Sylvie
When I wake up the next morning, it’s to a couple squabbling outside. I never told you that, a woman is insisting. Never! I never said that! Winslow’s nose is tucked up against my neck, and I pet him, and I wonder what the thing is she never said.
I unlock the van by way of an answer.
When he opens the sliding door, his arms are full of tent. “Breakfast? We have a couple hours until the eclipse.”
Inside the Walmart, we buy all the stuff we had to leave in our baskets the night before: Milano cookies, Sour Patch Kids, and Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke. Also a bag of bagels and iced coffee and creamer.
A LITTLE LATER
“I’ll take you straight to your mamaw’s after this.”
“Sounds good,” he says. “I’ll have to look up her number again because it had her address with it and I don’t remember it.” He hesitates. “Are we still—not talking on that drive?”
“I think,” I say, sipping my iced coffee, “that ship has sailed.”
“Okay.”
“You’re sure this is going to be okay? Not that your grandma wouldn’t want to see you. But, like, what if she moved?” I have never once in my life dropped in on someone without texting them twice to confirm.
“Then I’ll figure something out,” he says. “But I don’t think she moved. My mom would’ve said. Probably.”
“When’s the last time you saw her? Your grandma? Remind me—is she your dad’s mom or mom’s mom?”
“Dad’s mom. That’s why she and my mom aren’t close.
” He shakes the empty ice cubes in his glass, thinking.
“I don’t know the exact year I last saw her.
I was little. I remember listening to the radio with her.
She liked Loretta Lynn and sometimes she’d put on one of her CDs, or Rosanne Cash, and sing.
In her bathroom, she had one of those plush pink cushions on the toilet seat.
And a dish of Irish Spring soap. It smelled amazing. ”
“What’s she like? I’m picturing like a cowgirl from that music.”
“Not a cowgirl. She—I don’t know. She listens when people talk to her. And she thinks hard about what she says before she says it. Her house is quiet. I remember that. And there’s woods nearby. A lake. People take their kids there. It always felt like someplace I could be happy.”
“It sounds nice.”
“Yeah.”
I’m still making up my mind about something. I don’t want to tell him about it. I don’t think that’s the same thing as lying.