Sidewalk Flower (13 page)

But not Lucky.
 

He saw her as a good woman, deluded as he
was, and she was determined to keep it that way.
 
It was a gift she wouldn’t see tainted.

“Well, I should let you get some
sleep.
 
Good night, darlin’.”

“Good night, Lucky.”
 
But as she closed her eyes, she knew any
sleep that came tonight would be hollow and restless at best.

Chapter
Seven

A one, a colon, and two zeroes glowed
dimly red when Lucky rubbed his eyes and pulled the digital clock closer to the
edge of the nightstand by the bed.
 
Trista had fallen asleep in his arms less than two hours ago but she now
lay a foot or so away from him, on her back and seemingly agitated.
 
She lifted a shoulder, almost to her ear and
then laid it back down near her pillow.
 
Her arms lay in an x across her chest, wrists inward and almost wrapped
around each other.

He could guess she wasn’t in the middle
of a good dream but didn’t want to wake her up if it wasn’t necessary.
 
He waited for her to relax again and
hopefully fall back to sleep on her own.
 
Resting on his side, he propped up his head and waited.

“Please, don’t.”
 
Her whispered plea barely made it to his ears
and he debated again whether to wake her.

“No, don’t.”

That time was loud and clear.

Gently, he rubbed Trista’s shoulder to try
and rouse her from the bad dream.
 
“Trista, wake up.
 
It’s okay.’

But she was sound asleep.
 
He would have to shake her pretty hard and
didn’t want to.
 
She was quiet again, but
had twisted her forearms out and away from her body then back lower, toward her
belly,
losing the covers he had tried to keep wrapped
around her so she wouldn’t be cold.
 
Again, she rubbed the insides of her wrists against each other and then
brought them back up into the protective criss-cross over her chest.
 
She then rolled over onto her side and was
quiet and still.
 
He gently scooted back
up behind her, close enough that she might sense he was there but far enough
away that he wouldn’t frighten her with an unexpected touch.
 
He remained in that guarded position until
satisfied she was okay, then allowed
himself
to fall
back asleep.

* * * *

The sun was not up yet, but Trista
was.
 
She couldn’t sleep, she didn’t want
to anymore.
 
Not with those dreams.
 
Carefully, she rolled off the side of the bed
and tip toed over to her suitcase.
 
She
lifted the unzipped lid and pulled out the clothes she had laid out last
night.
 
After slipping out of her
nightgown and into her dress and tights, she then grabbed her toiletry bag and
travel-sized plastic cup and headed over to the sink.
 
Lurking around dark rooms, staying quiet so
as not to awaken sleeping bodies either in beds or passed out on floors was her
specialty.

After brushing her teeth and pulling her
hair back into disheveled neatness, she slid into her Mary Janes and went to
the small round table near the TV to write Lucky a note.
 
Her nausea grew now that she was close to
leaving this sheltered space.
 
She wrote
only enough to keep Lucky from worrying.
 

“Lucky, I
couldn’t sleep anymore so I’m up and out early to take care of my business.
 
Sorry to leave you stranded here without a
ride.
 
I don’t know how long I’ll be but
I’ll check in with you later.
 
Thanks
friend, Trista.”
 
She set the note,
the pen and the extra room key on the table and quietly exited their room.
 
Lucky hadn’t moved the whole time.
 
She was
very
practiced.

 
The early morning darkness of March would give
way to the sunrise soon.
 
Trista turned
her heater on but rode with the windows down.
 
Truth be told, she was close to freezing.
 
The cold wind acted as an elixir that numbed
her skin enough to endure the biting chill it caused.
 
The vicious circle of hurting and healing was
thoughtless and something she had become too good at.
 

She drove north, away from Lucky and
their hotel and toward the sleepy state highway that would take her west into
Duketown.
 
With the
stereo turned off, the only sound came from the gusty wind roiling around
outside, making its way within the roll bars of her Jeep.
 

The last time she had made this part of
the drive had been the summer of 1986.
 
Gramma was still traveling with the diner back then.
 
Twelve
years old,
she thought, remembering the tender age she’d been when Gramma
had come to Duketown and rescued her.
 
Not looking back, she had sat in the front seat, soaking wet and a
bloody mess.
 
Gramma drove them west,
away from it all, her left hand on the steering wheel and her right hand
holding firmly onto Trista’s makeshift bandages while her wrists bled
steadily.
 
That part didn’t matter.
 
She was being taken away, gratefully, to a new
life on the road with Gramma.

And now, after all these years, she was
back.

The large wrought iron cemetery gates
were closed when she arrived.
 
She could
park along the shoulder of the main road and make her way on foot if she didn’t
want to wait for them to open.
 
Two
decades hadn’t erased the memory of the day she’d stood bravely by, hand in
hand with her half-siblings, as her mother’s heavy wooden casket had been
lowered into the ground.
 
Two rows from the back gate, three spaces
over to my right
.

That day she had plucked a dandelion out
of the ground and laid it atop the hated box.
 
Today she would finally be able to lay a proper, fresh bouquet of yellow
daffodils against the headstone.
 
Flowers that would say “I’m doing fine, momma.
 
I love you.”
 
Hopefully her mom hadn’t really been watching from above all these
years, helpless to see what Trista had been left to.
 

That would have been cruel.
 

She wasn’t ready to get out of the Jeep
yet.
 
Wasn’t ready to
be here, period.
 
So, she signaled
left and pulled back out onto the main road and drove a few more miles to where
she would turn to head to her old street.
  

The library was new.
 
There hadn’t been one when she was growing
up.
 
Many business fronts looked
abandoned but the harsh weather in this area tended to give that appearance to
the buildings.
 
A small four-sided house
with a tree smashed through the roof stood alone near the roadway.
  

Things hadn’t changed all that much.
 
The most familiar objects to pinch her nerves
were the churches and the creeks.
 
There
was one located just about every mile or so as she continued her slow drive.

With a hitch in her heartbeat, she made
the turn that would lead her down the road to her old house.
 
It hadn’t been part of her plan.
 

For good reason.
 

She was here to visit momma’s side of the
grave, curse his side, and get the closure she needed—and that was it.
 
All she could handle.
 
Coming back to the house was dangerous.

But she made her way cautiously down the
road, trepid curiosity stringing her along.
 
The tall, white steeple of the church came into view as a warning that
she was almost there.
 
A couple hundred
feet further down the road, she slowed.
 
The sight of it made her stomach curdle so forcefully that she had to
pull over.
 
She sat in her Jeep, the sun
having just risen, and stared through bleary eyes at the rundown wooden
house.
 
Its front porch sank in places
and a wash of dirt and climbing plants covered what had been a plain but proper
white painting.
 
The screens were torn if
not missing.
 

This worn down structure looking like it
would cave in soon if left to withstand the elements alone, mirrored her
feelings.
 
No one should be living
here.
 
She guessed that in the four
months since her stepfather’s death, no one had.
 

Lily and Jack had left it to itself.
 
While estranged, she didn’t blame them.

With slow and deliberate moves, she
breathed in deeply and got out of the Jeep, walked over to the porch, passed it
by and found the window frame of her old bedroom.
 
She closed her eyes tightly and sank to the
leafy ground beneath her.
 

What in the
hell am I doing here?

The town would awake soon and she’d have
to hide from their prying eyes.
 
A
stranger didn’t pass through here without being noticed.
 

But she couldn’t move.
 
She couldn’t stop the reel of memories
playing out in her head.
 
Her nights of muffled crying.
 
Of trying not to scare her
little sister and brother.
 
Of not
wanting them to know what a monster their father was and the only reason she
wouldn’t runaway, for their protection.
 
Why he had chosen her in the way he had, she didn’t know.
 
Perhaps in his twisted mind, the lack of
blood relation was enough.
 
Maybe he saw
too much of her mother in her and he needed that, no matter the blackness it
would leave within her young soul.
 

She saw herself closing the door to her
siblings’ room and following him to his and her mother’s old room.
 
She could hear his voice, telling her it was
because he loved her that he needed her like this.
 
And that if she really
loved her momma, she would be kind to him and obey.
 
That she would keep this secret because to
let it out would mean taking him away from his two real children.
 
The two he seemed to be a good father to.
 
She was only ten when the abuse had started,
but she had enough sense, even at that young age, to know how important it was
that she stayed and did as she was told.

For two years, she complied
obediently.
 
For two years, she looked
out the front window, to the pristine white steeple across the street and
wondered how she could be so near but so far from its protective reach.
 
At one point, she had twisted the thought
around so much that she figured what was happening must not have been wrong for
it to have been taking place so close to the church.
 
But even that sick reasoning eventually
caved.
 

The day he came home and during their
nightly talk told her he was pulling her out of public school for
homeschooling, she knew her chances of escaping this wretched life had
ended.
 
He became so angry with her for not
touching him as he had always asked her to before they had intercourse.
 
The successive slaps that bullied her cheeks
and the tears that burned down them came without a sound.
 
She remained silent until he finished.
 
And then after being sent off to her room,
one that he had moved her younger sister out of, she waited.
 
Once all traces of light disappeared from
under her doorway, she dressed and carefully snuck out the window.
 

Not caring about the dark or the
country’s nighttime creatures, she found her way to the creek.
 
The only thing she was sure of was that she
had mistakenly been given to the devil and now she was getting away.
 
It didn’t help that her swollen eyes made it
hard to see but worse was how numb her other senses had become.
 
Not paying particular attention to her path,
she slipped on a crag of sharp, wet rocks.
 
Fresh gashes along her bare legs made her almost cry out.
 
But she held it in.
 

She sat herself upright, her bottom
soaking in the creek’s few inches of icy running water.
 
She ran her fingers over the tops of the
sharp rocks. Never having fallen on them before, she was amazed at how easily
they had cut through the skin of her calf.