Claudia D. Christian

Estimated reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Back then, his twenty-year old self had parked the car under a swaying carport. He had sat there in the dark, fingers curved over the wheel as if the tighter he held it the more likely time would reverse. He hadn’t known how to undo what he had done. Stealing, fighting, drugging—those were all crimes he committed and would own up proudly. But this…kidnapping, murder, rape?

His mind still recoiled at what might have happened if she had been any different than what she was. Would he have killed her, dumped her off the mountain in a desperate attempt to hide his idiocy?

Instead, he had looked down at his hands. His large, dirty, rough hands. Hands capable of doing what? He sniffed, not in tears, but at the rich smell of leather. He had wondered how much it cost to drive this car. The back seat was mere formality, much like the rich. Everything for appearance but nothing of practicality.

It was ridiculous. Just like her. Just like him.

He found himself mimicking his actions of a decade before. He hadn’t known the make of her car then but now he had the same one, redesigned with power and masculinity in mind. The feline’s face looked at him from center steering, mouth yawning ready to devour him for his stupidity.

Ashley hadn’t known what to make of it when he had first pulled up in it a month ago. The questions hung on her lips but she swallowed them whole. The fact he had yet to have her in the car was surely catalogued and filed away under, “Things That Have Yet To Affect Me.”

Somehow things had gotten away from him.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

The mantra brought dysfunctional comfort. His father had uttered the triple cadence at least fifty times a day from time memorable. Now he had nothing but nice words for his big-shot lawyer son. Now he regaled to one and all how he always knew there was something different about him. How he knew his youngest was going to be something.

It was generally around this time in the pseudo-ruminations that Ashley would draw up, delicate mouth stiff with cordial resentment. She would press her perfect nails into his arm, a sharp reminder to, “Please stop him from mentioning HER in my presence. It’s terribly rude and awkward for us all.”

His timing had slipped during the last visit.

He remembered sitting there in the living room of the manufactured house, one he had bought for his remaining parent. Ashley, while accepting of him with all her heart, could never quite understand why he had chosen this type of home for his father.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you’d bought Papa Peppers a site-built house? What if a tornado comes? There’s no way this would stand up to it.”

Ashley hadn’t understood.

She had though. She always understood.

She had known happiness varied from person to person. What Ashley saw as an abysmal doublewide his father saw a palace. Papa was inordinately proud of the poured concrete footers, brick foundation, and sheetrock construction. He gloried in going to Lowe’s and picking out the newest plantings to line the small beds with perfect precision.

He accompanied him from time to time. He walked alongside the old man, trying to ignore the hard knot forming inside his chest.

“You think that’s a good price?”

“Yeah.”

“I do too.”

Yet, the truth couldn’t be buried. His father’s hands had shown themselves for a liar. They could be gentle. They could coax something small and fragile to become beautiful. They could patiently tie plastic grocery bags around tiny stalks on nights of freezing weather. They knew how to nurture.

He had confessed his jealousy to her once. He had prepared himself for her gentle scorn. Instead, she had hugged him and kissed his ear.

“It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong in you hurting. You don’t understand how he can be this way with plants but couldn’t be this way with you. It’s not silly. Your papa loves you in his way. That’s why he insists on you coming to see him with a suit and tie. He doesn’t want you to change your clothes when you go gas up with him. He wants everybody to see his smart, successful boy.”

It still hurt but not nearly as much as it did before. She had that power. She had that way of taking the shame out of everything.

That’s why he ended up loving her too much.