Most sixteen-year-olds spend their time behind a wheel, driving just because they can. In a small town like Peaks, that meant teenagers circled a well-traveled loop, stopping at places like the old movie theater on Seventh and Val’s Diner on Main, drinking milkshakes and shooting spit wads across checkered flooring. Or taking the occasional back road to see if cows really could be tipped.
That was my plan.
Bethany, however, had no interest in the well-worn loop. And she knew cows didn’t sleep standing up. She wanted to ditch Peaks and drive to far-off cities like Los Angeles and New York. So we spent our freshman year of high school planning and plotting everything we’d do the minute I stepped out of the DMV with my driver’s license.
We had no idea that instead of driving with my dad to the DMV, we’d be riding in a limousine to a funeral. We had no idea cancer lurked in my mother’s brain, eating it from the inside out. We had no idea that instead of fun and friendship meeting behind the wheel of a new car, solace and grief would meet beneath the branches of our willow tree. The very branches Bethany and I had spent entire summers swinging from, splashing into the water. Clueless that one day, the same willow that brought so much laughter would cradle my tears.
I leaned my head against the rough bark, lifted my wrist to my nose, and inhaled the scent of my mother’s perfume. It seemed impossible that only yesterday I’d sat in a fold-up chair at the funeral, wondering what to do with my hands, my heart, and the now empty space at our kitchen table.
A car door slammed in the distance.
“That’s the fifth one today,” Bethany said, twirling a long blade of grass between her fingers.
“Six if you count repeat visits.” Ever since Mom’s death, a constant stream of visitors showed up on our doorstep, bearing warm meals and sad faces. I was tired of seeing them. Tired of the constant reminder that Mom was gone, and I was still here. Bethany must have known, because this morning, when the doorbell rang twice in the span of a single hour, she rolled her eyes and brought me here—to our tree.
“Do you want to go to a movie tomorrow night?” she asked.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“So?”
“So we order pizza and play Scrabble on Sundays.” Bethany and I had been eating pizza and playing Scrabble with my parents every Sunday since we first met at Peaks Laundromat four years ago. My mother was a Scrabble queen. All four of us liked to make up words.
“I thought you’d want to do something different.”
I sat with her suggestion, letting it soak while a bullfrog croaked to the waning daylight, until I decided I couldn’t do that to my father. I couldn’t leave him alone at our house. I couldn’t throw a last-minute change into our well-established routine. “I think we should keep it the same,” I said. “For my dad.”
Bethany shrugged.
And that’s what we did. For the next three years.
We ate Mom’s favorite pizza and played Scrabble every Sunday night. Until Bethany went away to college. The very next Sunday, Dad ordered Chinese. He poked at noodles with his chopsticks and sat in his recliner while the television flickered with football. He looked happy. Or maybe relieved.
I spent the evening in my room, moving Scrabble squares across the board.