Free When We Collide by A. L. Jackson

when I tried to refuse and offer up an excuse why it was
a terrible idea for me to go over there.
    I hadn’t been able to come up with one my mom found
acceptable. I couldn’t exactly tell her the real reason, could
I?
    “I still can’t believe Lara is gone,” Mom had said
with a disoriented sadness, shaking her head. The movement was
exaggerated by the tremors that plagued her body. “And Glenda,
losing her sister so young. Both of ‘em have never been anything
but kind to us.”
    I’d understood. For once, my mom was giving and not
taking.
    Reluctantly, I had accepted the dish, but I was
unable to stop the acute anxiety that came with the thought of
going over there. For years, I’d avoided the Marsches the best I
could in a town this small. I try not to make eye contact with any
of them when we crossed paths.
    I’d been the reason they’d lost him. I knew all the
rumors. I had heard the disparaging words about the notorious
William Marsch who’d shunned his family once he’d graduated from
college. The town talked about his mother’s heartbreak and Blake’s
anger that he had somehow thought himself too good for them and too
good for this town.
    But I knew better. I knew what’d happened the night
he left.
    And I knew it was my fault.
    He’d never come back in six years, and I hadn’t
expected him to now, either. It was stupid, really, to think he
wouldn’t come back for his aunt’s funeral.
    I’d had to sit in my van for an hour to even build
up the nerve. By then it was already time to pick up Jonathan from
kindergarten. I’d buckled him in while I told him we just had to
make a quick stop, my voice strained as I imagined walking through
the Marsches’ door.
    I’d kissed Jonathan on the forehead to give myself
some courage and to gain that sense of being whole I felt whenever
I was near my son. He was the one thing that kept me sane.
    I’d just step in and come right back out, I’d told
myself, give my mother’s condolences, as well as my own.
    Then I’d run.
    But when I helped Jonathan from the car and took his
hand to cross the street, he whispered up to me that he had to go
to the bathroom. He always held it until the last minute. Feeling a
hint of panic, I squeezed his hand and asked him if he couldn’t
hold it.
    With a baby-faced grimace, he’d shaken his head and
almost begged, “No, Mommy…I gotta go right now.”
    Pointing to the house up ahead of us on the right, I
said, “That’s where we’re going. I’m sure they have a bathroom you
can use…but you have to hurry, okay?”
    He nodded and ran ahead, taking the sidewalk and
steps as fast as his little feet would carry him, and he had
followed a couple inside.
    It wasn’t until I was halfway up the walk that I
noticed the expensive black car parked in the Marsches’ driveway,
partially hidden from view by the huge truck parked behind it.
    It had California plates.
    My knees had gone weak.
    There was nothing I could do, nowhere I could run,
and I’d had to face the ultimate consequence for all of my
sins—looking at the hate on the face of the only man I’d ever loved
and knowing that hate was directed at me.
    He’d thought I was scared of him, I knew. That
reflex to protect myself had come unbidden with the touch of an
angry hand. But never for a minute would I believe William would
strike me, even though part of me had wished he would instead of
looking at me the way he did.
    Then maybe the numbness would come and I wouldn’t
have to feel this .
    I hadn’t lied, though.
    Jonathan shouldn’t be his.
    Wiping my face with the back of my hand, I pulled
myself together enough to stand. I swayed with dizziness with the
sudden motion, but Jonathan would soon wake up from his afternoon
nap, and I didn’t want him to find me like this.
    I found my feet. My legs wobbled under me, and I
fumbled out of my room and down the hall. The little house we lived
in wasn’t much, but it was a hundred times better than what I’d
grown up