Fallon
Chapter ten
Dusty One Lane Road
What is it about going back to the place you grew up in that makes you feel so small?
I press harder on the gas. Dust kicks up behind me, drifting through the cracked window as I turn down the gravel lane.
The north side of town is polished, updated—nothing like this side of the tracks.
It would take more resources than the city is willing to give to bring the whole community up to that standard. Easier to leave parts of it behind.
I exhale.
Survivor’s guilt might be the best way to describe what I feel when I come back here.
This place gave me drive. The childhood I had here pushed me to want more—to be more—even if it also left me resentful of what I’m seeing now.
There’s only so much one person can pour into a place before it feels like nothing changes.
A broken fence line comes into view on my right. Frustration tightens in my chest.
It’s only been a month since I had it repaired. How does it already look like this?
I note the broken light pole, wires tangled and hanging from the top like exposed nerves—just as damaged as some of the people who live here.
The brief guilt I felt fades. I have to stop hoping for change in people who don’t want it.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
A clear picture of the town’s social divide mocks me as I pull up to the last depleted trailer on the right.
Momma rocks on her front porch, the planks shifting with each push of her toes.
She’s part of the problem. I clench my teeth.
This side of the trailer park looks like a junkyard—cluttered, neglected, forgotten.
The other side is different. Maintained.
Cared for. People who take pride in what they have.
It’s a perfect reflection of how I feel inside now—polished on the outside, a mess underneath.
Everything is caving in, threatening to suffocate me.
I’ve held this secret too long, clutching it to my chest, too afraid to let it go.
Momma blurs as my eyes sting; the pressure of keeping up the facade is almost too much to bear.
I wish I had someone to share my secrets with. Not just someone—but my mother. I want her to be the kind of person I could open my heart to, someone willing to help carry the weight instead of adding to it.
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp gasp. My momma learned a hundred ways to survive. Loving me wasn’t one of them. “Well, are you going to come up here, or gawk at me through that fancy windshield? This ain’t no petting zoo, girl.”
Exhibit A for why I’ll never trust her with the truth.
Every rung I claw myself onto seems to splinter under her words—each one a blow I can’t dodge.
The finish line always feels farther away with her in it, like a race I was never meant to win.
Her words cut deep. Her actions leave marks only I can feel.
Maybe she knows exactly how it lands. Maybe she doesn’t care. Empathy has never lived in her. I stop myself from reaching for approval that will never come. If she hasn’t been proud of me after everything I’ve survived, she never will be.
So I swallow the ache, steady my chest, and let it go. Stop reaching. Stop expecting. Protect myself. Breathe. Move on.
“I’m coming,” I call through the cracked window of my car.
My voice carries through the holler like it always does.
I grab the grocery bags and step out, the rough paper grounding me as I move.
She sits on the porch like a queen on a broken throne—poised, elevated, judging a kingdom she never built.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
There’s always been something sharp in my mother. It was easier to miss when I was younger, hidden beneath charm and survival. But over time, it surfaced—especially when she thought she was competing with the women in town, measuring herself against lives she envied but never built.
You can’t build a life on love when destruction is the only language you speak.
And somewhere along the way, I think something in her broke clean in two—left hollow, but still hungry for more.
No one taught her how to stand on her own, and she never quite learned how. Realizing no one was coming to save me was one of life’s earliest, harshest lessons.
I watched her give up. Sat front row as she wilted, like sunflowers left too long in the summer heat—bright at first, then slowly folding in on themselves, starved of something they needed to survive.
There’s nothing left for us here but the remnants of what came before—and the quiet pity that she never rose above what she was given.
I don’t understand the strain of cruelty that runs through our family.
My grandmother was the same way. Mean-spirited, though well-positioned in this town.
I remember being a little girl, living up on the mountain in a big rustic cabin, surrounded by sunflower fields and a clear pond where we’d jump in during hot summer days.
My mother’s family all lived there—Sunday services, picnic tables crowded with food, weekend softball games, even our own version of winter Olympics.
Everyone is dead now, or in state-run homes waiting for their meager lives to end.
Drugs are a contagious cancer that bleeds into every crevice of one’s life.
Opioid overdoses have decimated mine. Addiction was a blade that sliced through our bloodline until everyone was gone.
I often wonder what our relationship may have looked like if our family had made it out of the drug epidemic unscathed.
I’ve given up on renovating her property.
No one, not even her, should suffer a life like this.
But I’ve tried so many times. She leers at me from her spot.
“More charitable contributions.” Ignoring her jab, I inspect her more closely now that I’m near.
Wispy, bone-white curls, remnants of her once dark hair, frame a face shockingly aged for a midlife.
The consequences of her wild years finally catching up with her.
Still, her full, bright red lips gleam as she grins wickedly toward me.
“Cat got your tongue, girl? I hadn’t realized I’d raised an imbecile.”
“I brought you food, Mom, because I love you. I don’t mind helping.” She’s too far gone in her cup to end a good buzz by digesting substance.
Her rocker stops short as she leans her bony frame forward, indignation forcing her body into a stillness I’ve never been able to master. Her deep red nails stand out against her bleak environment.
“Now you listen here, Fallon Monroe Lawson. I have never accepted a penny of charity a day in my life. I won’t start now.
” She takes a long pull from her Virginia Slims, exhaling smoke toward me.
I lift my hands, my neatly manicured nails cutting through the haze as I wave it off.
I want nothing to do with the rank of it.
I’ve made plenty of foolish choices in my life.
Smoking isn’t one of them. Why would I willingly take part in something that shortens it?
Anxiety already steals enough of my time—I don’t need to give it help.
I pivot toward the house without another word, knowing no amount of explanation will reach her.
In her mind, I’m a snob. A disappointment.
Nothing I say will change that. My mother and I are water and oil. Always have been.
The secondhand embarrassment of having the town’s gossip center around my mother and her escapades curbed my own desire to rebel as a normal single woman would.
Small towns are not forgiving, nor do they forget.
No, other than DNA, my mother and I have one thing in common, and surely that too will become known soon enough.
My shoulders dip at the thought as I pass her to go inside.
The quicker I put these groceries away, the faster I can leave.
Back across the train tracks, where the front doors of homes stay unlocked, windows are open to allow the cool night’s air to blow our long days away, leaving each room fresh for our early mornings.
A place I’ve built to cozy up with my daughter and pretend the ugly of the world doesn’t exist.
Even thinking about how lucky I am to be Billy’s mother tugs at my heart, bittersweet in my acknowledgement that having a daughter has taught me how easy it is to love her. So why couldn’t the woman on the porch do the same for me?
“Momma, those things are going to kill you someday.” She flicks more ashes from her cigarette off the porch. Funny, she wasn’t that considerate at my shop the other day.
“Not soon enough.” I pause as her words turn into a coughing fit, our mutual disgust for one another’s lives is clear with the tension between us.
She wanted me to go to college, not for an education. No, she wanted me to find our next and last meal ticket. Her words all those years ago still make me flinch with humiliation.
“Fallon, you’re too pretty to waste your time on dreams that won’t pay off.
You need a rich man, one who will take good care of us.
Pop out a few brats to secure our future, for when he leaves, and leave, he will.
Men are good for one thing—and it sure as hell isn’t love.
But that paycheck for having kids will be worth it. Set us up real nice.”
Embarrassed that my mom would even suggest it, but not at all surprised, I responded. “Momma, that’s not true. Cyrus loves me.” With a flick of her wrist, she dismissed me.
“Love is a word we throw around to get what we want. A weapon, a tool for survival, handed down through generations of intelligent women who know how to get what they need for survival from a man.”
My seventeen-year-old heart shattered standing before the woman who gave birth to me. Did she not think I was worthy of love? Not pretty enough? Not smart enough?