Chapter 7
MILES
My truck sways as I pull off the main road and onto an old, gravel driveway.
I’ve driven far beyond the city limits out into the older parts of Charleston the tourists never make it to.
The parts where families have been living for generations and the people know everyone by their first name.
The parts of Charleston that haven’t been touched by big developers or city people looking to make an easy dollar on short-term rentals or vacation homes.
Carter is in the passenger seat with the window rolled down and his arm hanging out of it, letting the fall breeze fill the cab.
When the radio switches over to an old Scotty McCreery song, he turns it up and starts to belt out the lyrics as if he had won American Idol.
I let out a chuckle and turn the radio up even further to drown him out until we pull up to the old house we like to call ‘home.’
He and I grew up together as foster brothers after our own fair share of shitty childhood upbringings led us to the same home and the woman who was brave enough to bring us in and raise us as her own.
We were hell on wheels growing up but somehow Ivy managed to hold tight to the reins and make sure we made it to adulthood as unscathed as possible.
“Is Coop coming?” Carter asks, turning the knob of the radio to the left to silence the music.
“I think so. He texted me last night that he was.”
“Why’d he text you and not me?” he asks, sounding slightly offended.
“I don’t know, probably because you ask a million questions and want to have a full conversation whenever someone even looks in your direction?”
“Well sorry for being interested in the lives of the people I care about. I’ll try and take it down a notch from now on,” he jokes, swinging his head to look out the window again.
Finally reaching the end of the driveway, we pull into an imaginary parking spot and both hop out of the truck.
Our childhood home is small, quaint, and full of messy and chaotic memories.
The faded yellow color Ivy made us use to paint the outside one summer as a punishment from coming home drunk is starting to chip around the foundation.
I smile at myself recalling how Carter, Coop, and I argued the entire time we worked in the hot July sun, trying to blame the other for getting caught in the first place.
The old ranch style home is big enough for all of us to have our own room but still small enough to where we’re always close.
Ivy lost her husband to cancer before having any kids of her own.
Having always wanted some, she decided to become a foster parent.
I had been through Hell and back before landing on her doorstep.
An absent father who was never around and a mother so lost in her own addiction she didn’t even know who I was half the time, I practically grew up on my own.
I saw things no child should ever see. Things that alter your brain chemistry forever and make you constantly wonder how some people turn out the way they do.
I was one of the lucky ones, though. After CPS had been called for the fourth time, I was permanently removed from my mother’s custody and brought here.
It wasn’t long after I got dropped off that Carter came along.
I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I was when I moved in with Ivy.
Before coming here, I’d always dreamed of having someone to talk to at night while my mom was shooting it up in the kitchen with whatever man she’d brought home that night.
A friend, a partner, to have my back and make me feel less alone in what I was going through.
Then Carter showed up. And when Cooper and his little sister moved in across the street, everything just got sweeter.
“There they are, my two favorite boys,” Ivy calls out as she steps out onto the front porch. Her face is soft and wrinkled with white-gray hair that’s gotten shorter and shorter with age.
“Ivy, when was the last time you had those porch steps checked?” I ask, squinting at the wood on her front porch, noticing how it’s bowing outward to a dangerous degree.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s fine.” She waves a hand at me as if that’s going to reassure me. I walk across the porch to inspect it more closely. Bending down, I press my thumb into the wood and feel that it’s starting to go soft.
“Next weekend we need to come out here and fix it for her,” Carter says, stepping up behind me. I nod my head in agreement.
“Would you two stop and come give me a hug?” Ivy shakes her head at the two of us.
Doing as we’re told, I lock the truck and follow behind Carter to greet our chosen mother. He walks up a few steps and pulls her into a hug before giving her a kiss on the cheek. When he heads inside, I step up behind him and pull the old woman into an embrace.
“Hi, Mama,” I whisper into her ear. While she might not be my real mom, she’s always been my mama.
“Hello, my son,” she hums, squeezing me hard. When she pulls away, she twists her face up and sticks out her lips like she does when she’s trying to figure something out. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Why do you think something’s wrong?” I lean back, still holding her arms.
“I see it.” She takes a finger and wiggles it between my eyes. “Right there, behind your eyes. You’re carrying something heavy and it’s weighing you down.”
“I’m fine, Mama. There’s nothing going on with me.”
She brings a hand to my cheek. “You’ve always been my keeper. Never one to give any piece of yourself to someone else, even when it makes things hard for you. Even when what you’re keeping is someone else’s burden to bear.”
“I’m good for it.” I smile.
“I know you are. Just don’t let it wear you down too much, okay?”
Sighing at the fact that this is the second time in a week someone has mentioned how worn down I seem, I lean in and give her a kiss on the cheek. “I promise I won’t.”
A crash from inside causes us to both look towards the sound. Chuckling, she shakes her head. “We should probably get inside before too much trouble commences.”
“Is Willow here?” I ask, peering down at her.
“What do you think?” she responds, leaning into the question which tells me everything I need to know.
“Then we should absolutely get inside.”
While Cooper and Willow weren’t family, they could be.
Their parents moved them to Charleston a year or so after Carter and I came to live with Ivy.
Being the same age as us, Cooper, Carter, and I became fast friends.
Willow would always follow her big brother around and tag along on whatever trouble we could get into.
She and Ivy grew close when Willow’s mother passed away and she was searching for some sort of maternal figure to look up to.
Since Cooper is one of my best friends, he was always hanging around the house too.
There were more nights than not that the two of them would sleep over at our house or spend the entire weekend here instead of at home.
I follow Ivy in and close the front door behind me.
Scanning the entry space, I see old family photos and keepsakes from years ago that have been set down and never moved.
Walking through the house, you wouldn’t know that Carter and I aren’t Ivy’s biological children.
We’d come to stay with her when we were young, both of us less than ten years old when we arrived on her doorstep.
Because of that, so much of our childhood years are documented along the walls of the house.
School photos. Football action shots. Even senior prom photos of us are framed and hung on the walls as snapshots of the past. Among them, a photo of me in my service uniform after enlisting in the Marines.
Shaved head and straight-faced, I stand next to Ivy and the rest of my chosen family before heading off for basic training.
I pause at the photo and take in their happy, smiling faces.
All fake and for the sake of the photo. No one was happy when I told them my plan to go off and enlist but they were supportive of what I wanted just like they always were growing up.
If you look closely enough, you can see Willow’s eyes are bloodshot from crying and that Carter is flipping off the camera.
“Willie, what the hell are ya doing in here?” Carter shouts from down the hall, calling her the nickname he’d given her when we were kids.
“Nothing! I was only trying to get a bowl down from the cabinet for Ivy and I might have slipped. But I’m fine, everything’s fine.”
Walking into the kitchen, I see Willow on the floor holding a towel to her hand. The blood stain grows as she turns it over, exposing a gash across her palm.
“Jesus, Willow, are you okay?” I take a few hurried steps towards her. Reaching for her wrist, I carefully pull it towards me so I can look at the wound.
“I’m fine, I slipped. It’s just a scratch,” she protests, keeping her voice light.
“Willie, that’s more than a scratch; that’s a full on laceration,” Carter presses, his tone quickly becoming serious when he sees her hand. “Move, Miles, let me see.”
He shoulders me out of the way and takes her hand into his, gently flattening her fingers so he can get a better look. Sure enough, there’s a deep gash in the center of her palm that’s threatening to drip blood on the floor.
“Do you have the first aid kit in your truck?” he asks, looking at me over his shoulder.
“Always do. It’s behind the passenger seat.”
“Perfect. Let’s go, Willie. We need to deal with that before it gets infected.”
She rolls her eyes at him and tries to pull her hand away but he doesn’t let go. “I just need a Band-Aid; it’s really not that bad.”
“No arguing,” Carter demands, punctuating each word for impact. They hold one another’s glare for a beat before she rolls her eyes and lets him help her to her feet.
“Fine. But absolutely no stitches. I’m not letting you operate on me on the back of Miles’s truck.”