Beyond Eighteen(85)
I rolled into my driveway, my body reacting to every vision I had of Wilson—my pants were that much tighter. Great, Max, you’re gonna walk into your house with a raging hard-on.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I recognized the ringtone, and it was one I’d been wanting to ignore for the last couple of days. Well, there goes my hard-on.
“Hi, Gary.”
“Hi, Max, I wanted to catch you before you made any plans,” he said.
“Oh, really, what’s up?” I asked, knowing by the tone of his voice it wasn’t going to be anything I wanted to hear.
“Well, I just got a call from a couple of companies that are talking about leaving. Saying that your father is what kept them coming back. I’m going to need you to meet with them.”
Wouldn’t you know it? “What are we talking about, Gary?” I huffed.
“Well, Holtz’s Oil will meet you tomorrow, but the big account that’s ready to pull out wants to meet you Saturday mid-morning.”
“Well, don’t they know that Saturday is New Year’s Day? Who is it?”
“Yeah, it’s Glück Petroleum. I’m really sorry, Max, but if we lose—”
“I know, alright, I’ll deal with it. Thanks, Gary,” I said as I hung up the phone. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to go to California. Not until I took care of business.
Chapter Thirty
~ Wilson ~
I did what Max told me to do. I went over to my grandma’s china cabinet, pulled open the middle drawer, and tossed the letter inside. It was the same drawer where she kept all of her spit-shined silver serving spoons and spatulas. The same one I always used to hide anything I didn’t want anyone to read or find. See, the thing about my grams, she wasn’t one who would entertain people at the house. Most of the time the fine china and polished silver were valued more as a form of art than anything else. I’m not saying my grams couldn’t cook, she could; all I’m saying is that as she got older, she chose to keep those dishes right where they were. To her, the work wasn’t worth the hassle.
“So you aren’t going to open it?” Joanie said as she shut the door of the stove. She’d been able to get the fire raging, and the room was starting to warm.
“Well, not right now,” I answered.
“I think you should. It’s time to find out what the hell that woman wants; if not for you…open it for me. I’ve spent my whole life hearing about her, and finally something shows up that just might tell us why she did the things she did, and you are willing to shove it in a drawer with useless silver and God knows what else.”
“J, this isn’t about that! It’s about the fact that I’ve spent my entire life, running from the pain she inflicted on me since the day she left me and every day after,” I said, feeling the anger for Candi burn through my body.
Joanie walked over pulled open the drawer. Every movement she made seemed to go in slow motion—her fingers pulling the envelope from the drawer, the sound of the paper dragging against the wooden edge—I watched Joanie’s eyes narrow and her lips curl as words began to pour from her mouth.
“Wilson, it’s time you stop running. Don’t you think it’s time to close that book? At least turn the page of the story you’ve been stuck rereading every day of your life since she abandoned you on that porch. Face those fears, doubts, and pain, sweetheart. You’ll never know what could happen if you don’t ever turn the page,” Joanie whispered as she held the letter out in front of me.
I’m not going to lie, a big part of me, feared being rejected all over again by her. The other part of me looked at it from an aspect of respect for my grandparents and what they sacrificed for me. They didn’t run; they didn’t choose drugs over me. They stuck by me, giving up the freedoms older people probably took for granted. I knew what they did for me, and if I read her letter I was afraid it would nullify everything they forfeited to make my life something better than their shitty daughter’s existence.
“I’m sorry, J, I can’t,” I answered as I turned and walked away, dropping it on the table.
I glanced back long enough to see her shoulders round as she walked over to the table, picked up the goldenrod envelope and slid it back into the silverware drawer of the china cabinet.
Neither of us said anything more about it the rest of the evening. Dinner was quiet, to say the least. I didn’t eat much, just a bowl of minestrone soup. I think the fact that my stomach was still riddled with knots and indigestion had a lot to do with it. All I wanted to do was sleep. I wanted to feel Max hold me, hear him tell me everything was going to be alright. I ached to feel his voice tickle at my ear as he made me feel safe. I pulled my phone from my pocket and was about to call him when I saw that he’d texted me.