that she’d travelled on every highway in the world or anything, but the traffic was horrendous and she hated it. But once she got past Detroit, she knew the traffic would be much better and it’d be a much better drive the rest of the way.
She reached beside her and opened a bag of Doritos with one hand and shoved a couple into her mouth. She might as well get comfortable, she had days of driving ahead of her.
*
As much as she tried, Lily couldn’t stop herself from remembering the way she’d left Bassville eight years ago. She’d always said it was because she wanted to chase her dream, her dream of becoming an actress. But that wasn’t the only reason.
She’d spent the last eight years trying to block it from her memory, but the incident that had occurred in her family just months before she left was the main reason she hadn’t returned. Not that she hadn’t gone home to visit, she quickly argued with herself. I didn’t just drop off the face of the planet. And who could blame me for not wanting to show my face around town? But whenever she did go home for Christmas or Easter, she made damn sure that the visit was short and sweet. She was in and out of there so fast she barely had to show her face in town, most often only staying for a couple of nights before heading back to Toronto, making some excuse about having to get back to work. Ha! What a joke. It wasn’t as though she had any great career or anything. Anybody could wait tables.
For those last few months of high school before she moved, eyes would follow her as she walked down the street and people would whisper behind their hands as she went past. Her skin prickled with the memory. She wondered if anything had changed or if she’d still break out in a cold sweat walking down the main street. How her parents could still live there was beyond her comprehension. But she had nowhere else to go, and after eight years, surely people would have forgotten.
She turned her mind to happier memories, she had enough negative in her life as it was without recalling all the horrid details of her childhood. Lily thought of the house she grew up in and the unique smell of sagebrush outside her window. She missed the ranch more than she cared to admit. Really, how could a piece of dirt mean more to her than her family? But somehow it did. She knew that if the ranch was still theirs she would have come home more often.
So much for happy memories, she thought, wiping away a tear gathering at the edge of her eye.
She was close to her dad. She’d always been his little girl and she missed him dreadfully every day of her self-imposed exile.
It was her mother she struggled to forgive, and she worried about how she’d feel having her back in her life full time again.
Three months before she’d graduated from high school her mother, Roberta, lost the ranch to the bank. It had always been her mother’s job to do the books for the ranch. Neither Lily nor her dad knew that Roberta was pilfering money out of the account to pay for her gambling habit. Lily and her dad hadn’t even known about the gambling. At least not until it was too late.
Lily had been at home by herself when the bank manager had called. Of course the man on the other end of the line wouldn’t give out any details to her, given that she wasn’t a director of the company, but Lily knew then that something horrible was about to happen. Luckily it was her dad who came home first. Lily told him about the angry banker on the phone and he went straight to his office to call the manager back. Apparently it wasn’t the first time that he’d called. It was just the first time her dad knew about it.
Her dad had stayed in there for a very long time. Lily remembered how she had waited outside the door long after she heard him hang up the phone. The muffled distress noises she heard had her reaching for the doorknob. Just as her hand grasped the handle though, her mother came home fresh from shopping.
Lily remembered that day as though it was a movie. For some reason, in her mind, everything moved in slow motion. Her memory was crystal clear, clearer than real life, and the colors were unnaturally bright. Her mother’s hair was tied up in an intricate style and she had on her favorite floral dress. Lily remembered thinking she looked absolutely beautiful.
Roberta had taken one look at her and asked what was wrong. When Lily told her about the phone call from the bank, the blood drained from her mother’s face. She slipped into the office and shut the door behind her. Lily could still hear the click of the lock as if it had just happened.
Her parents didn’t fight and she rarely ever heard her dad raise his voice in anger. But that day, locked together in the office, her parents raged at each other. It started off as muffled murmurs that Lily struggled to decipher through the door, but soon their voices rose until Lily had to back away to save her ears. Glass shattered and wood splintered inside that small closed-off room.
Her father yelled at her mother, demanding to know where all his money had gone, and her mother cried and shrieked, begging for forgiveness.
The house was quiet for weeks after the initial blow-up. Lily recalled all too clearly the wreckage of the room and the redness in both her parents’ eyes from crying. They didn’t speak to each other for a month and Dad moved into the spare room across the hall from Lily.
Finally, at least a week after the bank manager had called, Lily worked up enough courage to ask her dad what was wrong. It was the first time she ever saw her father cry.
“She lost it,” Lily remembered her dad saying softly, as though he still couldn’t quite believe it.
“Lost what?” she’d asked when he didn’t continue. “What has she lost?”
Her world fell away at his whispered reply, “The ranch.”
She had cried herself to sleep for days as her world collapsed around her and she quickly started making her plans to leave. She didn’t want to stay long enough to see the ranch pulled out from under them, but she knew if she had any hope of ever making anything of herself, she needed to finish high school. But she couldn’t handle the rumors that flew around town. She was never sure as to who had started them because she sure as shit never told anyone about what was going on. Not her boyfriend Wade, and not any of her friends.
As soon as the ‘Foreclosure’ signs went up, her life changed forever. Suddenly the ‘rumors’ were all true. She couldn’t stand to look anyone in the eye and she felt her long standing relationships fall apart. Some of her so-called friends dropped from her circle instantly, the rest were hurt that she didn’t confide in them. They couldn’t understand that she didn’t want to talk about losing the ranch or what it was like to live with a gambling mother. Worse, they felt betrayed that she couldn’t trust them. She couldn’t trust anyone. She still couldn’t.
The day after she graduated, the bank came and took away the only home she had ever known, by auction, and they moved into a small house on the edge of town. The ranch sold lock, stock and barrel to Donald Franklin, the greediest son-of-a-bitch around. Lily still felt sick whenever she thought of him anywhere near her beloved horses. His daughter, Jenna, had once told her that Lily’s favorite gelding was lovely to ride. Lily promptly burst into tears. Jenna, mortified, quickly apologized and never mentioned anything about the ranch to her again.
Lily shook off the bad memories and pulled into a rundown motel for the night. She rubbed her eyes, partly to try to erase the memories haunting her and partly to get them to focus. Spending twelve hours on the road made her eyelids feel as though they were made from sandpaper.
There was a small diner across the street from where she was staying and after checking in to her room, she wandered over for a bite to eat. The Doritos she was munching on all day just weren’t cutting it anymore.
