Eleven

The way to Gosnells was straightforward. Directions were easy, and it would have taken me three hours if I hadn’t stopped every half hour at a gas station. At every stop, I found myself endlessly walking the aisles, buying a few snacks, then returning to my car and idly sitting for a good, long while, thinking and eating, and repeat.

Mom was dead, he said, the second I called him back. The rest of the voicemails had been from him stressing the importance to reach him as soon as I got his messages. Nothing had prepared me for the news.

Mom passed away eight days ago in a car crash. Eight.Days.Ago.

I’d been numb all over. My whole body had shook wildly, and a cold sensation ran up and down my spine, but my emotions were detached. Maybe it was self-preservation. I didn’t want to think I was too unfeeling to care, but the evident fear made the thought plausible.

Then more news. She’d had her funeral. My mother’s funeral and I wasn’t there to bury her. More shock. More glacial tingles down my spine. Speechless. Numb. Numb. Numb.

I’d called just in the nick of time. Her landlord had done all he could to keep the house with all her possessions intact, but he was losing money and needed to have it cleared out.

Too lost for words at that point, I’d simply answered yes when he asked me to do it. I was forwarded the landlord’s number. After I’d gotten off the phone, I broke the news to Daniel and Lexi who were beyond stunned themselves. I didn’t need sympathy, not when it was suddenly so hard for me to evoke any kind of emotion at the loss of my mother who I hadn’t seen and barely, if at all, spoken to in years.

When they’d offered to come out with me, I adamantly told them it was something I needed to do on my own. I wasn’t prepared to have those close to me see the life I left behind. I liked keeping that part of me buried in the past.

After calling the landlord, I was given two weeks to clear the house. Daniel handed me the keys to his SUV, and I packed a suit case and decided to start the journey the next morning. There was no way I was going to delay this. In and out was my objective, and maybe somewhere in the entire process I would be able to feel something. Currently, the news was indigestible. So surreal, as if I was outside of my body, watching me; doe eyed and lost, like a child in search of direction. 

I should have just told the landlord to toss everything in that house in the landfill. What would I possibly want to have in it, after all? Only I knew that would be a callous and uncaring act. My mother had been a shitty parent to me, but I had to respect the situation and not run from it because it was the easy way out.

On the other hand, I knew the difficulty in emptying that house wasn’t the sole reason why I didn’t want to return. It was everything that Gosnells stood for: my childhood, memories, Lucinda… and Jaxon. I’d done my research. The town had tripled in size the last three years due to the mining boom about an hour out of town that brought in a flood of workers and families looking to situate themselves in an established town where moms and kids weren’t far from their fathers and husbands. The population was exceeding fifty thousand. Gosnells was becoming a small city and not just an agricultural town anymore.

Still. I knew there was a big possibility I might bump into people I’d grown up with; people who were tied to him. And Lucinda wasn’t even a block away from my mother’s place. The thought of seeing her made my chest constrict painfully. It would be a downright nightmare. I took off. Buried my past and her along with it. How would I explain myself?

All that thought did was lead me to the painful reminder of what happened five years ago. After I’d left Jaxon without so much as a goodbye, I’d showed up at Lexi’s doorstep and hysterically bared my soul to her. I told her everything because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Did he ever lay a hand on you?” was her first question after I’d revealed my dark side.

“Never. It was all me, Lexi. All of it.”

“You can stay here, but I don’t know for how long.”

“He’ll know where to find me.”

“Then where are you going to go?”

“Probably stay the night at a hotel, and then take the Greyhound bus out of the city. I’ve got a good chunk of money tucked aside.”

“And go where?”

I shrugged, the weight of the world pressed on my heart. “I don’t care. Away.”

She’d been silent for a while, deep in thought. I knew her too well, and when I saw the stiffening of her shoulders, I knew something was up.

“What’s wrong?” I’d asked.

Her eyes glistened as she looked up at me. “Trevon and I broke up three days ago.”

“What? Why haven’t you told me?”

“Because he’s been trying to make it work out between us and sometimes I get tempted to move on and forgive. Then I remember what he did. Caught him texting some girl, and she’d been sending him nude photos. Told him that I was through with him, and that I wanted him gone. But he’s on the lease, too, and he’s playing the stubborn asshole. Won’t go.” With a sigh, she bit her lip and that tough look I knew so well to be Lexi returned as she straightened herself and relaxed her shoulders. “If you’re going to go, then I’m going with you.”

Snapping myself back to reality, I parked in the gas station just outside of Gosnells. The pain and the tightness in my chest had me gripping the steering wheel with all my might. I was having an anxiety attack, and it didn’t help when I looked back on that summer Lexi and I took off. Four weeks we jumped on buses and made our way to nowhere in particular. It was sometimes eventful, but most of the time we were running away and locked up inside our heads, talking to strangers as a way to distract ourselves from the pain and the thinking. I’d convinced myself the spontaneous trip was therapy, and that I’d healed from the evil inside of me. Every morning I woke up in some grubby motel room wishing I had Jaxon with me, and knowing damn well I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. So I turned it around and we headed back to Winthrop.

Twenty eight days I’d been gone, and I’d prepared the speech of my life. It was the kind of speech that would have me on my hands and knees begging Jaxon to take me back. I hadn’t anticipated that I’d rock up to the apartment complex and see a different couple through the apartment window from across the street. Then it was confirmed when I buzzed up to the apartment. They’d been moved in for two and a half weeks, they said, and had no idea who this Jaxon I was asking about was.