Free Live Like You Were Dying by Michael Morris Page B

tongue. It was a feat to hold my words back, but the trick failed. “I can’t tell you, because we never made that trip. Maybe one day. Right, Daddy? Maybe one day.”
    Never turning to face us, my father nodded and then made his way out of the house. The sound of his boots hitting the wooden floor echoed even after he’d made it through the doorway.
    I walked into the kitchen and watched him get into his truck. The floodlight from the back porch spread out across the truck like he was an actor in a play.
    Grand Vestal snuck up beside me and snaked her arm around me. She leaned so close that I could make out the mushroom-shaped age spots that dotted her hairline.
    â€œYou know something? As many years as I’ve known your daddy, I still don’t know him. But there’s one thing I’m satisfied of: Ronnie Bishop is a good man. His heart is good.”
    â€œI keep on wanting to believe that.”
    â€œThen keep on trying,” she said. “Throw off that anger that’s pinning you down. Let yourself be free.”
    She walked away and then stopped when she got to the shelf lined with family photos of our past and future. “You’re at a crossroads. And Sugar Boy, you’re the only one who can decide which way to go. Not me, not your wife, and not that daddy of yours. Listen to this old lady, because she knows what she’s talking about. Time’s a gift handed down to each one of us. Don’t waste that gift by wrestling things you can’t change.”
    After everyone went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table, flipping through the pages of the scrapbook my mother had put together. Something in the deepest part of me broke free that night, and with it came a flood of resentment that I’d long since locked away. The kitchen light cast a shadow over the clippings now yellowed and stained with age. Then, in the quiet of the night, with those I loved already tucked in bed, I pressed my head against the kitchen table and cried. The paper that had first been touched by my mother and held her dreams now carried the tears of my regrets, the tears of my past.

Chapter Seven
    By the second week in Choctaw, Heather was spending her days making contact with old friends from high school. The Walker twins, who ran the only dress store and travel agency in town, were regular lunchtime partners. They’d congregate at the deli that had set up business next to their shop at the old train depot. Lana, the sister with the biggest teeth, usually came by the house in a convertible Volkswagen Bug to pick Heather up. Swaying back and forth as she hugged Heather, Lana looked over Heather’s shoulder and saw me standing on the porch step with my hands tucked in my pockets. “Nathan Bishop . . . I swear, how long has it been?” Lana squealed as she came prancing toward me like she might still be homecoming queen, a long, sheer jacket flowing behind her.
    I patted my chest, “Still mending.”
    â€œYou look good,” she said, talking loud and patting my arm. All the while she stared at my chest as if trying to figure out the exact location where the spot lived. “I mean, to have cheated death and everything.” She and Heather quickly got into the car. “Come on and go with us,” she said.
    â€œNaw, there’s enough for me to do around here.”
    Lana grinned to reveal those shiny teeth that I remembered. “Now, before the summer’s over, we’re going to have a big cookout,” she yelled while buckling her seat belt. “A high-school reunion of sorts. It’ll be just like old times again.”
    Watching them drive away, I felt myself becoming more a part of the ten acres that surrounded Grand Vestal’s place. I imagined being in exile, unable to step foot past the fence post at the edge of the road, exiled from the townspeople who I’m sure had already started thinking about the type of flowers they might send to my