The Way Life Should Be by William Dameron EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: William Dameron
- Language: English
- Genre: Family Life Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The Rock
Like most advice, it was better in theory than in practice. On the road, with
Abbie in the back seat, silent except to say, “Thomas, turn this crap radio
station off,” it lacked nuance. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Thomas lets
his gaze fall to the hospital band still wrapped around Abbie’s wrist, and he
wonders exactly how far he should take the advice. Should he have insisted
that Abbie sit in the front seat with him? Should he have forced her to hug
her mother and say goodbye? What exactly can you make a nineteen-yearold college dropout do? If Matt were here, he’d know what to say. He’s a
much better father than Thomas’ll ever be. He reaches forward and turns off
the radio. Glancing back up, he says, “It’s ‘Dad.’”
Abbie closes her eyes and leans her head back on the seat, filaments of
her shoulder-length blond hair electric white in the morning light. Thomas
looks through the car window at the red clay fields and rows of soybean and
tobacco sprouting green, flickering by like the spokes of a wheel. Every
now and then, a cross appears in the field that surrounds a solitary lowslung brick ranch with white trim and black shutters. He imagines the
occupants of the house, a grandmother who still puts up green beans in
mason jars and her husband, who tends to the vegetable garden out back.
They go to church every Sunday. A needlepoint sampler hangs in the foyer:
One day at a time, sweet Jesus. The Antique White paint beneath it remains
unfaded. Perhaps Grandma lost a child during birth, or Grandpa killed a
man in some military conflict in a remote jungle. It would be impolite—unSouthern—to talk about such things, and so the bones of those travesties lie
silent in shadows deep. For no reason at all, the angled sunlight illuminating
the underside of an oak tree as it fades into the distance fills Thomas with
an unutterable sadness. Makes him feel like a sinking stone.
He tells himself they’ll both feel better once they make it across the
North Carolina state line, every tick of the odometer moving them a step
away from this tightness in his chest, this inability to breathe properly—this
silence. Thirteen hours. Once they get to Maine, ahead of the impending
storm, everything will be OK.
“Did I tell you we can see the ocean from our cottage?” he asks the
mirror. “In the evening, when the sun hits the backs of the beach houses,
they glow like a string of pearls.”
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