Chapter 15 #2
I felt a hand against my cheek, and I startled before seeing it was Micah. I told him I needed a minute, and I walked out the back to a small yard where a few smoked and murmured in the shadows. I took in the warm night as the adrenaline left my body, making me shake.
“Are you okay?” Martha asked from behind me, lighting a cigarette.
I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little overwhelmed.” I took another breath. “That album is…” I didn’t even know how to describe it. “Why is it so different from her other stuff?”
Martha looked up at the sky. “She wrote it after she left Clayton and when she first met your father. It was the first album where she got to create her own sound. She said it was inspired by where she grew up in the mountains, and Eve and original sin—this idea of the cursed woman as created by the Bible.” She blew out a stream of smoke.
“But I think there was more to it than that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She had demons, and I saw how they haunted her. I do think she felt like a cursed woman sometimes.”
“Like something bad had happened to her?”
“I don’t know for certain. She never talked about her past. But it was a sense I got—I’ve spent a lot of time around people like that.”
“Did my dad hurt her? Was he a bad person?” This was the question that had been haunting me.
She exhaled. “I don’t deal much in good and bad. He was like your mother—impulsive, creative, always in motion. I think that’s why they got along so well. But he had his own demons.”
“Like what?”
She paused. “He was so restless, and he wanted so many experiences that sometimes he hurt himself and others without meaning to—that was part of him being an addict.” She paused.
“There was also the trouble with his family—when he dropped out of college, his parents disowned him. And no matter how much you dislike your parents, that hurts in ways you might not be aware of.”
I barely remembered my grandparents, but I knew the rigidity of my aunt and her “morals,” deployed like weapons whenever it suited her.
She’d always lacked a capacity for understanding other people, was proud of it even, and I never understood why someone would choose to live such a limited existence.
“Did my parents love each other?” I asked.
She looked over at me. “I think so.”
“I wish I could have seen them together.”
She smiled sadly. “Me too.”
Back inside, I found Micah on the couch and curled up against his side. I told him everything Martha had said, and he stroked my arm as I tried to process this new information. Perhaps I had shared something with them after all, or maybe I was finally starting to see them as real people.
I suddenly felt Micah’s body stiffen against my shoulder. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I have to tell you something,” he said, his voice serious.
My heart skipped. “What?”
“I’m leaving Nashville in a few days. I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail this year, and I don’t want to miss the warm months up north.”
My face heated, and I could feel my heart beating faster, but I told myself to stay calm. Keep your voice level. Don’t let him know how upset you are. “I didn’t know.”
“I was actually headed to the trailhead in Maine when I stopped here. I didn’t mean to stay this long, but I’m glad I did.” He grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles, but I could barely feel it.
“Right.”
This was what I’d been worrying about all summer, that one day he was going to realize I was nothing special, that I was damaged, even, and he would leave me, and I would never see him again.
There was a pathetic relief in it, like it was finally happening, and I could just be done with it now.
I could stop pretending I was a person he could love.
He sat up and looked into my eyes. “Why don’t you come with me?”
I pulled my hand from his. “What? No. I can’t just leave.”
“The trail goes through Tennessee—you could see the place your mom grew up and wrote about in her music.” He tried to pull me back toward him, but I shrugged out of his grasp.
His mouth flattened, and he turned away from me. “The truth is, I don’t want to live in the past anymore. I don’t want to keep reliving the bad feelings. It’s not good for me, and I don’t think it’s good for you, either.”
He didn’t understand. “I’m not ready.”
He scowled. “Well, I don’t have a choice. I’m out of money. I’ll have just enough for the trail if I sell my brother’s car in Maine. I’m not like you—someone didn’t just show up at my house one day and give me millions of dollars.”
I glared at the ground, my cheeks burning in shame.
He exhaled, and his voice softened. “I can’t stay here any longer. I have to keep moving. But I want to be with you.”
“And I’m supposed to just follow you?”
He sighed in frustration and stood up from the couch. “I’m not going to beg.”
“Then don’t.” I could feel the meanness in it, like they weren’t my words. He stared at me, and I’d never seen him so hurt, the mirth in his eyes extinguished.
As he moved toward the door, I called out to him, but he kept going, and then he was gone.
Around two a.m. that night, Hess and Martha found me in Hess’s kitchen eating leftover fried chicken in the dark.
I’d left Martha’s without telling her and walked all the way back through the city to Hess’s house, imagining the woods from the album—this magical place where my mother had once heard music in the trees and where she’d discovered the thing that made her want to keep living.
“Where have you been?” Hess demanded sharply.
I glared at her, allowing all of the resentment of the last few weeks to rise to the surface. Even Lorraine and Carl had never tried to control me like this; for all of their indifference, at least in that house I’d had a bit of freedom.
“We were just worried,” Martha said gently. “Tell us what happened.”