Page 107 of The Crush
I know the exact number of minutes it takes along the long straight stretch of road through our land. Know every turn to take, the exact place the path will be.
When I stop my truck at the bottom of the hill, I find myself wishing I hadn’t come empty-handed, and I wonder if I should turn around even as my feet are already beginning to carry me up the incline. My steps are steady until I reach the top and peer up into the branches of a tall oak tree I’d climbed more than once as a child.
I don’t want to look down. To see what waits for me on the ridge even though I already know, can already picture it soclearly in my mind. That gray stone that seems to fit so perfectly where it shouldn’t be at all.
Ever since my conversation with Eva, I had felt that pull, and for the first time in a long time, I’d let myself follow it. Let myself think that maybe it was something that I should do. That she’d want me to do.
I huff, close to laughing at myself for not wanting to look at the damn ground, but every time I try something broken catches in my throat. I try again and again until I finally let myself see.
María Ríos
Amada Esposa, Madre, y Amiga
1937–1982
I read each word like they belong to someone else, wish they did. Unshed tears in my eyes that blur the text until I reach the end and start new.
“Hi, Mamá. Sorry it took me so long to come back.”
The Letter
It’s raining. Barely more than a light drizzle, but rain all the same. Promising enough to provide some short-lived relief from the August heat still blazing toward the end of a stifling summer of ‘96.
Tadeo takes his hat off and shakes the droplets away as he arrives beneath the large oak tree, its full canopy of leaves more than enough to keep him dry. Though Eva appears to be less willing to take the risk.
Even in this weather, she barely has a wrinkle in her clothes. Her time-streaked hair gathered up below a silk scarf as she stands on a countryside hill in her heels and pearls. He doesn’t have to see it to know the ribbon is there.
“Morning, Eva,” he says in greeting as he walks up behind her. “How are you?”
Though he’s certain they had no appointment, she huffs and turns in his direction as if he’s been keeping her waiting, her arms crossed as she juts her hip to the side.
“How do you get used to it? The house is always so empty now without all of them,” she tells him, diving right in without any sort of greeting of her own to show how worked up she is. “It’s so quiet.”
Tadeo shrugs, considering. “I leave the radio on a lot,I suppose.”
She nods in response, mulling it over even as she hugs herself tighter, and Tadeo frowns, wondering what the best thing to say is. How to tell her that you never really get used to it.
“Have you heard from Isa?” he asks her instead, nearly conspiratorial in his tone, and she brightens instantly.
“I have.” She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “Have you talked to Danny?”
“I have,” he says, stifling a grin. “He asked me how hard I thought it would be to build a house.”
Eva laughs, clearly drawing the same conclusion he had come to himself. “Interesting question to have.”
“Mm-hmm,” Tadeo replies, smiling now as he steps forward and bends down to lay a fresh bundle of sunflowers on the ground beside the gray stone, a fresh packet of letters and postcards on top. Each one signed with a familiar hurried script.
Before Tadeo straightens up he brushes the dust and windswept dirt from the engraving of María’s name, pausing there long enough to let it pass through him the way it always does. Never do get used to it…missing someone.
He clears his throat as he takes a few steps back, beside Eva again. The two of them linger in companionable silence, listening to the rain fall.
“Did Danny…” Eva starts again after a time. “Did he mention how big of a house he was thinking?”
Eighty-Six
Daniel
Friday, December 2, 1994
