Page 3 of Buried Dreams

“Can you focus on the road, please?” Autumn asks what everyone is thinking.

“Can you focus on the road?” Waylon mimics her as he picks up his speed and goes even faster. “Pain in my ass,” he grumbles and then turns his head around to talk to Autumn, taking his eyes completely off the road. “You’re a pain in my ass. You focus on the fucking road.” My eyes go from watching Waylon shout at Autumn to the flash of light that looks like it is coming straight for us.

“Watch out!” I shout to Waylon, who stops looking at Autumn and looks ahead. “Oh my God, we’re going to hit him.” My eyes are on the road in front of me as the headlights look like they are getting closer and closer to us. It feels as if the car is heading straight toward us. The sound of honking now fills the outside noise.

He jerks the truck right, going off onto the gravel and then quickly turns the wheel to the other side. The sound of metal scraping now fills the truck. I don’t know who yells first, me or Jennifer beside me. I’m now completely on Brock’s lap, holding on to his arms around me as Jennifer slides to the middle of the bench. It takes a second, or maybe even less, for us to feel like we are flying through the air. I look at Brock, the fear in his face. “I love you,” I whisper before my eyes shut, and I hear the crunching of metal. The blackness hits me as I feel like I’m being shoved forward.

Chapter Two

EVERLEIGH

Nine years later

I pick up my glass of water while reading the email that just came in at the same time as my phone rings from beside my keyboard. Looking down, I see it’s my mother. My eyes immediately go to the lower corner of the screen, noticing it’s just after seven in the evening. It’s like clockwork. There are certain things I can count on in my life, and my mother is one of them. Just like these nightly calls are. I slide the arrow to the side, accepting the FaceTime and seeing her face fill the screen. “Hey, Momma.” I smile at her.

“Hey, baby girl,” she replies, sitting in the reading chair in the living room that isn’t facing the television but instead the street. I’ve been trying to get her to turn it around since I was fourteen, but she says looking outside and seeing her neighbors is more entertaining. I mean, sometimes it really is, especially when cranky old Mr. Ferrucci next door was caught having an affair with one of his coworkers. Mrs. Ferrucci threw all of his stuff out onto the lawn. It was raining clothes for a good hour, and just when you thought it would end, there would be another stream of clothing falling from the window. “Whatcha doing?” I see her with her feet curled up under her.

“Nothing much,” I say, “just answering an email.”

“You are always working,” she replies, shaking her head. “When are you going to get out and find some friends?” I roll my eyes at her.

“I have friends,” I assure her. “It’s a Wednesday night,” I lie to her. I’ve been living in this city for the past seven years, and truth be told, I don’t really have any friends like I did before. I have my guard up all the time. I don’t know why, but it’s hard for me to make friends, and again, truth be told, I don’t want to make friends.

“When you lived here, you were out every night,” she reminds me, and I roll my eyes. “It was hard keeping you home.”

“Is that what you called me for, to ask me why I’m home?” I ask, leaning back in the chair and listening to the little wind chimes I brought from home that I put up by the window. “Why are you home?”

“It’s seven at night, and I wake up at five to go to work,” she snaps.

“But you finish work at five, so you could get yourself a man and be busy by seven,” I goad her. Her eyes go big, and she gasps.

“You watch that mouth, young lady,” she scolds. “You don’t need to worry about my needs. They are well taken care of.”

My face grimaces. “I just threw up.” It’s been Mom and me since I was born. My father decided a child wasn’t on his bingo card, so he dipped as soon as she told him she was pregnant with me. She worked two jobs to make sure I had everything I needed. She worked her ass tirelessly to make sure I never missed anything, and to this day, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Well, at least one thing I won’t do for her, but she’s never really asked me. She’s never been with another man after my father, or none I was aware of. There have been occasions when I thought she went out with a man a couple of times.

She laughs at my face. “How was your day?”

“It was okay. I have this new nightclub I am working on. It will be a restaurant until ten p.m., and then it’ll turn into a club. What about you? How are things?”

“Same old, same old,” she reports. I see her face go weird, and she stops talking.

“Mom.” I sit up in my chair. “Mom, are you okay?” I ask as the back of my neck gets warm.

“I don’t feel well,” she admits, and then the phone falls to the floor. The image on the screen is now of the ceiling in the living room, and my heart sinks as I spring out of my chair. “Mom!” I scream her name. “Mom,” I say again as my heart sinks to my feet and panic rushes through me. “Mom!” I yell again, hoping the phone is picked up, and she tells me she’s fine. I wait one second, literally one, before I hang up on her and call the neighbor who lives across from her.

“Hello,” Mrs. Gregory answers her phone while I tear through my one-bedroom apartment going to my bedroom, feeling that my heart is going to come out of my chest.

“Mrs. Gregory,” I quickly say, taking my bag out from the closet and tossing it on the bed. “My mom—” I try to calm myself down. “My mom, I was talking to her, and then something happened. She said she didn’t feel well, and then the phone fell out of her hands.”

“Oh my,” she replies, and I can hear her moving and then walking.

“She said she didn’t feel well. I can’t call 911 from here.” I take the phone off my ear and then open the browsing app and type in the emergency number for Montgavin. My hands are shaking so much it’s a miracle I can even type. “She needs help.” I sob out the last words, feeling more helpless than I’ve ever felt in my life.

“On it,” Mrs. Gregory confirms. My head spins as I run around my bedroom, throwing things in a bag. I look down at the phone and see she’s hung up on me. The tears pour down my cheeks, and I feel like I’m going to be sick. The idea of not knowing what is going on with my mother while I’m so far from her is killing me. I zip up the bag, running around to my office and unplugging my laptop, putting it in my backpack along with all the papers on my desk.

I’m out of the house ten minutes later, knowing I forgot something but also not giving a shit. I’m in my car and rushing out of the parking garage when my phone rings. “Hello.”

“Sweetie.” Mrs. Gregory’s voice is soft and low. “Honey,” she says. I can hear her sniffling from her side of the phone, and all the blood from my body feels like it’s being drained out. My hands grip the steering wheel as the tears pour down my face like the rushing of a stream down a hill. “They just took her,” she chokes out as she silently cries. “They think it was a heart attack.” I close my eyes. “They got her heart started again right before they left.”

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