Lyrics of a Small Town by Abbi Glines

Forty

Saul was sitting on Gran’s front porch when I pulled into the driveway right beside his blue truck at six the next morning. He stood up when he saw me and started down the stairs. Just seeing him was hard. It hurt so bad that breathing became difficult. I had missed him and now I would miss him even more. Taking a deep breath, I opened my car door and stepped out. Sleep had never come for me last night and Hillya was right, nothing looked clearer or brighter this morning.

I closed the car door and looked at him. He stopped then. His eyes had darker circles than the last time I saw him. His hair looked as if he had run his hands through it a dozen times. I wondered for a moment if he had been here all night.

“Where were you?” he asked, his voice deeper than usual.

“Hillya’s,” I replied. “I didn’t expect you to come here last night.”

His brows drew together. “I called and texted you several times.”

This was so hard. Even after all I knew, I loved him. I couldn’t forgive him, but I couldn’t stop loving him either. “I turned off my phone.”

“Why?”

He was angry with me. It was clear on his face. He was here ready to accuse me of something. Did he honestly think I was lying to him? The irony of it all struck me and my exhaustion from his betrayal didn’t mix well. My temper flared for the first time since I had been told about him and Isla.

“Oh, I don’t know Saul. Maybe because you went to your married girlfriend’s house first before you came here? That might have been a reason for me not to want to talk to you.”

His eyes narrowed and he took a step toward me. “What?” he finally asked.

He wasn’t going to admit it. Instead he was looking at me as if I was making this up. The way a guy looks at a girl he thinks is crazy. Anger coursed through me. Anger that he had hurt me, that he had made me love him, that he had lied to me. Anger that he would have an affair with a married woman. A mother with a child!

“You heard me,” I shouted. “I know where you went last night and that’s not the first time I’ve seen you with Isla. I saw you before at the Hendrix, but I convinced myself that it was innocent. Even after I asked what you did that day and you lied to me. You never said a word about seeing Isla. Then you don’t tell me you’re coming home. You go straight to her house to see her. Jesus, Saul! Do you not have any morals? She is married. She has a child! I understand that you have had a hard life. I get it. I have seen what you go through. That doesn’t give you an excuse for sleeping with a married woman. Forget that you lied to me and told me we were exclusive. Forget that you cheated on me. We haven’t been together that long. We weren’t serious enough. Whatever but she is married!” I stopped, needing to breathe. I had been yelling. All the pain inside had finally burst free and I blurted it all out. It didn’t make me feel better just as my tears hadn’t taken away any of the sorrow. Maybe in time but not yet.

Saul’s expression was now blank. There was no reaction. No anger, no remorse, no anything. We stood there, me glaring at him and breathing hard. Him cold and calm. I was sure my heart had broken enough, but in those seconds, I could have sworn it splintered into a million pieces.

“Is that all?” he asked, breaking the silence.

I couldn’t speak. I just stood there wishing he would say something to make this better. Something that made sense. I wished… I wished… he cared just a fraction of how much I did.

I stood there even after he walked past me.

I stood there after he got into his truck and I heard the door close.

I stood there when the engine started up and the shells in the driveway sounded like gravel as his tires backed out onto the road.

I stood there until I no longer heard the engine.

Then I walked up the stairs, unlocked the door, walked inside and crumpled to the floor as sobs shook my body.

It was like this that Rio found me. I didn’t look up at him when he said my name. When he bent down and wrapped his arms around me, I didn’t hear what he said. My sobbing subsided and a numbness began to ease over me. It seemed like a dream when Rio stood me up and walked me back to the bedroom. Once I was lying down, he covered me up and walked out, closing my bedroom door behind him.

The week passed and I managed to pull myself together. Rio had moved into the guest bedroom at some point while I was at work the next day. Hillya had told me to stay home, but I needed to work. Staying home meant thinking. I didn’t want to think. Thinking always led to Saul. It was easier to stay busy.

I didn’t ask Rio about what had happened between him and Saul. I couldn’t say his name and I didn’t want to hear it spoken. I knew though from things he had said that after he found me that he and Saul had a falling out. That was what I didn’t want to happen, but I didn’t have a way to fix it. I hadn’t set this ball in motion. Saul had.

When Sunday came, I didn’t want to take the day off, but Hillya insisted. My distraction came however in the form of my mother. I was brushing my teeth, trying to think of something to do to fill my day when Rio called down the hall. “Uh, Henley, you got company.”

I spit the toothpaste out of my mouth and hadn’t even rinsed it yet when I heard her footsteps followed by, “Why the hell have you not been answering my calls?”

I dried my mouth and turned to look at her. “Hello, Mother.”

“Don’t start with me. You’ve ignored me about this will and forced me to come to this… this place. We have to discuss what we are going to do with the house and you have some guy here with you? Already? Seriously, Henley what has gotten into you?” My mother’s loud, annoyed tone was not for this specific occasion. She spoke this way to me most of the time.

I walked past her and toward the kitchen. “Good to see you too,” I replied.

Rio was eating a bowl of cereal and sitting at the bar when I walked in the room. His eyes went wide when he saw me. I hadn’t heard her come in so there was no telling what she said to him.

“Do not walk away from me. I had to take off work to drive down here,” my mother said as she followed me into the kitchen. Her high heels clicking against the hardwoods.

“You didn’t have to do anything, Mom. You chose to,” I replied and reached for a coffee cup. I had just brushed my teeth, but I needed more caffeine to deal with her and some whiskey would help.

“We have to make a decision about the house and my daughter wouldn’t answer my calls. I had no choice,” she informed me.

I looked at her. “We don’t have a decision to make. The will states the house is mine. Not ours. Mine. Me. It’s mine.”

She glared at me. “And you know what to do with it?” She pointed at Rio. “You move here to do some ridiculous list for my mother and end up shacking up with some guy you just met. That’s not maturity, Henley. It’s foolishness.”

I took a drink of my coffee before responding. “I’m not shacking up with him. That would be disgusting since he’s my brother and all. Remember Rebel, my dad, well, this would be his son.” I looked at Rio. “Rio meet Lyra Warren, my mother. Mother this is Rio March. I’m sure you remember his mother, Manda March. Since y’all once loved the same guy.”

My mother’s face paled. Finally she was at a loss for words. I took advantage of it. “Gran’s list wasn’t ridiculous stuff she wanted me to take to people at her death. No, it was much more than that. Gran led me on a path and along the way I found Hillya, you know my other grandmother, and Rio here.”

My mother looked at Rio then back at me. “You spoke to Hillya?” she asked.

“Daily. I work for her,” I replied then took another sip of my coffee. I couldn’t remember a time in my life I had spoken to my mother like this. But then before now, before this summer, I hadn’t known all the lies she had fed me my entire life.

“Can we talk about this in private?” she asked with her teeth clenched.

“Nope. Rio can hear whatever you have to say and as you can see he is eating,” I told her.

My mother shot him an annoyed glare then crossed her arms over her chest. “So you find out these things and you are now planning on what? Staying here in The Shores? Working at a coffee shop for Hillya? You have one year left of college, remember? Or did you decide to settle down here and give up your dreams of owning your own boutique?”

This was something that had needed to be said a long time ago but I hadn’t wanted to upset my mother or let her down. I put my coffee on the counter and then looked at her. It was time I told her the truth too.

“Those were your dreams, Mom. That’s your boutique. That was what you wanted. Not me. I never wanted it. You just told me I did. I don’t enjoy fashion. I’m not good at it. But I am good at something else and you always acted like it was a hobby and I believed it was too. Until I came here and realized I could have a future doing what I loved. I can still finish college and in fact I intend to. I want my business degree. I just don’t want it so that I can own a boutique.”

My mother looked at me as if I had just spoken another language that she didn’t understand. “What hobby do you think you can have a career at, Henley? I’ve built that boutique and the brand. It’s ready to expand and even franchise. We planned this. We worked for it.”

I shook my head. “No. You planned it. Not me. And baking, Mom. I love creating new things. I love taking recipes and making them dairy-free and gluten-free. I enjoy the challenge to make it good. To make something people want.”

She laughed then. A hard, cold laugh. “You are joking, right? That college degree you have worked for, you think you can use to bake cookies? Henley, that is insane. You can’t make a living doing something like that.”

“Hillya does,” I replied.

“Hillya bakes regular things most people eat and she makes coffee drinks. That is not the same thing,” my mother shot back, looking pleased with herself.

“This past month I began making gluten, dairy, and nut-free things for Hillya’s shop. Every morning, they sell out. Every day, someone new comes in because they heard we have the things I bake. Hillya said that fifty percent of last month’s revenue was from the things I baked and the coffee drinks I created for allergy-sensitive people.”

My mother sniffed and shook her head as if she didn’t believe me. She was running out of argument and I could see it on her face. She was difficult and headstrong. She was also vain and selfish, but she was mine. She was the only mother I would ever have and I loved her despite her flaws. I loved her despite the fact she lied to me.

However, I could love her and choose my own path. I was done letting her decide for me because I didn’t want to upset her. The fact was my mother was always upset about something. It was just how she was. I had just given her something new to be upset about.

“Your plan is to live in this house, work for Hillya and then what? Take over her place one day? That’s what you want?” she asked, some of her steam was gone.

I shrugged. “Right now I don’t have a plan. I don’t know that I am staying here. All I know is that I don’t have to make a decision overnight. I have time.”

Mother reached up and tucked a dark strand of her hair behind her ear. She fidgeted when she was upset or anxious. My changing things on her had done both. She liked knowing what the future held. It was the reason for her constant state of aggravation. Since she wasn’t a fortune teller.

“I have a boutique to run. I can’t stay here and talk sense into you. Since Will died, you’ve been changing. This shouldn’t surprise me. But I will give you time. You’ll come to your senses. I think your gran passing has put more of a strain on you than I realized. I’ll just go back home and when you are ready to join me, I’m there.”

I would never be ready to join her back there again. That much I did know.

“Drive safe,” I told her. “And Mom, I love you.”

She took a deep breath and stepped forward to give me a brief hug before moving back. “I love you too, of course,” she replied. My mother was so different than her parents, I often wondered how she came from them.

She glanced at Rio again who was now eating his muffin. “I hope your grandparents are well,” she said. “I am sorry about your mother.” Her words were stiff, but she was trying. This was the best one could expect from Lyra Warren.

Rio nodded. “They’re just fine,” he replied. “Thank you.”

Mom started for the door and I wondered if I should ask her to stay the night but decided against it. The longer she stayed, the more she would want to try and convince me to come back to Chattanooga. I didn’t need to deal with that right now. I didn’t have the strength.

She paused at the door and looked back, but she didn’t look at me. She looked at Rio. “You look like him and your voice. It sounds just like him,” she said.

Rio turned to look at her.

“Rebel that is. Your uh, father,” she added. Then she turned around and opened the door.

“Bye, Mom,” I called out.

She lifted her perfectly manicured hand and waved at me. “Bye, Henley.”

When the door closed behind her, Rio let out a low whistle. “Jesus Christ, lord and savior, that woman is scary as hell.”

I leaned against the counter and picked my coffee back up. “You have no idea,” I replied then took a drink and watched from the window as she drove away.