Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 136507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 683(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
That was the day I realized I was in love with my best friend.
I didn’t say a word about it—to him or anyone.
Things changed in high school. We were still best friends, but it didn’t feel the same. Logan started chasing girls like Millie Crawford, who’d developed early and generously. God, I hated her, and for no other reason than that she held his attention. It wasn’t until the eleventh grade that Logan finally showed an interest in me that wasn’t platonic.
But all that was a lifetime ago. A distant memory, blurred by marriage and a baby, by divorce and death. All that’s left now are thoughts of what could have been.
With a sigh, I collect my keys and head for my SUV, focused on the day ahead.
Chapter 3
Logan
“It’s changed some since you were here last.” My father’s gruff voice cuts into the quiet as the truck crawls up the driveway, the morning fog revealing my family’s bison ranch like layers of curtains pulled back one at a time.
Those are the first words he’s said to me in two hours. Eight words added to the few hundred over the course of a lengthy drive. Not that I’m complaining. Inside this truck there are no guards barking orders, no inmates shouting threats, no nauseating buzz as I’m sealed into my cell. The lack of conversation is welcome, the scent of Colts tobacco oddly comforting, as I listen to the droning voice on the radio and struggle to adjust to my newfound freedom.
“It’s changed a lot.” And yet recollections I assumed long since forgotten barrel into me as I lay eyes on my childhood home for the first time in twenty years. The two-story house with the wraparound porch where my mother forced us to pose every October for a family picture ahead of Christmas card mailings; the sugar maple tree on the front lawn that my sister Sarah fell out of when she was nine, breaking her arm in two places; the old garage where Millie Crawford gave me my first blow job.
But I note the differences too. The house’s once-shingled roof is now a pine green metal. The window frames are painted midnight black, making them pop like gaping rectangular holes against the crisp white siding. Where my grandparents’ wooden rockers used to sit on the porch, there are chairs with plush cushions that perfectly match the green shade of the roof. I don’t remember there being so many gardens, but I didn’t pay much notice to that back then.
Somewhere out there, veiled by the fog, are multiple buildings, including a massive new equipment barn to replace the rickety old wooden one that Jay and I used to hide in when we were avoiding chores. That project took an entire season, according to my mother. Beyond it are a thousand acres of rolling hills and flatlands where five hundred bison graze. When I went away, the herd was a third of that.
Changes or not, nothing about this view ahead of me feels real. Probably because for the past twenty years I’ve stared at a concrete ceiling, thinking I’d never live to reach this day.
For a long time, I didn’t want to.
The truck’s brakes squeal as we ease to a stop in front of the house. The porch lights are still shining, though daylight’s well on its way to erasing their purpose.
My stiff body feels like squealing too. I climb out and stretch my arms over my head, inhaling the fresh air as I survey the nearby birch and maple trees that burst with yellow and orange fall foliage.
We should have arrived late last night, but plans went to shit from the word go. The prison released me hours after they were supposed to, thanks to paperwork nonsense. Then the drive home was riddled with traffic, construction, and an accident that brought the two-lane highway to a dead stop for hours. It was after two a.m. when we found a twenty-four-hour gas station and my sixty-three-year-old father slouched in his seat to catch a few hours of rest.
My attention pauses on the detached garage. “New doors.” Nice sliders, too, instead of the hinged ones. “And you took it down to the natural wood.” My father used to force us to stain the old post-and-beam building a hideous brown every spring until Jay got too big to be forced to do anything. Then the brush was shoved into my hand. I never had the nerve to say no.
“Yeah, Jon gave it a facelift a few years back. Big job.” My father winces as he rounds the front of the pickup, his Levi’s and army-green button-down creased from the journey. Aside from more wrinkles and gray hair, he looks how I remembered him. I’ve only seen him twice since the day of my sentencing, and only because Mom forced him to come for visitation.