My mom stares straight ahead, sunglasses on.
We've been driving for thirty minutes.
The second we left Derry, I felt a large weight being lifted off my chest. It should have been a really gratifying moment. But it was cut short by the heavy silence in the car. I scold myself for packing my Walkman in the trunk.
Mrs. Hannigan must sense my discomfort because she attempts to break the silence by asking me what I want to eat.
"Wherever is fine, Mrs. Hannigan," I say quietly. She laughs.
"Don't call me that."
"Okay, um," I think. "Mom?"
"Don't call me that either."
"What do you want me to call you then?"
She's silent for a second before stammering out, "Marie is fine."
I nod.
"So you remarried?" I ask. She nods. "Yup."
"Is he nice?"
"Yeah."
"What's his name?"
"Allen."
"Does he know I'm coming?"
"He's the one that talked me into this whole thing." Marie says. I furrow my brows. "What do you mean?"
She gives me a glance. "Well, it's just that, we don't really have the room for it right now," she turns into the drive-thru of a Wendy's. "But it would have been a longer, gruelling process to turn you loose to the state so, here you are." She says that last part sounding a bit annoyed.
We pull up to the menu and she turns to me.
"What do you want?"
As Marie opens her wallet to pay for the food, I make eye contact with a photo inside.
There's a man and two kids. A boy and a girl.
"You," I look up at her. "You have more kids?"
"I have one kid," She looks over at me. "The boy isn't mine, he's one year younger than you."
"What are their names?"
"John," Marie quips. I stare her down. "And the girl?"
She clears her throat before saying, "Christine."
I give her a small laugh. "Christine? Like, my middle name, Christine?"
"Lorraine," She sighs. "Look, when she was born, the name just came to me okay?"
"And you couldn't pick one that didn't belong to me?"
"I don't have time for this." Marie mutters. "It's a very common name, not everything is about you."
I scoff as she puts our drinks in the cup holders. All the questions that I've had all these years, now was the time to get answers.
"Why did you leave?"
She pushes up her sunglasses and grips the wheel with a fury I'd only ever seen in Charlie. "You're so predictable, you know that? You get that from your father." The brunette woman spits as she speeds out of the drive-thru. "I'll tell you why I left." She begins. "I left because it was exhausting to deal with that man. He would drink and he would get in this headspace that he could tell me what to do and what to say and how to act. All we did was fight and Charlotte was witness for all of it. Do you have any idea what that does to a kid, Lorraine?" I couldn't picture my parents fighting. I'd never seen them together let alone hostile towards each other.
