A nice change

1

The desert air was hot and dry. It was probably her overactive imagination, but it felt like the red sand choked her every breath. Sand and heat. Sand and heat. Columbus had snow and trees and cold. She could breathe in Columbus. She just couldn't speak. Not her mind. Not her heart. Sand and heat. A fresh start.

"Viola, please roll that window up,"

"Sorry Dad,"

"It's just as hot as I remember!" Dad remarked to himself, like something as permanent as the landscape that birthed and raised him could change in fifteen years. Or maybe he had forgotten. Maybe he had tried to forget. Viola couldn't quite be sure what he thought. He didn't talk as much as she and Pa did. He liked silence. Or the near silence with punk rock playing from the radio as he drove, humming along to the erratic beat somehow. Dad's affinity for any music that offended well meaning religious parents impressed even Viola sometimes, but she was glad for it now. Pa would probably start a conversation now and ruin the subtle peace of an empty desert road with nothing but the sand, the heat, and contemplative silence. Or almost empty road. Right now Pa was following Dad and Viola in a Uhaul filled with the family's furniture and anything else too big to fit in the truck. Dad and Pa didn't get Viola's gay joke about the Uhaul but they smiled at her anyways. Everyone always just smiles anyways. Especially Viola.