Like I said at the beginning, it gets worse.
I stormed past Sadie into the cottage, still enraged after the hour drive from Windber, unsure if I even parked the truck before jumping out. I picked up a hammer without slowing down and thrashed at the only remaining dividing wall in the living room where she was working. It wasn't my finest entrance.
"Hey, we're keeping that wall!" Sadie yelled. She stopped sweeping the floors and backed away with every bang of my hammer.
"Good," I said. I continued to beat the sheetrock until I was exhausted. There was a large hole in the center of the wall when I was finished and a lopsided pile of debris at my feet.
"I guess it didn't go very well with the lawyer," she said when I sat on top of the pile.
"Phil left him everything. Everything! And he knew! This whole time. And now he wants to buy me out and raise Noah and he loves me, or whatever, and I am completely freaking out." I put my face in my hands and fought tears for the millionth time that day.
"Slow down." She grabbed my hand and pulled me up from my spot on the floor. "Hey, Hector," she said as we passed him in the doorway, "We're calling it a day."
"It's only three!" he said as he continued inside.
"Bite me," she said.
Sadie didn't let go of my hand until we reached her truck. Any time I tried to say anything across the lawn, she'd make a zipping sound and yank me a little harder. She hoisted and stuffed me into the passenger seat like I was a child and ran around to her side, waving goodbye to the crew out front who was watching the commotion. I tried to speak inside the truck, but she held up her hand and took out her phone. "This is what we're going to do," she said. "Dolly Parton."
"Don't make me listen to more country music."
"Even better," Sadie said, tapping her phone. "Eighties-Pop Dolly."
"How is this going to help?"
"Just shut up and listen."
We drove in the direction of Windber, although I wasn't quite sure where we were going. We rolled down the windows and the scent of pine filled the truck as Sadie sped down the state road with the stereo at maximum volume. At first, I resisted the music––the eighties synths and the campiness––but eventually, somewhere between mile twenty and thirty, I couldn't help but embrace the loud ridiculousness of it and Sadie's husky voice screaming along. It made me feel like we were soaring through a time machine without the restrictions of gravity or emotions or memory. I let my arm float out the window and enjoyed the racing wind on my skin. But every time I felt almost happy, I suddenly remembered the reading of the will. I couldn't wrap my mind around how bombarded and betrayed I felt.
Sadie turned the volume down when she noticed I was no longer nodding my head along to the music and flying my arm on the breeze out the window. "Arguably one of her best albums," she continued. "Everyone always overlooks Eighties-Pop Dolly, but I know what's up."
"I don't see what this has to do with Darren lying to me," I said.
"Have you ever been to a wine tasting?"
"Are we going to a winery? Where are we going? What does this have to do with anything?"
"Rita always drags me to these swanky wineries. You're not supposed to drink the wine, they have these disgusting spit buckets, and the people look at me like I'm crazy when I down every glass. I'm drunk before we even get to the whites. Anyway, they have little palate cleansers, for those who can't party like me, between the different wines. It's so that the flavors don't mix and you can fully experience what each individual wine has to offer. Dolly was your palate cleanser. You had your taste of anger, now try something else."
"How did you get so wise all of the sudden?"
"You don't stay married this long without a few tricks up your sleeve." I pictured Sadie in her truck, driving around after a fight with Rita, and blasting Dolly Parton or one of her other country favorites with the windows down. It was a nice gesture, but once the music stopped, I was still angry. "He said 'I love you', right? That's what you said?" she asked after a while.
We pulled up to an apartment complex on the edge of town. It was a brick building on top of a hill with a hundred stairs that led to the front door. I assumed it was Sadie's and Rita's place. We stayed in the car, the stereo and the engine off, the sound of traffic whizzing by.
"Yes, but I don't think I can get over this," I said. "And why should I? I gave up my life to be here and it was all a lie."
"What can you do?"
"Go back to New York?" I thought about all that I had given up––Charlie and the gallery and my art. Then I looked at Sadie in the driver's seat, her long dark hair blowing out the window. "Come with me!"
"What is a hillbilly like me going to do in New York?"
"Construction! Buildings are always under construction in New York."
"I don't want to build skyscrapers. I want to build homes. If I ever get off demolition."
"So did I," I said. "But I guess that's over now." I looked away. We had made so many plans, Darren and I, daydreams and pillow talk, they were even painted on a wall in the cottage. Could I throw that all away over a will that Darren didn't even write?
"It doesn't have to be over. Go talk to him."
"Whose side are you on?" I snapped.
"I've known Darren a long time," Sadie said calmly. "He is a good man. There has to be a good reason for what he did. Phil was like a brother to him."
"People keep saying that. 'Like a brother.' Phil had a brother! I'm his brother."
"I know you are, but," and she hesitated here, "before he died, how often did you see Noah?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "I was in New York..."
"Darren was here every day." I could feel tears welling up because I knew she was right. Darren was here every day, but that was before. Things changed. Didn't that matter? When I didn't say anything, she continued. "There are more pictures of Noah on his phone than completed projects for the website. You've seen them together. It makes sense that your brother..."
"Stop it. Stop it!" Sadie had been so helpful since I had met her. She was a wild and emotional person with anger issues, picking fights with Darren when he didn't assign her the work she wanted or arguing with the bartender about things I didn't even remember. But somehow, she had always had clarity with me. She was calm and wise. How? "Did you know?" I asked.
"I..." She looked away at the building as if Rita might appear any second to save her.
"Did you know, Sadie?"
"He told me before I met you. We've been friends for a long time, Ryan."
"Oh my god!" I opened the truck door and stepped out.
"Wait!" She also got out and met me at the front of the truck, the headlights shining in our eyes so we could barely see each other as we yelled. "It wasn't my place to say anything."
"You're all in on it!" I said. I opened my arms wide and pointed at nothing, everything. "This whole town is in on it. It's always been against me." I walked away.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving."
"Back to the house? Do you want a ride?"
"Back to New York!"
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! I'm struggling with a title for this chapter. I have a few ideas - what do you think?
A) Eighties-Pop Dolly
B) Road Trip Soundtrack
C) Palate Cleanser
D) The River Unbroken
E) Sides
F) Nothing, Everything
Here's a little something from Sadie's playlist.