Chapter 7 – GLENNA #7
“We’re coming up,” another voice hollers. It’s Dina. The guy must be her husband.
Granger arrives on the scene, yapping and howling. He’s stoked to see Dina and Heavy.
Cash flashes me a wry smile. “He’s more of a hunting dog than a guard dog.”
“I see that.” My heart is pounding, and my face is on fire.
“Bad timing, Dina,” Cash shouts down the ladder just before her head emerges through the opening. She easily swings herself to sit on the edge of the square, dangling her legs through the hole.
“There’s no room up here for the man mountain,” Cash says. “No offense,” he calls over the side.
“None taken,” the deep voice replies. “I’m gonna hang out down here with this fella.”
It’s full dark now, but there’s a waxing moon that gives a little light, enough to see outlines, but not expressions. Even if I could see Dina’s face, it wouldn’t tell me much. She doesn’t give much away.
“Did Mom send you?” Cash asks.
“She asked Kellum, but I said I’d come.” She gazes off toward town. Lights are twinkling, and with the stars and moon overhead, it looks like a painting you’d buy at the mall. “I’m supposed to tell you coffee and dessert are ready.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all she asked me to say. She’s upset. Dad got the whiskey out. Jesse said he had to check on a horse and bailed.”
“Good for him,” Cash says.
“Poor Mona.” Dina sighs. “She has to listen to Mom kvetch. She’s helping in the kitchen.”
“So is that all? Dessert’s ready?” Cash asks, crossing his stretched legs.
Dina ignores him. She’s facing me. Her upper half is in shadow, but I can feel her regard.
Dina can be intimidating. She comes across as cold.
Her mom, in her never-ending mission to socialize her, took us to all kinds of kid’s events—the nature center, the public library, the community pool.
We always ended up playing by ourselves.
I didn’t mind. It was kind of nice that Dina took the blame for us being antisocial.
We used to be really tight.
My stomach aches with a familiar combination of guilt and regret.
“How come you dropped me?” Dina asks out of nowhere, but also as if she’s reading my mind. That’s another one of her ways.
“Dina—” Cash interrupts, a warning in his voice.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I need to apologize. It was uncool.”
“But why ?” I’m zapped back in time. Dina’s question is plaintive and so much like the kid I remember, frustrated by a world with little rhyme or reason.
It seems so dumb now, but I don’t want to pay back the honest question with a lie.
“I overheard Cash call me the chairman of the itty-bitty titty committee.”
There’s a snort from below and then silence.
Cash twists his head to look at me. “I did?”
“You were talking to your boys. Jaxson. Logan. I can’t remember who exactly.”
“He called you the chair man ?” Dina repeats.
“Yeah.”
She snorts. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I exhale. “Mom had just died. I got really embarrassed. Dad wasn’t doing well. I was already scared to leave him. I didn’t want to if I didn’t have to. So when you called to see if I could come over, I didn’t pick up the phone. It sucks. I know. I was a kid, but that’s no excuse.”
Cash isn’t saying anything.
“We never talked about your mom,” Dina says.
I lift a shoulder. “I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I didn’t know what to say.” She draws her feet through the hole and rests her heels on the edge, wrapping her delicate arms around her knees. It kind of feels like a long time ago, in a different treehouse.
There are men here now. We’re not alone. But still. There’s an echo from the past.
“You’re a dick,” Dina says to Cash.
“I know,” he says.
“Why’d you say that about her boobs? You were always lookin’ at them.”
Heavy clears his throat; I’m pretty sure to hide a chuckle. What does the scary-ass biker think of this ridiculous conversation? He’s being very patient. From the snuffling sounds and the whines, Granger’s getting a nice rubdown.
“I don’t know. Probably to get Jaxson or whoever to stop lookin’ at them.”
“You didn’t want anyone looking at my boobs?” It’s a tease, but a gentle, tentative one, and I’m more invested in the answer than I have any business being.
“No. Never did. Still don’t.” He’s gruff, but he doesn’t hesitate.
“‘Cause I was your sister’s friend?”
“‘Cause you were my friend.” He huffs, and without warning, jumps to his feet and stamps. “It’s getting cold out here.”
Dina laughs. “And people say I’m the one who’s not in touch with her feelings.”
“Shut up, Dina,” Cash says. He doesn’t ask. He takes my good arm and hauls me to my feet. “Everybody cool, again?”
“Cool,” Dina says.
“I’ve been cool,” Heavy adds from below. “I’m fuckin’ cold, too.”
“Cool,” I say.
Despite the shadows, I catch the flash of white as Dina smiles. She ducks her head down and shouts, “Catch me!”
“Dina, shit, hold up—” There’s an oof, a trilling laugh, a growl, and the sound of a palm connecting with a backside.
“Don’t you try that,” Cash warns as he lowers himself to the ladder ahead of me.
“Don’t worry. I know you couldn’t catch me.”
“I already have, Glenna Dobbs. Don’t doubt it. There’s a new chairman of the itty-bitty titty committee in town.”
“Seriously?” I drop my legs through the square and try to find a slat. Cash grabs my heel and guides my toe into place.
“Too soon?” he asks.
“Much.”
But I’m smiling, and as I climb down, my steps are light. I don’t quite understand what’s happening, but it doesn’t feel wrong.
We hike single file back to the Walls’ house, and as the night breeze blows, I have the strange sense that I’m a kid again, and also a woman, but not one I know, not the one I’ve been since my mother died. Not scared, not making myself small so the next disaster might not find me.
I feel like the person who put her name on the article. I didn’t understand her then—I chalked it up to impulse—but I’m starting to think there’s more to me than I knew.
Even when you make yourself small and quiet, even when you’re scrupulously careful to be grateful for what you have so that God isn’t tempted to humble you by ripping it out from under you, even when you’re afraid of losing what you have left every moment of every day—even then, you can’t entirely smother the part of you that’s brave. That dares to want.
It’s the part of me that grabs Cash’s hand after he opens the back door to his parents’ house for me.
The part that revels in the smile that breaks across his face.