Read Online The Road to You by Marilyn Brant - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Marilyn Brant
Ads: Link
closer to him. “I want to get out of this bucolic little place and see the world. Anonymously.”
“ Boo —what?” He stepped back to restore the distance between us and chuckled at my phrase. “Anyone ever tell you that you use too many big words?”
I didn’t answer. Alcohol made some people giddily drunk. For me, it had the primary effect of making me more introspective. And, apparently, it strengthened my vocabulary.
He exhaled, pecked a light kiss on my forehead and said, “Don’t rush things, Aurora. It’ll all happen for you.” Then, with those patronizing words still hanging in the air between us, he raised his palm in a parting wave and marched himself out of the hotel suite.
I slumped against the kitchenette wall and grimaced, hoping he’d come back—wishing and almost praying for it—but knowing he wouldn’t.
A half hour later, when Betsy stumbled in the room without the St. Cloud townie (he was snoring in the hallway), she said to me, “I’m tired. Can we go?”
So she and I left. I thought it would be years before I saw Donovan McCafferty again...but it turned out to be much sooner than that. Just a little over a month later, he came home briefly for a week, during the missing persons’ investigation. And everything that had happened between us before that just seemed frivolous, embarrassing and improbable.
I never would have predicted that we’d ever be in a motel room together again. That I’d be studying him like this as he sat on the bed with me, acting like he owned it, while he faked the appearance of being calm.
What a lie. He couldn’t have been more wound up if he’d been a yo-yo.
During the TV commercials, I tried to get him to strategize with me about the next day. Discuss what we’d do when we went to the corner store and found this Ronny guy. What we’d ask him.
“I don’t want to talk right now, Aurora. I don’t want to overanalyze anything. And I sure as hell don’t want to plan what I’m gonna say twelve hours from now,” he snapped. “I just want to relax, okay?” He underscored this statement by yawning loudly, stretching out even more and gluing his eyes to Jim Rockford.
Intellectually, I understood this was his way of resisting change, and I was starting to get a sense of what, exactly, fueled his anger.
I remembered beyond the investigation, even beyond the “funeral” services our parents had held for our brothers. In the early days, Donovan had been hopeful, so sure we’d find the answers quickly, much like a couple of lead actors in a detective show.
But he didn’t deal well with ambiguity. Didn’t like all the “I don’t knows” that lingered. And, so, he’d made a choice. A choice to slam the door on all hope. To reopen that door could be potentially very painful and undoubtedly very frightening.
Donovan, I realized, wasn’t a man who’d easily admit to fear. Anger, of course, was an acceptable emotion.
Sometime before the end of the show, he fell asleep on top of the bed, fully clothed—the TV crime still unsolved and me still watching him, thinking about how to get him to see the world a little more like I did. Get him to perceive a few more impulses, so he’d understand the complexity.
Not only of the situation, but of me .
Saturday, June 10
D ONOVAN AND I waited until a respectable ten a.m. before checking out of the motel and driving back to Crescent Cove.
During a lazy weekend morning, the town looked different than it had the night before. Not that the prior evening had been “bustling” by any stretch of the imagination, but there had, in fact, been people visible on Friday. Awake. Drinking. Wandering about the town and such. On a Saturday, midmorning, it was like the sun shining on a corpse—brightly lit but dead.
As we pushed our way through the corner store’s torn-screen front door, I couldn’t help but make comparisons again between Dale’s Grocery Mart and this place. This store was even smaller
“ Boo —what?” He stepped back to restore the distance between us and chuckled at my phrase. “Anyone ever tell you that you use too many big words?”
I didn’t answer. Alcohol made some people giddily drunk. For me, it had the primary effect of making me more introspective. And, apparently, it strengthened my vocabulary.
He exhaled, pecked a light kiss on my forehead and said, “Don’t rush things, Aurora. It’ll all happen for you.” Then, with those patronizing words still hanging in the air between us, he raised his palm in a parting wave and marched himself out of the hotel suite.
I slumped against the kitchenette wall and grimaced, hoping he’d come back—wishing and almost praying for it—but knowing he wouldn’t.
A half hour later, when Betsy stumbled in the room without the St. Cloud townie (he was snoring in the hallway), she said to me, “I’m tired. Can we go?”
So she and I left. I thought it would be years before I saw Donovan McCafferty again...but it turned out to be much sooner than that. Just a little over a month later, he came home briefly for a week, during the missing persons’ investigation. And everything that had happened between us before that just seemed frivolous, embarrassing and improbable.
I never would have predicted that we’d ever be in a motel room together again. That I’d be studying him like this as he sat on the bed with me, acting like he owned it, while he faked the appearance of being calm.
What a lie. He couldn’t have been more wound up if he’d been a yo-yo.
During the TV commercials, I tried to get him to strategize with me about the next day. Discuss what we’d do when we went to the corner store and found this Ronny guy. What we’d ask him.
“I don’t want to talk right now, Aurora. I don’t want to overanalyze anything. And I sure as hell don’t want to plan what I’m gonna say twelve hours from now,” he snapped. “I just want to relax, okay?” He underscored this statement by yawning loudly, stretching out even more and gluing his eyes to Jim Rockford.
Intellectually, I understood this was his way of resisting change, and I was starting to get a sense of what, exactly, fueled his anger.
I remembered beyond the investigation, even beyond the “funeral” services our parents had held for our brothers. In the early days, Donovan had been hopeful, so sure we’d find the answers quickly, much like a couple of lead actors in a detective show.
But he didn’t deal well with ambiguity. Didn’t like all the “I don’t knows” that lingered. And, so, he’d made a choice. A choice to slam the door on all hope. To reopen that door could be potentially very painful and undoubtedly very frightening.
Donovan, I realized, wasn’t a man who’d easily admit to fear. Anger, of course, was an acceptable emotion.
Sometime before the end of the show, he fell asleep on top of the bed, fully clothed—the TV crime still unsolved and me still watching him, thinking about how to get him to see the world a little more like I did. Get him to perceive a few more impulses, so he’d understand the complexity.
Not only of the situation, but of me .
Saturday, June 10
D ONOVAN AND I waited until a respectable ten a.m. before checking out of the motel and driving back to Crescent Cove.
During a lazy weekend morning, the town looked different than it had the night before. Not that the prior evening had been “bustling” by any stretch of the imagination, but there had, in fact, been people visible on Friday. Awake. Drinking. Wandering about the town and such. On a Saturday, midmorning, it was like the sun shining on a corpse—brightly lit but dead.
As we pushed our way through the corner store’s torn-screen front door, I couldn’t help but make comparisons again between Dale’s Grocery Mart and this place. This store was even smaller
Similar Books
