I just wanted to go home. Kyle’s words stuck in my head. ‘If she wants to call you back she will’. Talos was gone. Trudy was gone. Derich was lost in his own pain. V was half way across the country in her management orientation.
I would just stop at the liquor store on the way home, get a bottle of brown sugar bourbon, and wash the night away. In three hours I would be wrapped up in a warm fuzzy blanket on the couch hoping the spins stop so I could wake up the next day without a care in the world.
The house that Trudy built was just a five minute detour off my hour drive home. I had driven by the main road many times because of accidents or detours on 84 but I hadn’t stopped by in years.
The new plan was to hit the liquor store, get a bottle, stop by the house, pay my respects to the memory of Marrianne’s parents, and THEN wash the night away on my couch. It was like something was calling me to the house and I had to be there.
I looked up obituaries on my phone. The funeral had been exactly one week earlier. It seemed like Trudy lingered after the heart attack. The site said Trudy was surrounded by Marrianne, her brother Charlie, and their respective families when she passed. No wonder Marrianne had been reaching out but not picking up.
The GPS app said the trip should take 45 minutes, that included the stop at the store.
The highway was empty except for the memories and reflections. I thought back to times spent on Marrianne’s porch before she headed off to college. I laughed about showing up a week late for her wedding and not realizing I was at the wrong wedding until they mentioned the name of the bride and the groom.
I thought about the last three years. Job loss, cash flow problems, and the fear that had woken me up nights. These things all seemed so small and temporary. I remembered Karen’s idea of steps rather than goals and tried to will away the worry.
The two bottles I picked up at the store clinked together as I turned off the main road on to the side street. I held on to them so they wouldn’t slide from the passenger’s seat to the floor. The brown sugar bourbon was for later. The small bottle of Jaegermeister was for the memory of Trudy.
I was caught off guard when I saw downstairs lights on and the small Subaru parked in the semicircular driveway. My heart jumped when the Vermont license plate came into view.
I parked next to the Subaru and slid the small bottle of Jager into my inner coat pocket.
It took two rounds of knocking before she finally came to the door. For a moment I thought she was going to, understandably, leave me out in the cold. Though there had been a lot of sporadic texting and the occasional phone call, it had actually been years since I had seen her in person.
“Hey,” she said quietly standing in the doorway. Her eyes were red from crying. Her silver lined curls were pulled back into a loose ponytail.
“I’m so sor..” I heard the catch in my voice and felt the tears welling. “I’m so sorry,” I finished, hanging my head. “I didn’t know. I was stopping by to pay my respects. I didn’t know anyone was here. I was going to do a shot of Jager on the porch then head to my house.”
I felt empty and small. I just wanted to go home.
“Both of my parents are gone,” she said as she hugged me and let herself cry into my shoulder. As much as I wanted to go home, something had called me to the house and I had to be there.
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