“Transition,” I had whispered, leaning heavily on my carbon-fiber cane. “You’re throwing your wife out of the house we bought together.”
“I bought it,” he shot back, his voice suddenly rising, revealing the ugly, sharp edge he usually kept hidden behind his country-club manners. “My salary paid the mortgage while you were playing soldier in the sand. I’ve spent two years waiting for you to come back normal. Instead, I get a broken machine that can’t even walk Lily to the school bus.”
The memory made my grip on the steering wheel tighten until my knuckles turned a bloodless white.
We turned off the main highway onto Briar Creek Road, the tires splashing through deep puddles that had gathered in the ruts of the gravel path. The trees here grew thick and low, their wet branches hanging over the lane like dark, grasping fingers.
When the headlights finally swept across the old homestead, my heart sank.
The house was dark, its white paint peeled back in long, grey ribbons that flapped in the wind. The front porch, where my father used to sit with his guitar on humid August nights, had sagged in the middle, the support beams leaning at an unnatural angle. Weeds had grown through the gravel driveway, their dead stalks shaking in the storm.