Over the Hills and Far Away (NOLA's Own #1) (9 page)

“Who were you talking to, Grandma?” I whispered.

Everyone in here was whispering as if Mom would wake up if we spoke too loudly.

If only…

“Oh, an old friend who used to live in the neighborhood. He grew up with your mother,” she replied in a less whispery voice.

Mama Sally had employed the services of a practicing Buddhist to come and speak over Mom. I liked the idea since Mom had felt that if ever there were a religious practice she would have adopted, it would have been Buddhism. Apparently, he had known my mother, but I had never met him. Mama Sally had said he had counseled Mom, helping her come to terms with her condition and encouraging her further in her meditation.

“Beloved family and friends,” he said in a calm, quiet voice, “we are here to celebrate the life of a vibrant, beautiful soul, whom we all feel has left us far too soon…”

I tuned out after that.

Maybe I was just afraid that if I started crying, I’d never stop. If I listened to this man and his heartfelt words cherishing my mother’s soul, I might snap, dissolving into hysterics. I’d like to think I had accepted what had happened seven days ago, but deep down, I knew I hadn’t. Inside, I was beating and scratching and kicking myself, hating myself for insisting I take the fucking end-of-the-week exam instead of hauling my ass home like my heart had screamed at me to do.

Once the Buddhist had said his piece, a few more people went to the small podium next to the casket and said nice, wonderful generic things about my mother.

I never heard the words. I hadn’t bothered to listen to them either.

On my other side, my father was gripping tightly to my right hand, gasping and sniffling. My hand had gone damp in his great freckled paw, but I did nothing about it. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him by wanting to dry my hand of his sweaty despair.

Each of us had sheets of music, and the room broke out into the mournful tunes Mama Sally had helped Grandma pick out. “Amazing Grace” started belching its way out of everyone’s mouth, except mine.

Connor should be strumming on his acoustic guitar, and everyone should be forced to sing “Over the Hills and Far Away
.”
That’s what she would have wanted, more than these songs of eternal mourning.

I sat there as though I were carved from stone, unable to participate.

After the service, everyone stood. The rush of blood to my legs had me feeling light-headed. People I hardly knew kept coming up, wanting to talk with me and touch me. I gritted my teeth and bore it even though I couldn’t say it was done with any sort of grace. My head hurt with the effort it took me not to explode.

Finally, they started to close Mom’s casket. Grandma and Da—who was weeping, weeping, weeping—stood next to it and watched as the oak lid descended over her waxed features.

She was to be taken to the crematorium. She had never wanted to be buried, occupying wasted space, rotting in a box. She had wanted her ashes scattered in the flowerbeds in the backyard where she’d lived nearly her whole life.

I need to get the hell out of here,
I thought,
and away from all these fucking people
.

I decided I was going to back out of dinner with the family even though I knew they would be upset. I didn’t want food. Everyone had kept bringing us fucking food, like greasy nonorganic casseroles I wouldn’t feed to a rat. With the amount people had been dropping off, one would think we needed to feed the whole fucking Tucker’s Farm Community.

I should be grateful that so many people loved her and wanted to say good-bye, but I’m too broken to give a shit. One day, I’ll look back and be grateful, but right now, I can’t.

“Right,” I grunted rudely after most of the people left. “I need to get out of here—”

“Kenna, dinna ye
dare
think ye’re leavin’,” Da half-hissed, half-snotted at me, his Scottish brogue rumbling thickly through the waterworks.

“I am leaving. I’m not going to dinner,” I told him flatly. “I need to have some fucking—”

“Language!” Da barked at me, his already swollen red face going puce.

“Really?” I scoffed. “I’m not hungry, and I’m not in the mood to be in another public place. I’m
fucking
leaving,” I snapped. I turned on my heel to walk out of the large room.

“Let her go, Sigmund,” Gloria said. “She’s hurting badly. Can’t you see that?”

No, he can’t because he can’t see past his own grief and despair to realize that his family is just as hurt and broken as he is. He wasn’t there to watch her life slowly get leeched away, day after day after day. No, he got to hole himself up with the mother of his other child and forget. I don’t care if Mom told him to go. He should’ve been around! He should’ve fucking given a shit about the rest of us!

Alys and Lili ran after me, their heels clicking behind my long strides to the car. They had ridden with me on the way over, but that didn’t mean they had to come with me now.

“Kenna!” Alys started to chide me.

I could hear it in her voice that she thought I was in the wrong, and she was probably right.

“Stay if you want. I need to leave,” I said, something in my tone halting her chastisement.

“Where are we going?” asked Lili, hopping into shotgun position.

Alys huffed angrily and jumped into the backseat.

We would be going to that seedy backwater gas station that sold alcohol to minors. Normally, I didn’t drink. It didn’t ever do anything for me. I always preferred weed or even mushrooms. But I had the feeling that what I really wanted was to suck down something that would drown this rage and maybe help me cry.

At the gas station, we selected colorful bottles of Mad Dog 20/20. I got blue, Alys went red, and Lili chose purple.

We drove back to Grandma’s, and I was relieved to see that no one else had returned. We headed inside and changed out of our fancy black mourning get-ups and into comfortable clothes and sneakers. Instead of going out back, we traipsed over to the side gate that led to the Plantation House property.

“Shit. It is fucking creepy back here,” whispered Lili.

We picked our way through the dense foliage of ferns, vines, thick trees, and in some places, chest-high grass. Well, it was chest-high on me. Lili got swallowed up in it. The only way we could tell she was still with us was the fact that the grass tips were moving. It smelled like rotting vegetation, and the pond that was back here somewhere reeked of algae. Hopefully, there was nothing back here big enough to snap up a Lili-sized snack.

We made our way to a bit of open space, parking it in the tall grass. I leaned back on my elbows, looking up into the purple sky. Stars were now starting to pop up along the darkening backdrop, and for a split second, I recognized the beauty of this moment. The cosmos above us looked soft and velvety, and I wished to reach up and caress it, aching to feel my mother reach back one last time and brush my fingertips with hers.

Then, I twisted open my bottle of blue liquid and took a few long pulls.

“Ugh, this shit is harsh,” said Alys. “It’s like cough syrup. What flavor is yours?”

“Blue. This shit tastes fucking blue,” I grunted in reply.

Lili busted out laughing.

The three of us ended up getting shit-faced. After we downed each of our bottles, we smoked a spliff and learned that it wasn’t a very good idea to do that while drunk. Alys crawled over to some nearby bushes and vomited spectacularly. It smelled like cough syrup.

But I reached my goal! At some point, the tears started pouring, and it was such a blessed relief that I didn’t care I was on all fours, hurling up blue-tasting puke. The tears from my eyes could have just been from the force with which I projectile-spewed, but it had gotten the ball rolling. I was puking and weeping and, yes, laughing, all at once. When I finished throwing up, I flopped onto my side and rolled my way toward Alys.

“Oy! None of you guys pass out on your backs,” I barked. “I can’t bury someone else just yet.”

Lili snored sweetly in reply.

The walk of shame early the next morning was excruciating. Grass and leaves were stuck in our hair and clothing, and at some point, I might have rolled back into my vomit pile. I had some blue dried and crusted on my arm. We were filthy and smelled like the swamp, and I was still a bit drunk.

Thinking we’d creep through the back door, trying to be all sneaky-sneaky, didn’t pan out. Grandma was waiting for us in the kitchen, and I had never seen her more pissed off in my life.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she shouted, making my pounding head feel as though it was shredding apart. “Taking off like that, not telling anyone where you were going! We’ve been worried sick over you three! And right after your mother—how could
you do that to us? Where the hell have you been?”

“We, uh…”
How the fuck do I explain this?

Lili cleared her throat, but Alys jumped in instead.

“We’re really sorry, Grandma Betty. Kenna…has been a real mess. We all have. We snuck next door and ended up getting drunk and passing out. We didn’t want her to be alone, and we didn’t want to be drunk in front of anyone else either. We should’ve told someone.”

Grandma softened a bit. “Next door?”

“We slept in the bushes,” Lili confessed, shame-faced. “And by the smell of it, Kenna slept in her own puke.”

“It won’t happen again,” my voice rasped. “I’m sorry, really. I just didn’t know how else to deal with it.”

“You got drunk?” Grandma seemed extremely surprised by this.

I didn’t blame her. She knew I never drank, so I hoped that this one-time fuck-up would slide with her. It wasn’t like she could ground me or anything, but she had the power to make me feel like even greater garbage than I already did.

“No. I got wasted.” I sounded pretty exhausted and morose.

Her lips twitched, and she put her arms around me, sniffing delicately at my rankness.

“It’s all right, honey. I wouldn’t mind getting wasted either. Now, go call your father and tell him you’re all right, okay?”

Damn it
. The last thing I wanted to do was call that man.

“On second thought, maybe I should be the one to call him,” she said, heading for the kitchen phone.

There was no need to hear
that
conversation, so the three of us grabbed a few mason jars of water and slunk our asses up to my bedroom.

Phil

Somethin’ was wrong—really, really wrong.

From a dead fuckin’ sleep, I woke up at fuckin’ three forty-five in the goddamn morning. Next to me, naked and warm, slept the redhead I’d snagged last night after the show. Guilt stabbed at me, making my heart bleed a little bit.

Four weeks.
It had been four weeks since I found my Baby Girl, since I lost my Baby Girl, since my life went from an all-time fuckin’ high to the lowest and darkest I’d ever felt. But that wasn’t it, not really. Maybe just a part of it. It was something else.

It’s her, you fool. Somethin’ is really, really wrong with her. She’s hurtin’ bad. Her heart’s broken. Can’t you feel it? She’s the one in a dark place!

Dizziness spun my head, making me want to gag. Getting up, I stumbled into the bathroom just in time to puke up my guts. The stench of half-digested bourbon assailed my nose, helping to bring up the rest.

Yeah, fuckin’ got wasted last night. I’d been doing that a lot lately. Normally, I’d only have a beer or two, but I was hitting the hard stuff more and more. When I did, I liked to find me a sweet piece and pretend I was banging my Baby Girl.

The sleeping redhead was starting to irritate the fuck outta me now. I needed her gone. Rinsing out my mouth and pulling on my boxers, I headed back into the room.

Grabbing her shoulder, I shook her, “Hey.”

Snorting, she woke up. “Hey, baby. Time for round four?” she asked me, all sleepy.

“Naw, mama. I need you to go.”

“What?” she asked, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

“You gotta go.”

I was prepared for a fuckin’ meltdown, but the woman simply got up, got dressed, and grabbed her shit.

“It was fun,” she said, writing something down on the pad next to the door. “Give me a call the next time you’re in town.”