“Did you?” Her lower lip trembled for a beat, but she firmed it, visibly refusing to give in to the pity she was feeling for him. “Don’t tell me I wouldn’t have chosen you. You tell yourself lies about not being wanted or worthy because you’re afraid to hope for good.”
“While my father lies to himself so he doesn’t have to acknowledge the bad.”
The road was water-like in front of him. Wavy. Lifting and lowering.
He’d been wearing a brown paper bag with eye holes, so he’d only been able to look straight forward, but now…now he could see that he’d been suffering from the same affliction as his father this whole time. They’d just handled the disappearance of his mother in different ways. She’d left a void and they’d filled it with a new reality of their choosing. Tucker’s father had refused to accept she left of her own free will. Tucker had accepted it, but assumed her leaving meant he was second rate. A man someone might settle for if they ran out of options.
Tucker’s gaze came back into focus and there it was, a few hundred yards away.
His home. The barn.
The satellites were still mounted on top, faded letters on the roof.
He used to feel humiliation when pulling up to this red fence with the missing wooden boards. A sense of resentment that his father couldn’t be normal, like everyone else’s dad. Maybe Tucker should have expected that such an extended absence would soften his judgment of Carl Moore. He never could have expected the wave of homesickness that battered him now, along with a healthy dose of shame.
Mary was right.
He’d made excuses. A lot of them. Not only for himself, blaming his appearance for being alone. But also for never coming back to Buckhannon. Being wanted for questioning? It had never really been about that. It had been about facing this place where he’d been made to feel unwanted. Confronting the cause.
How easy it had been to blame his father’s eccentricities for his isolation, the way he’d drifted, never really taking anything seriously. All along, he’d had his own unresolved hang-ups.
When Mary unhooked her seatbelt, Tucker did the same, his movements jerky. There was a heaviness to the air, words spoken between them that couldn’t be erased, both of them clearly unsettled in the wake of their semi-argument. It caused Tucker physical pain, not being able to haul her across the console into his lap where he would apologize and hold her until the tension dissipated. It wasn’t possible, though. And it never would be.
Tucker tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Mary nodded. “I want to give you the opportunity to see and hear him without revealing yourself. Unless you want to.”
“Nah, I can’t. I…he’s already been pitched so far outside of reality with his belief in UFOs, I’m worried what seeing me would do to him. It’s a whole new can of worms.”
“I understand,” Mary murmured, anxiously chewing her lip. “Are we mad at each other?”
“Come on now, kid. I’m incapable of being mad at you.” He struggled against the urge to reach out and cup her soft cheek. “Thank you. For thinking of this. It never would have occurred to me and now that we’re here, yeah. Yeah, I really want to see him.” He tore his eyes off her and peered through the windshield at the house. “Make sure he’s doing all right.”
“We can sit here a while until you’re ready.”
“This is a town of early risers. The less time we hang around, the better.” He reached into the back seat for the folded white sheet, plus the pillow case for collecting candy and her walking stick. “He won’t see me, but I’ll be right there the whole time, okay?”
“I know you will.”
His stationary heart flipped over at her belief in him. If she could have seen him in that moment, there would have been no mistaking the love. It drenched his expression. Made him feel feverish and freezing cold at the same time, his eyes traveling over her delicate features and memorizing them one by one.
“Tucker?”
“Right. Sorry.” With one last look, he exited the driver’s side and closed the door quietly, crossing to Mary’s, helping her out. Arm in arm, they breached the gate and stepped onto his father’s property, gravel crunching under their feet. They passed his father’s old pickup, same old pile of parts, though it had a few more dings in the back bumper and a fresh, “Ships Happen,” sticker in the rear windshield.
The windows of house were dark, but his sensitized hearing picked up the hum of the satellites on the roof. Static. The frenetic wavering of frequencies. Just like the house’s interior, the night was black, the moon only a sliver, but Tucker was able to navigate them as if it was noon on a sunny day, as opposed to one o’clock in the morning.