When Clyde Parker, the wayward son and the rotten-apple of the Parker family-tree, storms his way back into Avery Fields, he sets out a flurry of butterfly effect in Dawn Marshal's life.
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STEELY BLUE FINGERS CLUTCHED the steering wheel, his eye remained steadfast on the freeway and his fingernails aggressively dug into the leather-a trait that ran in the family. Black Sabbath blasted from the car radio, loud enough to give him a migraine but not loud enough to blur out his train of thoughts. Angst-that's what he felt.
He wished he could make this white noise inside his head stop. He hated this. He hated having to sit around in a family dinner and spew out lies, he hated having to pretend to be someone else. He hated feeding his family, the two people he loved the most, a bag of lies straight out of his hand.
But he couldn't help it, he pretended to be someone else for so long that he forgot what it was to be himself. He was tossed so far away from the real him that returning to everything he used to be, appeared impossible. He wasn't ashamed of who he was, never, he just didn't know how to embrace it without letting other people down.
His father tried to cure him, as if he was a disease. His father, he tried to fix him a s if there was something broken inside him in the first place.
His father, he knew it even before he even knew it himself. His father knew it when he played with his sister's dolls instead of his toy cars, his father knew it when he hung a Bruce Springsteen poster in his bedroom instead of covering his walls with half-naked playboy bunnies like most boys his age did after hitting puberty. His father, albeit a royal douche-bag and an adulterer, was indeed an observant man.
He had devoted all his life to earning that man's approval, the kind of man who walked out on his wife and kids for a blonde bimbo. He tried to be so much like his father-a poised, white-collared, corporate-slave walking around with a stick up his ass screaming of toxic-masculinity.
He tried but no matter what, he couldn't be that man. He had beaten himself up for years for not being everything his father was.
If his sister was here, she would tell him not to let the man who walked out on his wife of 24 years and two kids for a woman half-his age control his life. She would tell him how much of a lesser man their father was for doing what he did, she would tell him how much of a coward their father was and how if he didn't accept himself he would be no better than their father.
His sister, she was a spitfire: she took no one's shit. He chuckled mildly to himself. He loved his sister, he truly did, even when he would never tell her that.
Frustrated, his knuckles smacked the breaks before his beat-up truck came to an abrupt screeching halt. He killed the engine and buried his face in his hands, letting himself cry for a little while. In that moment of weakness, he let himself waver too as he fished out his phone and punched a familiar number on the battered keypad. One last time.
Two rings, three rings till the call reached straight to voicemail. He tried again and again and again but all to no avail. He groaned in desperation, his mind, his body seeking a release, seeking an escape as he frisked all over the dashboard of his truck.
