Everything I Left Unsaid(6)

But the thought of not wearing the scarf and the glasses made me feel naked.

So obvious won.

—

Kevin was a big man. Tall, wide, big stomach, big shoulders. His belly peeked out beneath his giant red tee shirt, already sweaty in the August North Carolina heat. He had big feet wedged into Adidas shower flip-flops that looked like they’d been welded on at some point. He wore his gray-black hair in a long ponytail down his back, with ponytail holders at regular intervals, keeping it all in line.

“Morning,” he said without much of a smile. He didn’t seem like a smiler.

Kevin was a still waters kind of guy. Or maybe he just didn’t give a shit.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, pushing up the edges of the scarf. “I overslept. I usually don’t sleep so late.”

Last night it had taken me hours to fall asleep. I’d jumped at every sound, and there were lots in the trailer park. People yelling, doors slamming. Wind and trees. A car alarm.

But finally I’d drifted off after two in the morning. Usually I’d be up at dawn, but sleep since I’d left Oklahoma had been in fits and starts.

And honest to God, who would have thought that mattress would be so comfortable?

“You’re the one who said you wanted to start today,” he said, his eyes wide under bushy eyebrows. “I thought you was nuts.”

“Nope, just broke.” When I’d asked about work in the area while doing the paperwork for the RV, he’d told me they were hiring at the park to do some groundskeeping, and I’d jumped at the opportunity.

Physical labor, right where I was living. I wouldn’t have to go into town. Meet other people.

My gut, which had been silent for my entire life—seriously, not a peep out of the thing for twenty-four years—had been yelling at me nonstop since I woke up on my kitchen floor two weeks ago. And my gut seemed to think this arrangement, this job, was not to be passed up.

“Did I tell you what you’ll be doing?” he asked, walking in front of me down the dirt track between my trailer and the next one.

“No. You just mentioned some lawn work.”

Kevin laughed, but I didn’t find any comfort in it. I had the distinct impression he was laughing at me. “Well, that was clever of me,” he said ominously.

The trailer next door was nearly identical to mine, though it seemed to be a newer model. White, where mine was totally ’70s beige, with a darker brown racing stripe down the side. American Dreamer written in sort of an old-timey Western print.

Yep, she was a beaut.

But the white RV next door had a wooden deck on the outside with a chair, a table, and an ashtray.

Deluxe.

I had trailer envy.

“Does anyone live there?” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the neighbor’s trailer.

“Joan,” Kevin said. “Keeps to herself. Not too friendly. If you’re smart you’ll stay away. She’s kind of a bitch.”

The skin on the back of my neck prickled as I walked by, as if someone was watching me from between two slats on the blinds. But when I glanced back there was nothing.

I’d been paranoid most of my life—it’s not like I could just make it stop.

“Ben, on the other hand,” he said, pointing past Joan’s trailer to the trailer the man…Dylan…had asked me to look in on.

Just the thought of his name electrified part of me, like a filament in a lightbulb starting to glow.

Don’t. Don’t think about him.

“Nice guy. Quiet, but not rude about it. Grows a hell of a garden.” He pointed over at the far end of the property, where I could see fencing and some plants.

Hardly sounds like a guy worth watching, I thought, wondering if Dylan wasn’t looking after the wrong person.

“Other side of the park,” Kevin said, jutting his chin out at the trailers just visible over a giant rhododendron bush, “that’s where the families are. Some are great. Some are screamers and drinkers and scene makers, so I try to keep the people without kids on this side.”

“Are you quarantining them? Or us?” I asked.

He gave me an arch look. “Hell if you won’t appreciate it by next Friday.”

Probably true.

We walked single file across a wooden bridge over a rain ditch that because of a recent storm was gurgling along happily under my feet.

Black-eyed Susans and forget-me-nots and tons and tons of Queen Anne’s lace covered the banks of the small stream. Crickets were loud and jumping into my legs. The highway was a bunch of miles in the distance, but I could feel the hum of trucks on asphalt rumbling in the boggy ground beneath my feet.

“It’s nice,” I said.

“What is?”

“This place.” I flung out a hand toward the flowers, the stream. A cricket smacked into the back of my leg and then buzzed away.

Kevin’s look made it clear he doubted my sanity. “You must see some real shit holes if this is nice.”

Oh Kevin, you don’t want to know.

Because the truth was, I hadn’t seen anywhere. Shit hole or otherwise.

Mom had been on a campaign practically since the moment of my birth to convince me that the world outside of the farm was a godless, terrible place. Full of selfish people doing selfish things. Men who’d want nothing but to hurt me, and women who’d look away while they did it.