by R.S. Grey
“How about we run through DQ and get a Blizzard?” he asked.
I couldn't remember the last time my dad and I had done something as simple as drive through a fast food place. I nodded and headed for the DQ just down the road. We each ordered an Oreo Blizzard and ate them while sitting in the DQ parking lot, with birds chirping and light filtering in through the back window of the truck.
It was the best afternoon I'd had with my dad in two years.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Lilah
Chase had set an old gardening book on the edge of my bed. Its pages were yellow-tinted and the binding was torn. I sat down on top of my comforter and pulled it closer so I could inspect the front cover. It claimed to be an encyclopedia of plants that could grow well in Texas.
I gently tugged open the front cover and froze when I saw my mom's scribbled handwriting right next to mine. We’d each signed our names.
This book belongs to:
Elaine and Lilah Calloway
My letters were nearly impossible to read, but I could make out the “Lil” in Lilah. I ran my hand over the old ink and then turned to the next page. “Fruit Trees” was printed in bold across the top and beneath that my mother had scribbled a few notes. I oriented the book and held it up just below my face so I could read her writing better. The light from my window poured over the page, illuminating a forgotten piece of my past.
This morning I asked Lilah what type of fruit trees she'd like to grow. She listed grapes, oranges, and bananas—probably because they were still on her mind after breakfast. I explained that grapes grow on vines and that banana trees take up a lot of space. Then she said she'd rather do raspberries anyway, so we're going to try raspberries this year. I doubt Lilah will let them ripen long enough before she picks them. Raspberries are her favorite right now.
I didn't realize I was crying until a tear traced down my cheek and fell onto the page. The fat drop of water sat directly next to her writing and I simultaneously wiped it away with one hand and reached with the other hand to block another tear from ruining her penmanship.
I’d had no clue the book even existed. I realized it must have been hidden in those boxes of her old things—things I had no interest in looking through, but Chase had. He’d found something I never would have.
That first page was as far as I got that day, but it was the start of a change. When I closed the cover and took a deep breath, I could almost remember scribbling my name alongside hers.
Chapter Sixty
Chase
“I can't believe Trent got kicked out for the rest of the year,” Brian said, letting his tray slam onto the lunch table hard enough to tip over my bottle of water.
I reached up to right it before it spilled onto my tray. “He did?” I asked.
Brian nodded.
“He's in juvie for a few months and then he has to repeat his second semester to graduate,” Brian said, twisting off the cap to his Gatorade.
“Where'd you hear that?” I asked.
“I overheard the ladies in the front office talking about it while I was waiting to see the college counselor,” he explained.
“He deserves even more than that,” I said with a sharp tone. The police had questioned me and Ashley a few times after the event, but I hadn't been sure what they'd do to Trent. Guess I finally had my answer.
Connor walked up to our table and slid into the seat beside Brian.
“If we don't beat Oak Hill this week, we're officially out of the playoffs,” Connor said as he took a seat.
“Thank you for that reminder,” Brian groaned, tossing a fry at him.
I was half-listening to their conversation, half-wondering where Lilah was. For the last two weeks she'd switched back and forth between eating lunch in the library and eating out in the nature center. I always angled myself toward the front of the cafeteria on the off chance she’d walk by. A few times, I'd spotted her with her mother's book in her arms, clutched close to her chest. She'd texted me the night after she’d found it, just a simple thank you, but I knew it’d meant something to her.
I gulped down some water and then glanced up to the entrance of the cafeteria where windows spanned from the floor to the ceiling. I spotted Lilah walking through a small crowd of students with her mom's book in her hand. She seemed intent on heading for the school doors, which meant she was going to the nature center that day.
“Dude. Stop stalking her and focus. I just called your name like four times,” Connor said, throwing a French fry in my direction. I shot him a warning glare. I'd been an ass lately, but there was really no way around it. With everything going on, I was lucky to get through the day without blowing up on somebody.
“I'm listening,” I said, resisting the urge to look back at Lilah.
She’d switched groups in physics, which meant those fleeting moments of spotting her around school were the only thing I had to sustain me while I waited for her.
“We were just talking about renting a spaceship and flying to the moon after school.”
“Sounds good,” I said as I tried to catch one last glimpse of her before she disappeared outside.
“Dude! I knew you weren’t listening.”
I flinched as a handful of fries hit me in the face.
…
Later that night I walked into my house after practice, sore and tired. I needed to shower, cook some kind of dinner for my dad, and then finish my homework. Finals were coming up and my AP tests loomed.
I sat my bag down by the door and then straightened up as I caught of a whiff of something in the air. Garlic.
“Dad?” I called out as I walked down our main hallway toward the kitchen. The light was on, and as I got closer I could hear pots and pans shuffling around on the stove. When I turned the corner into the kitchen, I paused. My father was standing at the stove with headphones on, mixing some kind of sauce.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him cook.
I walked up and patted his shoulder so he'd know I was there. He turned and pulled out one of the headphones.
“Oh, hey, I wasn't expecting you back for a little while. I would have had this finished already,” he said, gesturing to the food.
“No worries, I still need to shower.”
He nodded, shifting his eyes back to the chicken. “Okay, well yeah, the food will be ready when you're done.”
“Do you need any help?” I offered, pointing to his casted arm. He seemed to have managed just fine so far, but I didn't want him to push himself too much.
He glanced down at his arm with a frown and then shook his head. “I've got it.”
I nodded slowly, assessing the stove once more before turning and heading up to shower. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. My dad hadn't touched a bottle in two and a half weeks, he was keeping the house clean, cooking dinner, and earlier that morning as I’d left for school, I’d heard him on the phone with a customer from the repair shop.
I tried not to think too much into it. Instead, I took the stairs two at a time and focused on everything I had to get done for school.
Chapter Sixty-One
Lilah
I took a small bite of my salad, feeling my dad’s stare boring into the side of my head.
“Do I have something on my face?” I asked, sliding my gaze to him. We were eating dinner by ourselves that night and it felt weird without Chase there.
My dad’s brows shot up, and he shook his head before taking a bite of his turkey sandwich. Nice try.
“You're not going to tell me?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes on his sandwich and then shrugged. “For the past few weeks, you've been quiet like you used to be when Chase first moved in.”
I thought about his observation for a moment, wondering if he was right. “It's a different kind of quiet.”
“Oh really? How so?” he asked with a small smile.
I picked at my sandwich. “I'm not sad like I was then. I'm just…” I paused, trying t
o clear up my thoughts. “Figuring a few things out.”
He chewed his bite before asking, “About Chase?”
I shrugged.
“You know, I really like the kid. It's more fun with him in the house, and I didn’t want to admit it, but he makes better pancakes than me.”
I smiled. “Even if we started dating again, he wouldn't move back in. He's taking care of his dad,” I pointed out.
He frowned. “True. Do whatever you want then.”
I laughed.
“He's in love with you though. You know that, right?”
I nodded, eyeing my food. I knew.
“All right, all right. I’ll change the subject. How do you want to celebrate your birthday next week?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
Every year my birthday marked the end of spring. Growing up I had loved the idea of being a spring baby. After all, spring was supposed to be my season. My mother had named me Lilah Rose to commemorate that fact. When I was young, I’d count down the days to my birthday with mixed feelings. I’d want the cake and the presents, but I didn’t want the season to end.
However, for the last two years, my birthday had served as a reminder that I’ve survived another spring, that the struggle would soon end.
“Can I take a rain check?” I asked with a simple smile.
My dad furrowed his brows, clearly wanting to push the subject, but I knew he wouldn’t.
After dinner, he went into his room to watch game footage, and I pulled my mother's book out of my backpack and flipped to where I'd slipped my bookmark between the worn pages earlier that day. I'd left off at the beginning of the vegetable section, and before I started reading, I went out onto the back porch and sat on the top stair. Reading her scribbles and working in my garden always brought me a sort of solace, so combining them meant that my breaths came easy and my thoughts smoothed themselves out.
As usual, her handwriting gave me a jolt of nostalgia as I read over the first few lines of text.
Lilah insisted we start planting the vegetables early. We normally plant seedlings, but this year, she wants to do seeds. We'll be trying zucchini, squash, and bell peppers. Maybe next year we'll plant even more, but I didn't want to get in over our heads. Chris built a few raised beds out of some old lumber so Lilah and I would have somewhere to plant our seeds.
Her words overflowed into the margins and I had to turn the book to read them. I wished I could have asked her why she chose to write in a gardening book instead of a journal. She could have filled entire pages with her words, but instead she was confined to the small spaces left over in the margins.
Upon finding her gardening book a few weeks earlier, I'd searched through the rest of her things, hoping to find a journal, but there was nothing else lurking in the boxes. The small gardening book was my final connection with her. At once, I craved to read it all, to greedily rush through every word, and yet, I wanted to savor it slowly and make it last forever. It felt like for those brief moments I had my mother back, the real one who’d been there for the first seven years of my life.
Lilah and I figured out that yellow squash tend to need a bit more water than the zucchinis.
I ran over the text a few times before slipping the bookmark back between the pages and standing up to grab the garden hose. I headed straight to the squash, where the vines were growing wild and big yellow flowers were starting to sprout. I let the water soak into the dark soil, giving the plants extra water just as the book instructed, all the while feeling closer to my mom than I had in ten years.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Lilah
I stopped by Crosby’s Market on the way back from school the next day. I walked through the aisles and paused in front of the display of hair dye. My roots were in bad shape and I couldn’t ignore them any longer.
I stared at the smiling woman on the front of the box of blonde dye. I’d resented her months before, annoyed with her easy smile. Now I didn’t think she was so bad. Even still, I reached for the box of black dye, not because I had an agenda or because I wanted to be a rebel.
Nope, I just liked the black.
I carried the dye in my hand as I walked the mile to Ashley’s house. It was starting to warm up and by the time I reached her front door, I was practically melting. Summer had almost arrived.
Ashley opened the door after I knocked and I held up the box of dye. “Can you spare a few minutes for a friend?”
She scanned over my blonde roots and smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Lilah
I’d been obsessed with uncovering the secrets and lies of Blackwater, Texas because I had a theory I desperately needed to prove: no one was as happy, as perfect, or as good as they were pretending to be.
For half of my childhood, my mother had been the subject of every whisper uttered in my small town.
She was the bad mom who’d left her daughter.
She was the drug addict who couldn’t get clean.
She was the lost woman with no hope of redemption.
I watched everyone in my small town turn against her, pulling back inch by inch until she was nothing more than a shadow they tried their best to avoid. They’d pull their children back when they saw her approaching, they’d cross the street and avert eye contact. I watched them judge her and dissect her choices, confident that they were better, they were wiser, they were happier. Superior.
I was confused by the hypocrisy of it even as a kid and now I had a journal that proved my theory.
We all tell lies. We all live in delusions.
So why was my mom so terrible? Why were her failures not met with forgiveness?
Because her lies were on the outside. They were written across her face, plain to see. They were uncomfortable and dark and big enough that they made other lies seem small and simple. Infidelity, fraud, gossip were all eclipsed by my mother’s crashing and burning.
Her failures made everyone look better. Everyone could be a great mom, wife, or friend if only they compared themselves to Elaine Calloway.
A part of me wanted to spread the truth I knew. It’d be so easy to scan the pages of my journal and print out a thousand copies. Our town was small and an afternoon at the copy shop and a couple of rolls of tape was all it would take to coat it in cold, hard truth. I wanted everyone to realize their mistakes, to feel the sting of embarrassment they’d forced my mother to feel, but I never could pull the trigger. Maybe because I knew firsthand that every person in that town would have to face their own truth sooner or later, or maybe because in my gut, I knew my desire for vengeance was dwindling more and more each day.
I carried two books everywhere I went during the end of that spring semester: my mom’s gardening book and the journal I’d filled with secrets and lies. They seemed to go hand in hand at first. I’d skim through them both, finding solace in the worn pages, but then one day, I skipped over my journal.
My mother’s words were like a salve on my heart, patching up the wounds I’d tried hard to cover up. Eventually I knew I wouldn’t need the journal any more, not if I really wanted to move on.
The secrets and lies of Blackwater weren’t my concern.
Not any more.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chase
Our first playoff game was scheduled for noon on Saturday. I held out no hope of beating our opponent, the reigning state champs, but I'd play my best and keep my head up high as we walked off the field. For most of my teammates, it’d be their last baseball game, but I had years of college ball left.
I was set to start and as I warmed up on the mound, the blazing sun scorched the skin on the back of my neck. I reared back, drew my leg up off the ground, and hurled a curveball at Connor. The ball collided with his glove with a sharp pop. I lived for that sound.
Conner stood, straightened his catcher’s helmet, and tossed the ball back to me. I caught it and moved back to take my position for another.
I glanced up into the stands to find the Diamonds Girls in their seats, their matching shirts a dead giveaway. Parents and fans surrounded them, but I didn't see Lilah's short black hair anywhere, and if she wasn't there, then I didn't care who was in the stands.
I finished three more warm-up throws before the announcer spoke through the field’s scratchy speakers.
“Welcome to the 3A Region 2 playoffs! We have the defending state champs, the Lake Johnson Rattlers taking on the Blackwater Wolves. Starting for Lake Johnson we have…”
The announcer's voice carried on but I tuned him out as I lined up next to my teammates.
I’d just made it to the front of the line when two figures walking up the middle aisle of the stadium caught my attention. Lilah and my dad were walking up the ramp side by side. He was carrying a bag of peanuts and she had two sodas. She pointed to two open seats at the front of the bleachers and they slid past other fans to take their seats. When he turned, he scanned the field and then found me, staring up at him.
My throat tightened as he smiled and waved. It was a small, self-conscious wave; he was nervous about being there and I had no way to reassure him other than to smile, take my hat off, and wave back.
I couldn’t believe it.
My dad could change.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Lilah
I finished my mother's book the night before my eighteenth birthday. It was dark out, nearly midnight, and I lay in my bed illuminated by the soft glow from my bedside lamp. I’d thought I liked to garden because it was something I did with my mom. It was a passion we shared, and most of my happy memories with her took place in the garden.