Bad.
I don’t know anymore.
Lottie’s voice cuts through the room, low and firm. “You can feel guilty in Oregon. Right now, you get in the damn car.”
Janie chokes on a laugh and a sob at the same time.
I look at Lottie. “Language.”
She points at me. “Honey, if that boy ain’t learned damn from Derby by now, I’ll buy him a scholarship.”
August sniffles. “I know damn.”
“Of course you do,” Lottie says.
I almost laugh.
It comes out broken.
Janie presses a bag into Lottie’s hand. “Snacks. Socks. Wipes. Coloring books. Two juice boxes. Don’t let Lottie give him gas station nachos before noon.”
Lottie looks offended. “Nachos are road cuisine.”
“They are a digestive crime,” Janie says.
“Roads require crime.”
August clutches Blue Rex tighter. “Can we bring dinosaur court?”
Lottie nods toward the backpack. “Packed the judge. The rest of the courthouse was structurally unsound.”
“That’s what Derby said.”
“I know. It pained me to agree with him.”
I look back one last time.
Down the hall.
At Derby’s cracked bedroom door.
I can’t see him from here. Only the shadowed gap, the dark beyond it, the place where I left him sleeping in the belief that I would come back from the bathroom.
My chest folds in on itself.
Leaving Jeremy felt like dragging myself out of a grave.
Leaving Derby feels like walking out of warmth into a storm because I’m afraid my fire will burn him down.
I press my lips together.
No sound.
No crying.
Not until the car moves.
We leave through the front door.