Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(38)

Tuning Mom out, I unfold the piece of paper. The handwriting, I don’t recognize. The lines from the poem, I do. It was the assignment I missed in English class. I picked it up after class, thinking I’d be able to have it completed by Monday. Best laid plans...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both.

I like this poem. You probably have a lot of makeup work to do. Sorry about that. Forgot how high school sucks. Also sorry about your knee. Never what we wanted. We just want peace. Remember which path you need to travel. We’ll be in touch soon.

My heart beats so loudly Mom has to hear it, but if she does, she doesn’t acknowledge it. “They feel terrible about what’s happened and they want to keep you safe.”

My hands shake and I ball the paper in my fist, then shove it back into my pocket. “When did you bring my stuff over? My notebook? My jacket?”

“The day you were found. Why?”

We’re not safe here. We’re not safe anywhere. The Riot—they’re everywhere.





CHEVY

ELI’S TRUCK WHEEZES as I ease into the Shamrock’s parking lot and I half expect it to let out a backfire shot when I cut the engine, but instead it heaves into silence. Two motorcycles rumble in behind me and park in open spots. It’s Pigpen and Dust. They’re part of the volunteers tailing me and Violet until the board feels we’re safe.

Safe.

Not sure what that means anymore.

Shamrock’s neon street sign is so bright that the stars can’t be seen in the dark night. It’s only seven, but feels like midnight.

“I could have driven myself.” Mom glances over at her side mirror, no doubt checking out Pigpen watching us.

“You’re the one who said it was time to go back to normal. Me driving you on Friday and Saturday nights is the norm.”

Mom opens her purse and shifts the contents from one side to the other. “If it was a normal Friday night, you would have been at school all week. You’d be at the football game and wouldn’t have been able to drive me in. If it was a normal Friday night, you’d be sleeping in your bed at home and not at Cyrus’s and two members of the Terror wouldn’t be here. If it was a normal Friday night, I wouldn’t spend most of my shift tonight wondering if you’re going to show to pick me up or if I’ll walk out of here to find out someone took you again.”

Mom throws her purse to the floor of the truck. It makes a thud and then we sit. Letting the weight of the past week crush us both. Can’t imagine what it was like for her. Sitting at the bar, waiting. Each minute that passed upping the odds I wasn’t coming to get her and that I wasn’t returning home.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not the Terror’s either.”

Her lack of a response expresses her disagreement. Even suggests a couple of curse words she still refuses to say in front of me, but that I’ve heard her utter to a few asshole customers.

“After all you’ve been through,” she says, “I don’t know how to make you understand how dangerous they are.”

“I’m home. I’m fine.”

She whips her head in my direction. “Fine? You’re not fine. The bruises may be fading, but when I look in your eyes, I don’t see my son. Violet may be the one who went quiet, but you’re not acting the same either. You don’t laugh. You don’t smile.”

I curl the keys into my palm and the pain from the edges is welcomed. “It’s barely been a week. Violet was just released today. What do you expect from me?”

“That you’ll wake up and see that the road you’re choosing is one that is going to shatter my heart.” Her voice breaks at the end and it’s like someone has reached into my chest and crushed my heart.

This is my mom. The woman who has raised me on her own selling drinks to men who treat her like shit. The woman who has attended every practice, peewee football game, JV and then varsity game known to man. The woman who has nursed cuts, broken bones and a broken heart.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask in such a low tone I’m not sure she heard it.

“You know what I want.”

A life away from the Terror. What had she said once? Football, a girl, a few high school parties, the son who goes away to college. Somebody else’s normal.

“Days like today I wish I could go back and slap the girl I was in high school. Tell her to take school more seriously. Tell her to take the advanced math course over the basic. Tell her that boys weren’t the answer, but really the problem. Maybe if I had taken my life more seriously, then I wouldn’t have had to rely on the Terror so much when you were younger. Then maybe you wouldn’t be as close to them as you are now. I should have done better.”

“You’ve done a great job raising me.”

“Bartending, waitressing, being away from you at night and on the weekends. Just because I wanted to be the one to take you to school in the morning. Because I wanted to be the mom who brought the cupcakes on party day and then picked you up. Because it’s the job that made me financially free from the Terror. But it wasn’t enough. I should have been home. I should have a better job. I should have found someone else to take care of you. I should have never relied on the Terror.”