The Runaways

Chapter 33

Even in the low light, the downstairs looked a little too much like home, not enough to cry about, but enough to sting.

Even the smells were familiar, from the musty stink of dead hay, to the reek of rotten wood hanging in the air. The ugliest years of my life happened between walls like these, the kind that were thin enough to suck in the summer heat, but too thick to breathe it back out.

All the memories I’d had in that goddamn slaughterhouse worked the same way.

Nothing ever left. Not even if I wanted it to.

Every bad thing that ever happened there buried itself in the doors, walls and floors deeper than the termites could. But the worst ones were still buried in me.

From the looks of things, Georgia’d left a couple of her memories here too. Everything from old pictures of her and Dean, to half-painted tables he probably never finished. The barn would’ve been better off empty, ‘cause the furniture kept his ghost alive in a place that died a long time ago.

I climbed up to the second floor before the first one got too far under my skin.

Georgia and Dean did justice to the upstairs. They’d built a little loft that overlooked the wheat field-spanning out towards the woods. I hadn’t seen a comfortable reclining chair like the one’s they’d left lying around the loft in years. Liam never spent any money on anything so I’d gotten used to being uncomfortable.

Georgia and Dean had the place stocked up like they’d planned to live here at one point. Maybe they had. Whatever the loft was for, they’d done a lot with a little bit, and I respected that. This was the kinda space I could start over in if I had the chance to. It wasn’t much, just a couple of wood barrel tables, an old stove and some makeshift cabinets, but I liked things simple.

Not too sure whose fault it was, but somebody’d left a half-empty crate of moonshine stashed under a pile of moving boxes. I picked out a jar of the stuff, kicked back in a Lazy-Boy, and fell in love with the view.

The old shadows of the Blue Ridge Mountains stuck out against the skyline while the sun dimmed away under the trees. But as pretty as it was, I didn’t have the peace of mind to pay much attention to anything else but that empty road.

 I thought about drinking to pass the time, there wasn’t anything else to do anyway. If Georgia caught me sloshing around in her barn, she’d slap me silly, but after sitting alone for a while losing my mind to sound of crickets, I figured a little bit of moonshine was worth gettin’ hit over.

Funny thing was, every time I got myself into something I didn’t want Georgia to catch me doing, she’d show up. Two sips in, I relaxed a little. The road stayed quiet.

Four sips in, I figured I’d be spending the night like this, alone and slowly going outta my mind.

By the time I got through a third of that Mason jar, headlights flickered at the far end of the road. I’d had enough moonshine in my life to know how to hold my liquor, but seeing that truck speeding up towards the house had me doubting the Irish in me.

Just when I thought Georgia’d leave her truck in the driveway, she veered right and headed straight for the barn, revving the engine like an off-road lunatic. Being as old as she was, I don’t know how she saw my lamplight from so far way. I figured Hailey was the reason behind that miracle.

Georgia drove over that field in half the time it took me to walk it, which depressed the hell out me. That and the fact that it was still too damn dark to see whether or not the girl I’d been waiting for all day was sitting safely in the passenger’s seat. Georgia parked right in front of the barn, and popped out of the truck just to start shouting at me as soon as her feet hit the dirt.