Chapter 16: Two Suitcases

My father sat on the tailgate of the silver minivan under the Sheetz canopy with a coffee he hadn't touched.

Two suitcases stood beside him, the tweed one and the blue one from the church trip.

He looked smaller than he had on the lawn.

"Sam," he said, and stood up, and didn't seem to know what to do with his hands.

I hugged him.

He smelled like the garage, like WD-40 and old coffee, and he held on a beat too long.

Waylon stayed by the pumps and pretended to read the price board.

"I took the van," Dad said. "I figured it's half mine. I put a note on the table."

"What did it say?"

"That I'd be back for my reading glasses." He laughed, wetly. "I couldn't think of anything else."

"Dad. Are you leaving Mom?"

"I don't know what the word is. I'm not going home tonight."

"Okay."

"I sat in that kitchen for four days," he said.

"Every time she looked at me, I could hear myself saying nothing."

"What do you want to do?"

He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt, a thing he did when he was trying not to cry.

"The rehearsal dinner's the Friday before the wedding," he said.

"I'm paying for half the room. I want to go, and I want to say what I saw."

"Dad."

"I counted three heads, Sam. I want a hundred people to hear me say it."

"They won't want to hear it."

"I know."

"Mom will never forgive you."

"I know that too." He put the glasses back on. "I'd like to be somebody you could stand next to, first."

I looked at him for a while.

Then I nodded, and he put a hand over his mouth.

Waylon took both suitcases without asking.

"My house has a couch," he said. "Not fancy. The creek's loud."

"I couldn't impose."

"Mr. Larkham, your daughter has the spare room. But the couch has a quilt my grandmother made, and my aunt will feed you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Forgot Me at a Rest Stop, I Forgot Them Forever from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.