But the image fades just like the school in the rearview. There’s always this empty void, a gap in space and time where my mom should be but isn’t.
Shifting in my seat, I rest my head against the glass of the car window and close my eyes, reaching in my pocket to wrap my fingers around the lucky quarter.
I usually push these thoughts away because I can never picture it, but for the first time in a long time, one arm cradling the familiar shape of a bingo prize basket, the taste of our favorite ice-cream flavor still on my tongue, I can feel her.
I can actually feel her.
My thumbnail finds that familiar nick just above George Washington’s head, and I can’t help but think that maybe this bingo night wasn’t so bad after all.
3
The rising sun is already ridiculously hot, and I’m relieved when my bike picks up speed and I feel the wind pulling at my hair, the for-sale sign on my front lawn fading farther and farther into the distance as I head off to work the next day.
I could do this ride with my eyes closed, the route carved deep into my memory. It’s crazy to think I won’t be riding along it soon. Every familiar turn and hill and landmark will be a thing of the past, since we’ll probably move into an apartment in town, and Nina’s will be just around the corner.
Not that Dad has said anything about it.
I turn out onto the main road that’ll take me straight into the heart of Huckabee and scan the horizon as a single red car lumbers past me. Behind the car sits a blanket of farmland, cornstalks growing taller and taller with each pedal.
And, of course, there are the cows.
Anytime there’s a stretch of farmland in between a development of McMansions, you see them, loafing around in a field of grass, not a single care in the world.
Each stretch marks a Huckabee family that’s refused to be bought out and shoved a few miles south to the cheap, rickety town houses that no one really wants to live in.
I pedal past Devonshire Estates, a development of cookie-cutter houses that were built on top of my grandparents’ farm back in the mid-2000s. My grandfather died just after I was born, and when the real estate developers came knocking, my grandma didn’t really have a choice. The farm where she grew up, where she raised my mom, was ripped right out from under her. She lived in the town houses until she passed away.
I stare at a golden retriever sunbathing in a sprawling backyard, wondering what part of the farm used to lie underneath him. Wondering if my grandma was just as devastated about losing the home she had grown up in as I am about losing mine.
Saint Michael’s Church comes swinging into view, with its stoic brick and stained-glass windows and ancient wooden door, and the playground next to it where I used to jump off swings and play tag and hang upside down on the monkey bars with Kiera.
Admittedly, I probably won’t miss this part of the ride all that much, since when I slow to a stop at a big red stop sign, I find myself trying, like I always do, to ignore the black sign looming in the distance just in front of me, HUCKABEE CEMETERY painted in thick gold letters.
I duck my head and pedal quickly past, the black sign and the wrought-iron gates whizzing by me as the center of Huckabee pulls me safely inside. Yet even when I can breathe again, there’s still a crater inside me that feels like I’ve left her behind. Again.
The business district, or, really, the heart of Huckabee, hasn’t changed a single bit in my entire life. Sure, a few of the buildings have been renovated and modernized, likely because they had lead paint from the fifties, but it still has the same feel, good and bad memories around every corner. Memories I don’t want to think about.
I see Judy through the window at Hank’s Diner, where my dad and I went almost every day for three months when we just didn’t have it in us to make dinner. She blows me a kiss, and I can already feel the bone-crushing hug she’ll give me when she finds out we’re selling the house. Judy is the cornerstone of Hank’s, having worked there since she was a freshman at Huckabee High. She’ll be seventy-five this fall.
The Coffee Bean is a few doors down, followed by a slew of other shops, like O’Reilly’s Used Books and a hardware store my dad frequents. I wave to Mr. O’Reilly as he unlocks the door to his shop, his carefully maintained mustache turning up at the corners as he gives me a smile, even though I haven’t set foot in there in years. The creaking wood floors and the smell of old books are still too much three years on.
As I pedal down Main Street, I watch the giant clock in the center of town tick slowly closer to seven forty-five, the morning sun already shining brightly in the sky behind it. I slide onto the sidewalk, hop off my bike, and walk it over to the rack at the bottom of the library steps. Taking my U-lock out of my bag, I glance up at the huge old building with its wide windows and century-old red brick. And sitting in stark contrast across the street from it is…
Nina’s Bakery. Relief washes over me at just the sight of it.
Whitewashed brick gives way to a large circular sign, spelling out the name in
