Candy Colored Sky, стр. 32
ME: Already got me thinking about whiskey and pickups.
What it really has me thinking about is her, and how happy she was sitting next to me in my mom’s car, singing her heart out, voice of an angel. I switch my phone’s mode over to my earbuds and pop one in my ear so I can listen a little clearer and turn the volume up a bit.
ELEANOR: That first song is about a guy working on a Bronco.
My brow pinches because I didn’t hear any of that at all, not that I was paying close attention. I restart from the beginning and put my other earbud in so I can really concentrate, and from the very first lines, I get it. I mean, the guy in this song is clearly a little older than me, and he sounds as if he actually knows what he’s doing, but the sentiment and meaning in these lyrics strikes an open wound I didn’t realize I had. He’s working on a Bronco that he wants to give to his son. I’m not sure if she realized how much these words would resonate, but the impact is profound. I play the entire song through and start again from the beginning, searching for the lyrics so I can read along with the music this time.
ELEANOR: You like it at least?
I pause the song halfway through, realizing I left her hanging.
ME: I do, Eleanor. I like it very much. More than I thought.
ELEANOR: Good. Happy birthday, Jonah.
Her light goes out, but I stay here, by my window, in case she’s still looking out. I don’t want her to feel alone.
I resume the sound on my phone, and for the first time, maybe ever, I experience a deep, satisfying ache that stretches inside my ribs and pushes down inside my body, pinning me to my chair with a force stronger than gravity. It’s painful, but it also feels as though it’s supposed to be. I don’t realize until the song finishes that my cheeks are wet. Tears are streaming down them, and I start to wipe them away with the edge of my sleeve. I stop halfway, though, deciding that I want to feel the cold air dry them on its own, so I know all of this is real. I miss my dad. I miss him like hell, even the parts I never got to know. And I hate that he’s not here to show me how to do any of this—the Bronco, college . . . life.
Ten
I’ve always liked Sundays. I get the memes that complain about the day being too close to Monday, but I’ve always looked at it differently, I guess. I see it as one more day. We could have been screwed with six-day weeks and only one day of rest. Yeah, yeah. I know that the whole earth calendar, moon-sun cycle doesn’t work out mathematically any other way, but for the sake of my argument, I choose to be thankful for a year divided by sevens.
I choose to love Sundays.
Today begins like most Sundays for me—breakfast with Grandpa Hank, a battle of will to stomach his eggs, and a dose of daily news. Typically, he and I divide up the Sunday paper and trade sections as we read. He insists on the actual news print, which normally I criticize because it’s wasteful and the ink feels gross. But on Sundays? On Sundays, he is right.
Today’s Tribune comes with a heavy story inside, though, and it takes us a while to uncover it buried in the local section. It’s Addy’s story—a plea for help to find a missing Oak Forest grade-schooler who seems to have vanished into thin air. Morgan wrote it, and I wait while my grandfather reads through it first before daring to myself. When he spins it around to face me and pushes it forward, I know he’s signaling that I would want to.
Most of what Morgan writes are things we know. Her words are powerful—the way she describes the empty hole left in their hearts, how their nerves are forever raw because of all that is unknown. She gives details about Addy, mostly descriptive, but there are some new things I didn’t know—things that a sister would. Addy sings her words, and it’s more than just a nervous behavior, but rather part of a mild Tourette syndrome. Stress makes it harder to understand her, and by now she is no doubt in serious distress. Ten days off her medication, her tics are likely more prominent as well, mostly her right arm jabbing out at the elbow when she walks and a scrunch-like blinking habit that accompanies every turn of her head.
“Did you know Addy had Tourette’s?” Grandpa asks when he sees I’m more than halfway through the story.
“I didn’t even realize she was nine until the news broke last weekend,” I admit. How little we know about the people who share our space is eye-opening in times like this. The thought strikes me that I should probably make a point of mentally noting important details about all of our immediate neighbors, and maybe I should share some of our details with them. It’s a miracle people are ever found after they go missing.
“You get to the end?” My grandpa peers at me over the rims of his reading glasses, his mouth a hard line that leads me to believe there’s more to be revealed. I shake my head and he glances down at the paper in front of me. “Let me know when you do.”
I swallow and prepare myself for something heavy. It’s pretty clear that the next few paragraphs were written with some help from investigators, details about leads and things for people to