Free When You Go Away by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

Grandpa having moved here when she was in college.  All the furniture, all the plants, and the books belonged only to him.
         Carly grabbed one end of a sheet and tucked it into a corner and pulled up the blanket.  Her grandfather bent over his task, whisking the top of the bed with his palms.  Her mother told her he was in the army before he married Grandma Janice.  Maybe that was why he was so neat.  But really, she didn't know anything about him except castles and cigars and kitchen cleaners, and as she shook a pillow into a pillowcase, she heard herself ask, "Why does Mom hate you so much?"
         Grandpa Carl stood up straight, sliding a hand over his white hair.  He looked the same way he had pushed open the door of their apartment, surprised and pale.  Then he sighed and sat down on the bed he'd just smoothed tight.  "It's about the divorce."
         "Why would she be mad at you over that?  It was Dad's idea."
         "Not that divorce."
         "Oh."
         Carly looked down at her shoes, the same ones she'd put on that morning, all the way back in the time when she was responsible for everything.  She thought about her dad, the way she wanted to see him so bad and the way she wanted to yell at him.  At night sometimes when she lay awake listening to her mother's and her sister's breathing, one steady, one erratic and thick, she imagined visiting him in Phoenix, walking up to the woman he'd left Mom for and slapping her.  She'd practiced it again and again in her mind until she could feel her hand tingling.  Maybe , she thought now, I really want to slap him .  That's how her Mom must have felt toward Grandpa Carl all these years.
         "Your mom and I never really talked about why I left your Grandma Janice.  Peri was younger than you when it all happened, and I'm sure she didn't understand.  It wasn't like these days where she would have gone to therapy or something."
         "We didn't go to therapy," Carly said.  The only person who went anywhere for treatment was Brooke.  She was the one who needed it the most, and lately, even she hadn't gotten any. 
         Grandpa Carl shook his head.  "I know.  But it will be different now.  I promise."
         "Will it be different for Mom?"
         He stood up and walked over to her, pulling her close.  As she felt his warmth, tears in her eyes again, she knew why Ryan had cried.  The relief of finally feeling a big adult body taking charge, giving them what they had been missing for so long, was too much to contain.

SIX
     
        Peri woke up tangled in the sheet, her heart pounding, her hair in front of her eyes.  She tried to swallow, clearing her throat of sleep.  The baby wasn't here, the crying further and further away, but Peri knew she had to keep moving. 
         Last night, she'd made it to the outskirts of Phoenix, parking the Honda in front of what she thought was a Motel 6, only realizing after she held the key in her hand that the blinking sign read only "Motel."  All night long, Peri had heard the sounds of bodies slapping together, beds pounding against the walls, loud cries of laughter and a few, piercing screams.  But her head was a twirl of knots, the extra sound didn’t bother her, and she slept without dreaming.
         After a shower, she sat on the bed looking at map of Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs.  With Graham's address in one hand, she followed the squares and twists of roads and streets, red and blue like veins in a flat body, until she found where he lived.  She grabbed her purse and closed the door behind her.  Outside, she blinked, the morning dry and warm, mountains rising out of the flats of the city like dinosaur bones.  She'd never been to Phoenix before, but already she hated it, the air empty, too able to carry the sounds of the baby to her, no Bay Area fog to muffle the sounds.
         "Hey, baby," a man said from an open window, a can of beer in his