Page 3 of New River Gorge(ous)
That’s one way to put it.
“Ugh. Mom,” I whine. Usually I don’t whine, but I’m allowed to be dramatic right now. “Why does no one want to date me, likedate dateme?”
“It’s because you haven’t met the right one yet, sweetie.” She stands and looks at the picture I was painting, perched on a three legged easel. It’s a landscape of Lake Superior with a dark red sunset on the horizon. “You could sell these, you know.”
I shrug. “It’s just for me, Mom.” Painting and crocheting keep my hands and mind busy, and that has always helped keep the trichotillomania at bay. The pink hair helps too. I don’t want to pull out a strand that I spent money dyeing.
“That’s fine, sweetie, but you have so much talent.” She stoops down and picks up the supplies I left on the ground after the Leaning Tower of Easel incident. “Would you consider it?” she asks as she arranges the supplies neatly on my counter.
I know she isn’t talking about selling my paintings. I close my eyes, and as I do, I see a vision of Matt and Melanie getting married and realize that Matt thinks this isthe one. And I havenothing. As my mom kindly pointed out, I don’t have anything that’s really keeping me here. I mean, I have my family, but I’m a grown twenty-four-year-old woman. A change of scenery, a way out of the abysmal dating pool I’ve found myself drowning in …I’ll do it.
When I open my eyes and nod at her, she claps her hands. “I’m so glad, Brooke. It will be good for you and Meemaw.”
Meemaw
Deep in the hills of West Virginia, a seventy-six-year-old woman limps along the hall of a post-surgical physical therapy rehabilitation center. She’s stealthy—the benefit of her four-foot-eleven height and thin frame—and the only sound is theswish-thump-swishof her neon blue cast sliding along the linoleum floor.
Outside, the moon peeks in and out of cloud cover.
She hears a noise, the sound of one of the nurse’s heavy footfalls.
She flattens herself against the wall, just feet from the exterior door to the parking lot. She holds her breath as she waits for the nurse to either turn down the other hallway or to find her.
Will she be given the freedom she craves?
Voices reach her ears.
“Have you seen June?” one nurse asks.
“No,” another nurse answers. “Isn’t she sleeping in her room?”
“Clearly you don’t know June.”
June sees her chance. She shuffles as quickly as she can to the exit door. She pushes it open, angling her thin, work-worn body through the crack.
She cackles as she stands on the sidewalk, tipping her face up to the cloud-covered moon.
And then the alarm sounds.
Frozen and unable to run with the cast on her foot, she puts her hands up as two nurses come running out of the same door she escaped from.
She lets out a frustrated curse as the nurses approach her.
She eyes the cars in the parking lot. Her car isn’t here, but she knows how to hot-wire one. She watched videos one afternoon on YouTube.
It’s not stealing if it’s a matter of freedom.
“Miss June, I know you don’t want to be here, but why are you running away in the middle of the night?” the younger of the two nurses asks. June likes him better. He has better manners than the older one.
She sniffs and assumes an air of dignity. “Can’t a woman get some fresh air?”
“Not in the middle of the night. Your ankle isn’t healed yet, Miss June.”
“It’s fine.” An idea takes hold. “Call my grandson, Dr. Beckett Whistler. He’ll tell you I’m fine to go home.”
“Miss June, you never mentioned a grandson who was a doctor.”
She lies and bobs her head, causing her silver hair to shake. “I forgot about him.”
