Torn Away

“So are you still living at the motel?” I asked.

“If you call it living, sure,” he answered.

“Is there power in Elizabeth yet?”

“Yes.”

I sipped my soda, feeling the cold sink down into my fingers and toes, the sugar and carbonation rushing to my head. I kicked off my shoes and held my feet under the floor vent, letting the air-conditioning dry my sweaty toes. I’d run out of things to ask him. He wasn’t going to give me answers—not real ones, anyway—so what was the point? We both slipped into silence. I leaned my head against the window and watched the lines being eaten up by the front of the truck, until my eyes were too heavy from watching and I fell asleep.

I awoke when my body sensed that we had stopped moving. I sat up straight, stretching my stiff neck, and looked around. We were in a parking lot, but not one I recognized. I peered out the window. We weren’t in Elizabeth, I could see that much. Ro

“Where are we?” I asked on a yawn. I grabbed my soda and took another sip. It had gotten warm and watery, but it still tasted like heaven. A sign on the side of a nearby building said WAVERLY PUBLIC LIBRARY.

“Waverly,” he said, as I made the co

“Waverly? Why?”

Waverly was about an hour southeast of Elizabeth. We’d driven through it once or twice on road trips, and Mom had always pointed out that she’d grown up there.

“Godforsaken hellhole,” she’d always say. “Hold your breath. You don’t want to breathe in judgment. Oppression is contagious.” And even though we had no idea what she was talking about, we’d always make a game of it—see who could hold their breath the longest. See if we could make it all the way through the town without taking a breath.

Ro

“I wanted to be there. I should have been.”

“I was trying to keep you from being hurt.”

“My mother died. It’s too late to keep me from being hurt. I should have been there.”

“Your mom’s parents came,” he said, leveling his eyes at me at last.

I sat back, stu

But they were alive.

And she was the dead one.

Ro

“She didn’t run away. They disowned her,” I said, not caring a bit. “That’s their own fault.”

“They live here in Waverly,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, and my insides started to turn cold as all the pieces fell into place. Mom growing up here, telling us to hold our breaths so we didn’t catch the oppression and judgment alive and well in Waverly. Ro

“But they didn’t bother to come by until now?” I wanted to keep him talking, to turn the conversation around. Maybe I could stop what I knew was coming. Maybe if I made him understand how much Mom hated them, he wouldn’t do what he was about to do. Again. “They didn’t care enough to try to see us until after she was dead?”

Ro

“You don’t do that,” I said, and I realized that I wasn’t sure if I was talking about my grandparents or about Mom or about Ro

“I’m sorry, Jersey,” Ro

“No,” I said. My nose dripped and soaked into my jeans. I clutched at his elbow. “Please, Ro

He shook his head and put the truck into drive. My hand slipped off his arm and landed in my lap in defeat. “I don’t hate you,” he said. “But I can’t take care of you. Every time I look at you, I see her. Every time I hear you talk, I think about how I let everyone down. I think about how I couldn’t save any of you. Not one.” He glanced at me as he turned down a side road, the street sign reading FLORA. The houses were tidy, landscaped, painted. Not big, but bigger than our old house. “What good am I to anyone if I can’t be there when it most matters?”

“But I’m still alive. You can still save me. It matters now.”

He pulled into a driveway. My tears slowed as I took in the white-and-brown Tudor-style house, flowers blooming in orderly raised beds surrounding the swept sidewalk. More flowers blooming in quaint window boxes. A saintly-looking statue on the front porch. The door opened slowly. I wiped my face with my palms.

“I know you don’t understand,” Ro

I tore my eyes away from the pale hand that still clutched the door. The hand must have belonged to one of my grandparents, but the shadows kept me from seeing who.

“You’re not going to stay where they’re buried?”

“Every time I look at that neighborhood, at the house, at every business and building I pass, I’m reminded of how I failed them. I can’t live a life that way. I’ve got to go.”

“So you’re abandoning all of us,” I said, not a question, but a statement.

“I’m saving myself,” he said very quietly.

It dawned on me that on some level I had expected Ro

“You’re a coward.” But before I could say any more, a gray-haired man wearing a plaid shirt and a baseball cap knocked on Ro