Free Ambrosia (A Flowering Novella) by Sarah Daltry Page B

house and I’m supposed to be heading out to get soda, which I supposedly forgot, but she’s really heading to her shower and I have to kill time all afternoon. I wish her shower was next week, since Dave will be home, but it’s not and I debate about what to do, finally ending up at the café for some reason. I haven’t been here for a long time and I don’t know anyone working. I don’t even know anyone who still works here at all, never mind this afternoon. They also changed the napkin dispensers and I can’t even get through the menu before I realize that I need to get out.
    I know it’s a shitty restaurant and it doesn’t matter, but I don’t like seeing the world change. Everything changes, and although I guess it’s better than nothing changing about what my life used to be, I still tend to feel like the world always changes for the worse. The café has a fucking Facebook page now. Why? It’s a hole in the wall, but already, I can see that they’re starting to cater to college kids more and trying to appeal to a new demographic. It’s such a dumb thing to upset me, but I guess I just wish that the good things in the world could stay that way.
    Maybe it’s the weather or the café or just boredom, but I soon find myself at the prison. It has been a few years now. I don’t even know if he’s still here. I don’t know what brought me here, but as soon as I pull into the lot, I know it’s a mistake. I don’t even want to know if he’s alive. I don’t want to know anything. I want to imagine a life where he somehow faded into some bad dream and that’s all.
    When I saw him last, I told him that I was done with him – and as I sit here, wondering why I’m here, I know I made a choice to let it go. If the café makes me resent growing up and the way things change, being here makes me want to embrace it. I’m just not this guy anymore.
    Sure, there are probably people who would tell me that I should forgive him, that we should try to salvage what we had, but they don’t know. They didn’t listen to my mom beg for her life. They didn’t hear the things he called her as he took her from me. For most of my high school and college years, I felt like I had to bear this burden, that I needed to escape his shadow – but I’m coming to terms with the fact that my father’s actions were his alone. My mom fucked up and I’m always going to be a mess because of losing her and because she wasn’t much of a mom anyway, but I don’t have to accept what my father did.
    Instead of going in, I leave and end up at the cemetery. I visit with both my mom and my grandmother, and I feel a little shame about how long it’s been since I was here last. Probably more so about my grandmother. I’ve been only a handful of times since I lost her. I sit longer by her grave, but after a while, it’s just one more place, isn’t it?
    As I grew up, I thought I would never get out of this circle – home, prison, the graveyard – but now, I find myself creating excuses to stay away. I don’t know that running away is really the same as acceptance, but it does seems strange now how overwhelming of a feeling being trapped was for so many years. And now, it’s just ground and trees and roads and places that used to be one thing and are now something else.
    I have time to waste, but there’s just nothing left for me here anymore, so I head up to Lily’s parents’ area and drive around. Eventually, I sit in the parking lot of the high school and listen to music. All I ever wanted was to move forward, but now that I’m here, I can’t make sense of how distant it all feels.

Lily
    M y father gives it away immediately. He just keeps emphasizing how important the soda is and Jack leaves to go get it, but first of all, my parents don’t drink soda and secondly, he winks at Jack when he says it. As if I can’t see him. I try not to laugh, because it’s cute and I knew the shower was coming, but he is just so bad at keeping