CHAPTER 2 collins NOW | 2010
collins
It’s five o’clock on a Friday, which means the workday is officially over. When I push through the doors, I’m not surprised to find my brothers already heading out.
“When you gonna give that beater a rest?” Campbell calls over his shoulder, eyeing my truck through the front window like it personally offends him.
I roll my eyes as he grabs a ball cap from the hook on the wall and flips it on backward. His loose and stubborn caramel-colored curls spill out from the sides, refusing to be tamed.
My twin brothers have always looked nearly identical, but these days it’s a little easier to tell them apart. Campbell is the clean-cut one. The good-boy type. The kind of guy Abercrombie would probably throw on a billboard tomorrow if he walked past a casting call.
Crandall, on the other hand…that man-child is chaos wrapped in charm.
He rides a motorcycle like he’s auditioning for Sons of Anarchy, is quiet and mysterious most days, but with a wild streak that’s gotten us all into trouble more times than I can count.
Tattoos cover him. One arm a full sleeve, the other halfway there.
Ink scatters across the rest of him sporadically, except for his face.
The twins both have that thick, ridiculous wavy hair. It’s the kind that women lose their minds over.
Meanwhile, my hair stays stubbornly stick-straight, but just as impossible to control.
“I’ll stop driving that truck,” I shoot back, “when you chop off that Richard Simmons mop on your head.”
Crandall chokes on a laugh from behind Campbell.
I shake my head and walk toward the desk I claim as my own, dropping my empty lunchbox with a thud, then pause. A newspaper clipping sits neatly in the center of the desk.
Waiting.
Something cold slides down my spine as I pick it up.
“What the fuck is this?”
Both of their heads snap back toward me. And the looks on their faces, guilty and uneasy, tell me everything before either of them even speaks.
Campbell rubs the back of his neck. “Look, man, we were gonna tell you. We just didn’t know how to bring it up. With everything that happened with you and Johnnie—how close we all got to Nan…” His voice trails off.
“I’m sorry, bro. This really sucks.”
My eyes drop back to the clipping.
Aletha “Allie” Smith
The words blur instantly as bile rises in my throat.
No.
My vision swims as the room tilts slightly, and suddenly both of my brothers are there, each gripping one of my shoulders.
Nan…is gone?
I force my eyes down the page, skimming the obituary through the haze until they land on the words that steal the air straight from my lungs.
Also surviving, a granddaughter, Johnnie Hardin of San Antonio, Texas.
Ten years.
Ten damn years.
And still, those blue irises are burned into my memory so vividly that my own eyes start to burn. The distant sound of my brothers’ footsteps echo as they quietly step outside, giving me space. I sink into my desk chair, elbows on my knees, face buried in my hands.
All the pain I thought I buried years ago comes roaring back, sharp and merciless, splitting my already scarred heart wide open.