The Reunion Ch. 03

I was genuinely terrified in that moment. I'd been hit a few times in the years I'd lived with Chet and Pauline. They adhered strongly to the parts of the Bible they cared for, and "spare the rod, spoil the child," was one of their favorites. But I'd never been hit like this.

Sobs spilled out of me as he slapped me again on the face, and then on my naked thigh. The slaps came one after the other until eventually, mercifully, he seemed to come to his senses. He stood, but he didn't walk away. I felt blood pouring from my nose and lips. As I lay in a heap at his feet, still curled into a ball, my ruined dress high around my waist, he stared down at me, panting.

His hands began fumbling with his zipper.

The rest happened so quickly, I could barely remember it. I would never know how she managed to sneak up on him, but from the shadows, Kelly's softball bat made clear, ringing contact with Chet's head. The metallic clunk of aluminum against hard skull rang through the night. He went down like a sack.

I heard hollering from Kelly's house. Her momma was rushing across the yard in her slippers, yelling back to Kelly's dad to call the cops. Meanwhile, Kelly stood panting in her pajamas. She dropped the bat and fell down beside me. Then she pulled my head into her lap. I lay there sobbing for a long time, until Kelly and her momma convinced me to come inside.

The rest of the night was a blur. An ambulance came for Chet, then a cop questioned me and Kelly. I could barely force the words out as I stumbled through what had happened. I stayed in Kelly's bed that night, just as I'd done during countless sleepovers. But I didn't sleep. Shortly after dawn, my social worker, Peggy, came by the house. Chet was in stable condition, and he'd soon be questioned. I wasn't a minor anymore, so what happened next was up to me.

Up to me. Everything that followed was my choice. In the moments when I felt particularly down on myself, those words rang through my head. My choice.

I chose to leave. Kelly's older sister was a junior at Auburn, and she had an apartment off campus. Her roommate wasn't sticking around for the summer, so she had an extra bed. Once Kelly's parents explained everything, she was more than happy to let me spend the summer there with her. I could have stayed in Hapville with Kelly, or opted for a temporary placement elsewhere, but neither option would have worked. Kelly's place was too close to Chet and Pauline, and there was no telling who I'd be placed with if I chose to stay in the system. It was better all around if I headed on to Auburn, since that was where I would be in a couple months anyway.

But that still left James. There were a hundred different ways I could have handled things, and I chose the absolute, dead-last, worst thing I could possibly have done. Nothing.

That day, Kelly's dad went to Chet and Pauline's to gather up my things for me, and the four of us - me, Kelly, her momma and daddy - drove down to Auburn. They didn't have much to spare, but they gave me a few hundred bucks to keep me in food and necessaries until I could get set up with a part-time job. I didn't walk with Kelly at graduation. My diploma came in the mail half-way through the summer. I didn't have a cell phone then, couldn't afford one, but I knew James' number by heart. I just never used it.

I told myself later that he could have found me. He could have asked Kelly where I went, and I know she would have told him. In those early weeks, I half-expected him to show up at any moment, banging on the apartment door demanding to see me. But he never did.

* * *

The train passed, and I crept over the tracks and out of town.

About a mile after I turned onto the county road, past the kudzu-covered "Welcome to Hapville!" sign, my tire light came on with a soft "ding." Less than half a mile later, I felt my car slowing, rumbling as the quickly deflating tire flopped against the pavement. I pulled off to the side.

I cursed. I had almost made it. I flipped on my hazards and thumbed through my contacts until I found AAA. I listened to the radio with the air on high while I waited for help. Forty minutes later, my car was loaded onto the back of a tow truck. I had forgotten to replace my donut the last time I popped a tire, so I would need a new one. I rode shotgun in the cab as the driver took us back into town, to the same auto body shop I'd noticed near the tracks. "J.J.'s Collision Repair" the sign out front read.

While the tow truck driver unloaded my car, I went inside to talk prices and wait times.

A familiar voice rang through the lobby. "Welcome!" Behind the counter, James' dad smiled. When he saw me, his smile fell.

It hurt to see him. He had aged quite a bit in ten years. His once salt-and-pepper hair was now stark white. He had always liked me, and I had always loved him. It was hard to think that there might have come a day when I would have called him "father."

We stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment. He struggled to replace his smile as he asked, a little less cheerily, "What can I do for you?"

I opened my mouth to try to answer. When words didn't come out, he craned his neck to look at my car through the floor-to-ceiling windows. "Looks like a flat, huh? Let me pop in back to see what replacement models we have."

I thought it a little strange that he didn't ask what size tire I needed before practically sprinting from behind the counter. Then I heard a flurry of male voices in the back room. When the door opened again a moment later, it wasn't James' dad.

It was James.