Burnt Read online

  The twinkle quickly disappeared at the rejection. “Okay, no problem,” Kenny told me dejectedly, clearly feeling a bit embarrassed that I had turned him down in front of someone else. “You gals have a fun time tonight.”

  “Maybe another time, “ I said to him apologetically.

  “Sure thing,” the hope returned to his face as he answered me before he turned and headed back down the hall towards the main office.

  Mary hooked her arm around mine as she led me out the front doors towards the parking lot.

  “Why do you do that to him?” Mary said to me.

  “Do what?”

  “Give him false hope about going out with you,” she told me as we reached our cars, which just happened to be parked next to each other. “He had his shot with you. If he weren't a lecherous octopus, maybe things would have been different. Just the thought of him putting his hands on me…. Ewwww,” Mary shook her body at the thought.

  “I know,” I told her as I put my backpack in the trunk of my car. “I guess I feel bad saying no all the time.”

  “Stop being so nice Sophie,” Mary scolded me as she walked over to her car and climbed into the driver’s seat. She rolled down the window to the passenger side of her car to talk to me. “Meet me at the Homestead at six?”

  I sighed again. “I guess so,” I said to her, knowing Henry James could wait another day.

  “Great! Finally, a night out on the town with you. See you later!” Mary backed up and peeled out of the parking lot like she was one of the seniors in high school. I laughed as I waved away the dust she kicked up and climbed into the driver’s seat of my trusty Camry.

  As I slowly worked my way the long not-quite two miles from the school to my house on Hodges Avenue, I glanced over at the house on the corner of Collins Drive, right before my street. I always slowed down as I went passed, knowing it was his Dad’s place. In my imagination, I half-expected to see him walk out the front door and stop me as I was going by, but of course, this never happened. Today was no different, though the house was clearly quieter now.

  I wonder what will happen to the place, I considered as I kept driving by until I reached my driveway.

  I pulled into the driveway and shut off my car, climbing out and grabbing my backpack from the trunk. I gave a casual wave to Mrs. Griffin, sitting out on her porch next door as she always does this time of day in the summer, and hopped up the steps of my porch to the front door. I checked the mailbox by the door before going in, and it was the usual junk mail.

  Not even the mail is exciting in Canon, I thought to myself as I walked in the front door and tossed the mail on the end table.

  I went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and got my pitcher of lemonade out and poured myself a glass. I walked over to the old rocker in the living room, the one I always sat in just like my mother did before me, and sat down to relax. It was only three-thirty, so I still had time before I had to meet Mary for dinner.

  I picked up my backpack and held it in my hands. The brown leather had worn over the years, but the bag was still in great shape and had served me well. I ran my hand over the brass plate that had my initials on it, still visible after all this time, though with scratch marks and spots. I pulled the bag closer to me on my lap and closed my eyes, thinking back to the day I got the bag, the day he gave it to me as a gift, and how much I had smiled and loved it.

  And loved him.

  4

  Travis

  Abby and I had made pretty good progress on the road so far, getting to within about an hour of Canon after about two hours on the road. She had barely said three words to me since we got in the car. Instead she had slipped her earbuds in to listen to music while she frantically tapped away on her phone, chatting with someone and smiling along the way.

  Finding a radio station once we got close to Canon was nearly impossible because of the mountains surrounding the area. Since I hadn’t bothered to attach my phone to the car, I couldn’t play any music I might like along the way, which left me to just get lost in my thoughts as I drove along. I took in the scenery as we went along the highway and was quickly reminded of how beautiful it was around here. The sun was still shining brightly, the trees looked beautiful, and the area around Canon was much more rural than what I had become accustomed to over the last several years.

  We hadn’t been back to Canon for a while to see my mom. In fact, it had been years since I had been here at all. Normally she would just get frustrated and come to see us in Ridgefield, constantly chiding me because I never came to see her. I certainly never went there to see my dad or anyone else for that matter. My parents had split up when I was seventeen, and even though they lived in the same town, I never saw him much, and even less after I left for college. I saw him once before Abby was born, and then talked to him on the phone after her birth, though it was more of a one-sided, drunken argument and chastising from him about how I threw my life away getting some girl pregnant. After that, I never spoke to him again, and never really wanted to.

  My daydreaming continued on for a while, and before I knew it, I saw the sign for the exit for Canon and realized I had never called my mother to let her know we were coming. It was getting close to six, which meant she wasn’t at home anymore and was already down at her place watching over everything for the dinner crowd. She had been running that restaurant for as long as I could remember, a business she inherited from her father and that she had operated with great pride, despite having to throw my father out of there more than once for drinking too much or getting cozy with one of the new waitresses. That’s what eventually let her come to her senses and toss him out on his ear, permanently.

  I had spent more than enough of my life at The Homestead. I spent hours there waiting for her while she worked and worked there as a busboy in high school. I didn’t have much of a desire to go there at all tonight. I was tired, my leg hurt, my head hurt, and I didn’t want to run into any old high school folks that I didn’t want to see anyway.

  “Dad,” Abby said to me as she pulled the earbuds from her ears, “does Grandma know we’re coming?”

  “No, not really,” I said to her as I turned off the exit ramp and headed out towards my mom’s house on Wood Place.

  “Then why are we going to her house? You know she won’t be there. Let’s just go to the restaurant.”

  “Honey,” I sighed, “I’ve been driving for three hours, and I’m tired. I don’t feel like dealing with the dinner crowd at the Homestead and trying to get Grandma’s attention. We’ll just go to the house, go in, and call her from there. She won’t mind.”

  Wood Place was not far from the exit, and it was moments before we were pulling into the gravel driveway. The motion lights I had told her to get flipped on as we pulled in and I could hear Pee Wee, her St. Bernard, barking inside as soon as he heard us.

  Abby bounded out of the car before the engine was off and scurried up the porch steps to the front door. I was barely out of the car, stretching my sore leg after the drive, and opening the trunk to get the bags when I saw the front door was open and Abby was inside. I didn’t realize she was tall enough now to reach the broken shingle near the front door where my mom hid the spare key. She was growing up way too fast.

  I grabbed our bags from the trunk and lumbered up the front steps of the porch and through the front doorway. The house looked and smelled the same as it did since the last time I was here, when Abby was a much smaller girl that needed me to carry her up the staircase to go to sleep. All the details were still the same, including the pictures in the hallway, the framed cross-stitch in the living room, and the old percolator that she refused to give up to make her coffee in the morning.

  I dropped the bags in the hallway and sat down on the old leather couch in the living room and looked around. I flipped the light on next to the couch to brighten things up a bit, though the room was still a bit dark from the wood paneling in the room that Mom refused to replace. In a flash, Abby came racing around the corne
r with a giant, slobbering Pee Wee behind her. Abby threw herself onto the couch next to me, and Pee Wee immediately jumped up between us, practically knocking me off the couch with his head as he smiled a slobbering smile at me.

  Abby praised him and petted him for a bit before he jumped down and lay on the floor in front of us. I was glad for the extra space and stretched out my legs a bit in front of me.

  “Okay, let’s go see Grandma,” Abby said as she jumped up off the couch.

  “I thought we already decided this,” I told her, resisting her futile attempts to pull me up off the couch. “Let’s just relax here and see her later.”

  “Well if you don’t want to go, that’s fine. I can walk down there myself.”

  Abby started walking towards the front door.

  “Hold it,” I shouted. Abby spun around on her heels and put her hands on her hips, immediately reminding me of the way her mother used to do the same thing.

  “What?” she said as if she was itching for an argument.

  “You’re not walking there alone. It’s getting dark.”

  “Dad, you can’t be serious,” she said to me incredulously. “I’m not a little kid anymore, and the restaurant is only a few blocks away. Besides, we’re in Canon. They’ve already started rolling up the sidewalks.”

  She was, of course, right on all those points, and I didn’t really feel like arguing with her.

  “Fine, go, but make sure you have your phone with you,” I told her, trying to sound as parental as possible.

  “Thanks, Dad!” Abby yelled as she was out the door and down the porch steps.

  I kicked back on the couch, swinging my sore leg up, and kicked my boots off onto the floor. I put my left arm over my eyes while my right dangled down on the floor and gently scratched behind Pee Wee’s ear as we both rested. I closed my eyes, trying not to think too hard about anything at all – not the past, present, or future – and hoped I could get some peaceful sleep.

  5

  Sophie

  I had dozed off in my rocking chair for much longer than I had anticipated. I woke with a start as I heard a car honk its horn as it went by the house, and I was already sorry I had woken up. I was still clutching the backpack in my arms and had been roused from a sweet dream, one I have every now and again. The two of us were there, back in college like we were years ago, but this time things didn’t end as badly as they did. We stayed together, the outside world wasn’t real, and there we were sitting on the front porch of our own place, watching the sun go down, holding hands. He leaned over and kissed me deeply, the way he always used to, still holding my hand. He then rose up from our front porch swing, pulled me by the hand and led me inside to the bedroom. Within moments the passion overtook both of us, and we were lying there together, blankets rumpled around us, clothing tossed aside, as we made love as the sun went down outside the window. It was intense and magical all at once, feeling him like that… feeling him in a way that I never had the chance to before.

  And then that stupid horn went off and woke me up before anything else happened. Something always seemed to startle me up at just the wrong moment, and I never get to see how this dream plays out. I sat in the rocking chair for a moment, feeling flush all over, my body tingling from head to toe. I took a quick glance down at my watch and saw it was already six o’clock. Mary would think I was standing her up again and it would be moments before my cell phone was ringing or she was sending me a text to ask where I was.

  I stood up from the rocker, tossing the backpack on the floor next to the chair as it creaked back and forth. I took a quick glance at myself in the mirror just inside my front door and fixed my hair a bit and pulled it back into a ponytail. As I was tightening my ponytail and tying it back with a piece of blue ribbon I had plucked from the top of the bureau, I took a closer look at myself. My face was still a bit flush, and even the top of my chest that was visible above the light blue dress I was wearing was a bit rosy as well.

  That was some dream, I told myself as I picked up my purse and headed out the door.

  I decided it was too nice of a night to drive over to The Homestead. Besides, it was only a few blocks away from here, like most things were in this small town, and there was rarely any parking on the street or in the small lot next to the restaurant anyway. I thought the walk would be good to help me clear my head a bit and help me build up my appetite for a night out. As I reached the corner of Collins Drive, I began to walk slowly passed the house. The house was dark, as it had been ever since his father passed away. I stood just outside the cyclone fence gate surrounding the front yard there and peered at the house. The porch paint was a bit worn, the gutter on the front of the house was hanging loose, and the front lawn was clearly in need of a mow. I could only imagine what the inside looked like if the outside had been let to go like this. I tried to get a glance through one of the front windows, the one where the shade was near all the way up, wondering if I could see anything inside. The only thing visible was an old chair positioned by the window. I couldn’t make out much of the detail of it, but I remember it was where his father sat every day, reading with the window open while he played music on his record player or watched the ballgame so loud you could hear it from the street. I craned my neck to get a better look, peering closely, wanting to see something, and then received a jolt when I felt my phone buzz in my hand, making me jump back and drop my phone over the fence, onto the grass.

  “Damn,” I said lightly, as I now had to open the gate to get my phone.

  At least Mary would be proud of me for swearing out loud, “ I thought, making myself chuckle lightly. I opened the gate slowly, feeling some resistance from the rust on the hinges and as the gate tried to move through the overgrown grass. With the sun going down, it was a little darker on the lawn than I thought it would be and with the grass so high, finding my phone was not as easy as I thought it would be. I was finally able to locate it, and I glanced down, seeing the message from Mary –

  “Where the hell are you? Don’t stand me up again Sophie!”

  I typed a quick message to her:

  “On my way. Walking there right now.”

  I got up from my crouch and saw I was closer to the window now, but now that I was this close something inside me made me feel like the house didn’t look so friendly now. It looked older, worn, almost sad. I found myself wanting to get out of there faster, and as I was looking at the house, I thought I could see a shadow inside by the window. I gasped audibly and stumbled, bumping into the gate as I turned, fumbled with the gate, and got it open so I could get out of there.

  I raced down the street, not sure if I really saw something or if my imagination was just getting the better of me at this point with all my daydreaming today. I wasn’t taking any chances and found myself moving quickly across the few blocks until I was outside the door to The Homestead in no time at all.

  I opened the glass door to the entrance and went right inside. There was no one stationed at the hostess podium, where Maggie could almost always be found, and I was kind of glad about that today. I was feeling a bit out of breath as I scanned the room quickly, hoping to spot Mary. I saw her seated at a table near the center of the room, a drink in her hand as she smirked and waved at me.

  The dining room was a decent size since this was the only restaurant of note in town, with about fifteen or twenty tables of various sizes, but every table was already filled, and all the seats at the large mahogany bar along the far end of the room were all taken as well. There were TVs on by the bar, but Maggie always made them keep the sound muted because she didn’t want to disturb the dining patrons. I plopped myself down in the wooden chair opposite where Mary was sitting and watched her take another sip of her drink, finishing it off.

  “Where were you? You’re late,” she chided me as she set her glass down. “Are you okay? You look flushed.”

  I took a deep breath to further compose myself. Now I wasn’t sure if I was flush from the experience at the house,
my dream or what.

  “I’m fine,” I told her as I brushed the hair out of my face. It was just then that I noticed that I had lost my ribbon somewhere along the way. “ I ran over here so I could meet you without being too late. You don’t happen to have a hair tie, do you? I seem to have lost mine.”

  Mary looked at me and then pointed at her recently cut short auburn hair. “Remember, my haircut two weeks ago? I’ve been complaining about it ever since I got it cut at Gail’s place. I never should have let that blonde butcher my hair.” She ran her right hand over the short length as she spoke to emphasize her anger over it.

  “Sorry, I forgot about that,” I told her sincerely, brushing the hair from my eyes again.

  “I have a hair tie you can use Ms. Ingram,” a voice said to my side. I looked up and saw our server, Patty Watkins, a former student of mine who was now a senior in the high school and worked at the restaurant. She was looking more grown-up than ever, making me feel old again as I saw her in her crisp white blouse and black slacks, with her own blonde hair pulled back. She reached into her apron and pulled out a small black hair tie and handed it to me.