Don't look back

Chapter fourteen

I rubbed my swollen ankles with an exhausted sigh. I had been working double shifts for the past month. Things moved very slowly in Anacoco. Miss. Ruby, the owner of the diner and my boss, was a nice southern lady from Alabama. She knew that I was pregnant, I had started to form an infuriating bump on my stomach. One day, the diner phone rang. Miss. Ruby answered and said it was for me. I was confused, the only person who would call me would be Joy, but Joy was usually asleep at this time. I answered the phone with absolutely no idea. "Everly?" I froze. My body turned into ice. I'd recognized that voice anywhere. "M-mom?" I stuttered. "Hi sweetie." There was something off in her voice. It sounded...dead. Had I really done that to her? No. There's no way she would sound like that. She sounded monotone and like nothing cheerful would ever happen again. "Mom, how did you know how to find me?" I heard her sigh on the other end. "I have a lot of money, Everly. With enough money and determination you can do anything. I've been trying to find you ever since we read your letter. Eve, I've never been more angry then I was when I read that. Not at you, no. At him. Your father went straight to his house and almost beat him to death. We got him thrown in prison for life. Both Leslie and Jamie miss you so much. I miss you. I'm not gonna try to convince you to come home. I love you so much though. But Everly, I need to tell you something. Your father...he didn't take the news lightly. He started drinking. And one day..." I could hear my mom starting to get chocked up on the other end. "...he got into a car accident. Everly, he's dead." When I was seven, I was at the grocery store with my parents. I was distracted by a rainbow scarf and fell behind. I got lost. I was stumbling around screaming and crying. I thought I would never see them again. This was worse. So much worse. Because I wouldn't ever see my dad again. I wouldn't ever hear him laugh, hear him talk. See him move. He was gone forever into...what? This took a couple of minutes to process as I started to cry and I lost the will to stand. People were looking at me funny but I didn't care. "Mom, where'd he go?" I sounded like a little kid curious as to what happened after someone died. The answer my mom gave was so simple yet in that one little word, held everything. "On."