They had American flags hanging from slanted poles beside their front doors. Some didn’t fly American flags but purple and white ones, with a bulldog emblazoned on it, the high school mascot. In those houses you knew they had a kid at school, probably an athlete or a cheerleader or the owners were alumni themselves or both. Others were gold and black Purdue flags or red and white IU flags. Others still were seasonal, orange, brown and gold leaf designs in fall, pastel flowers in spring, Easter eggs, Halloween witches, Christmas poinsettias or snowmen.
There were tons of trees planted willy-nilly, not in formation, not in a design some landscape architect sketched on a pad. And the trees were big and tall with wide trunks that grew so far out they’d cracked the sidewalks and full branches that, when they had leaves in a month or two, would throw so much shade during the hot, humid summer months, the entire neighborhood would feel like a cool breeze.
It was a great neighborhood and Colt’s house was the house he bought for Melanie.
Colt married Melanie Seivers about five years after I left. Their divorce was final three years ago but she’d been gone a year before that.
She’d been in the year behind me in school – pretty, dark hair, dark eyes, sweet, quiet, a lot like Amy except Melanie was tall. I knew her in school and I knew her after it. She’d come over with Colt when I was there for family occasions.
You had to hand it to Melanie, even with me being what I used to be to Colt, she was always nice to me. Never made me feel funny, never made me feel like she felt funny around me. She was just a nice gal.
She couldn’t get pregnant though, not Colt’s faulty equipment, hers. She took it hard. Although my parents, Morrie nor Delilah ever talked much about it to me, when Mom called and said Melanie left Colt and they were getting divorced she finally talked about it, though not much.
“Some women… don’t know, Feb… they just see no purpose in life without kids. Melanie was like that, just slipped through Colt’s fingers no matter how he tried to grab hold. She gave him no choice, he had to let go.”
I knew what she meant though not about the kids. He’d had another girl slip through his fingers who he’d tried to grab hold. I figured he knew when to stop trying.
Melanie had moved to another small town at the other side of the city. Not far, as the crow flies, but with the city in the way and having to navigate the highways and by-ways to get from here to there, she might as well have been in another state. I didn’t know what she was doing now without kids or Colt in her life. I did know I thought she was all kinds of crazy for leaving Colt. Colt was a man with all that entailed but even I wasn’t fool enough to think, when you got down to it, he wasn’t a good one.
Once Dad turned off the ignition to the RV, Wilson and me jumped out the side door. I had him in a kitty carrier in one hand, I had my bag in the other and I had my purse slung over my shoulder.
Colt had been standing in his front yard watching Dad trying to park from attempt two through attempt four. He walked up to me when Wilson and me jumped down from the RV and without even looking at me he grabbed onto Wilson and then leaned around me and grabbed my bag and then he walked into the house.
I looked behind me to see Mom carrying Wilson’s litter box. She jutted her chin to the door and I sucked in a breath, let it out and then followed Colt into my new nightmare.
When I walked into the living room, the cat box was on the coffee table and Colt was crouched in front of it, opening the wire door.
I took this time to look around.
I was surprised to see Colt had pretty much erased Melanie unless she wasn’t that into interior design. The place wasn’t a bachelor pad by a long shot but it didn’t have flowered wallpaper or wreathes made of twigs or little angel figurines (all of which I imagined where the way Melanie would decorate her and Colt’s house).
There was a huge, double-wide frame on the wall, Colt’s purple and white high school football jersey next to his Purdue jersey, both laid out careful and identical, same number on each, sixty-seven, his last name “Colton” across the shoulders. They were pinned to the mat, framed in a box frame on the wall. I hadn’t seen it since he got it and sucked in a quiet breath just looking at it.
Dad had given that to him years ago for Christmas. Colt had liked it so much, after the wrapping fell away he took one look at it, one look at Dad and he left the room. I knew why; men weren’t good with displaying that kind of emotion. Dad got choked up too and hid it behind a cough. Mom just started crying. Morrie had followed Colt.
I shook off that memory because it included me getting choked up too at the time and I didn’t want to do it now so I kept looking around.