Learning to Live

Chapter 19

"She passed about a year after my dad."

Hunter looked out the window. I felt a warm weight on my thigh. Hunter's big hand looked tan against my jeans. I put my hand on his, steering the car with one hand. The perks of automatic cars.

Hunter turned his palm and our fingers linked, fitting together perfectly, like pieces of one broken soul.

We reached the shelter. I pulled up in the deserted parking lot. There were very few cars this time of the day. I killed the engine and we stayed in by silent agreement.

Hunter's touch anchored me to the present. Thinking about Mom was more difficult than thinking about Dad.

"We never speak about Mom, my brothers and I," I found myself saying. The words came easier than I expected.

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe because we resent her a little?" I sighed. "She... killed herself. It was a year or so after dad died.

"She was very close to Dad. They were best friends. More than best friends. Now that I think about it, her dependence on him wasn't exactly normal."

The words tasted like betrayal in my mouth. "She was my mother. I feel like shit talking about her like she's been mentally unstable."

"Was she? Mentally unstable?"

"I don't know. She passed away when I was ten. I didn't have as much memories with her as I had with my dad."

And every memory I had was tainted by the very last image of my mother. An empty bottle of pills. A limp hand. Blue lips. A cold body. I squeezed my eyes shut against the barrage of images.

Hunter's phone rang. He glanced at it then immediately cut the line.

"Shouldn't you get that?"

"It's fine."

"Anyway! We should go in," I said, letting go of the steering wheel. My fingers hurt. I flexed my hands.

I unstrapped my seat belt and hopped out of the car.

He took my hand, quietly, and we walked to the shelter, my heart a little lighter, a little warmer. A memory arose from the cobwebs corners of my mind. Of my mom holding my hand, hers so big and warm around mine, as we walked up to my dad, standing in the front door of our house with a big smile on his face.

I glanced at Hunter. It was difficult to believe that this big, brooding boy banished some of the darkness clinging to my memories of my mother. I smiled and squeezed his hand.

The shelter's name board above the double doors read Pawsome Shelter. The building was two stories, stretching over a big swath of land on the edge of town. With its own parking lot and a massive backyard that the dogs loved, it was considerably sized and could host more than a hundred animals at any given time from what I knew.

A couple got out the doors then, the woman carrying a little ball of golden fur. The two looked in love with the golden retriever puppy. The animal peeked at the world through dark, soulful eyes, ready to start a new life in his forever home.

Hunter's phone rang again. He sighed, pulled it out and cut the line on whoever it was. But I could almost swear I caught something like Mom on the screen before it went dark.

I pushed the door open, immediately hit by the faint smell of dogs under a heavy layer of air spray, a failed attempt to make the place smell less like a shelter and more like a home. Anushka, the shelter's manager, just wouldn't lose hope.

Barks and meows filled the place, the sounds making me smile. The walls of the reception area were covered with murals of cute dogs and cats, painted by one of the shelter's volunteers a few years ago.