting it. I let them all think what they wanted, never speaking ill of him so long as he stayed as far away from us as possible. And he had. Until I left for college and Ma’s mental health started to deteriorate.

He wanted to put her in a home. I had adamantly opposed. We fought about it for four years, until he died in his sleep the night before my college graduation.

Was I sad? Sure. No one wants to lose a parent, regardless of the fact that the mailman treated them with more care and respect. Suddenly, the decision to move on from The Hollow and pursue a life thousands of miles away from this shithole was ripped out from under me. I packed up my family and our tiny apartment and moved back into my parents' house a week later, taking a job a couple of towns over so me and Emma could help Ma while her health continued to get worse.

The most disappointing part was coming back after years of being away and finding that not a single thing had changed. As if the entire town had sat on pause while I was away. And call me crazy, but I don’t think anything restarted when I got back, either. I think I just nestled back into the desolate community with the rest of them, my life sitting still while we all waited for something to shake us back awake.

Then, it had.

Shehad—my daughter. But I blinked, and she was gone, leaving me behind in the nothingness as a hollowed-out shell, just like the rest of the poor suckers who were stuck here. I'm willing to bet that's where the town's name originated. We all have a different version of the same sob story.

But not the girl who went eighteen years being ignored by the only place she’d ever known and took off the first chance she got. Mouse may not have been loved outwardly like Denise or Marnie; she never attracted the sort of attention or adoration they had with their physical attributes. Never exploited herself to get something she wanted. No, Mouse operated on an entirely different level than her family always had, and it only served her better in the long run.

She had volunteered for bake sales when the town needed a little extra cash. She’d worked overtime at the diner during most of our high school events, so that the other waitresses could take the night off to attend or capture pictures of their children. She’d picked up the garbage that everyone stepped over on the sidewalk. She’d checked in on the elderly to make sure they were still kicking.

She was a severely underappreciated angel sent to The Hollow from the big man himself and we collectively took advantage of her and squeezed her dry until she had nothing left to give. Until she had to choose between herself and a group of low-life individuals. Spoiler alert: she chose herself and it was the best fucking decision she could have ever made.

But the town suffered. Businesses closed. Elderly people died, their bodies sitting in their homes for days, sometimes weeks before anyone discovered them. Everyone became just a little more selfish, and everything went to shit.

I’m not saying it’s her fault but it’s also not a coincidence. The only ray of light shining down on this place moved on and we were covered in nothing but darkness.

So, it was only right that we all waited in limbo for our angel to reappear and save us. To splash color onto our bleak, gray walls and breathe life back into our pathetic, docile community. The problem was that she had no intention of ever doing that. She’d wanted to get in and get out before anyone even noticed. She wanted to rid herself of the cancer that was The Hollow before any of it spread to her.

Seven years.

I had gone seven years without seeing her shining, smiling face every morning. Seven years without my muse; the girl who always managed to take my mind off whatever trivial thing I had going on and refocus it onto bigger, better things. Seven years since I threw myself on the line for her, only to be left in the dust, watching her back as she ran as far away as she could from all of us.

Well, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen again. This time, I’m not going to let our little Mouse scurry away.

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