“Of course, get back there,” he said, waving me in the direction of the kitchen.
I looked over to Oliver, and he gave me a knowing look. “Don’t worry, I’ll just eat this cake with Reese,” he told me.
“No way, Mr. Mith. You’d better get your own cake,” Reese said with a mouthful of food.
I left the two of them to fight over the dessert and headed to the kitchen to get to work. The moment I slid on one of the diner aprons, it was as if my body went into muscle memory. Without even thinking about it, I knew what to do. Luckily, Walter had kept almost everything in the same exact place. I began preparing our breakfasts, and the excitement I felt came rushing back to me.
I knew cooking was my passion. I knew I had to finish my degree at some point soon, and I couldn’t thank Oliver enough for giving me the chance to be his personal chef to relight that fire in my soul.
After our meal, which Walter refused to let us pay for, we walked over to the town square to explore the farmers’ market. Oliver sported a nice baseball cap and sunglasses to hide his appearance the best he could, and luckily for us, no one really called us out, even though I ran into a few familiar faces.
I loved watching Reese and Oliver explore everything together. I loved how free they both looked, how free Oliver seemed to be. At one point, he lifted Reese onto his shoulders as they bought me flowers.
Each passing day, I was falling more in love with the man standing in front of me, and I doubted I’d ever be able to stop that fall.
The day was smooth throughout, without a hitch in sight. We explored all day and made our way back that night for some food trucks and street music.
Everything was going better than I thought it could, up until I came face to face with the people I feared most in Randall.
After we finished the slushie drinks that Reese had to have a part in, I tossed our cups into the trash can, and when I looked up, I met a pair of eyes that matched mine.
“Mama,” I muttered, stunned to see her standing in front of me with Dad right by her side. They were holding bags from the local grocery store, and they were clearly just as stunned to see me as I was to see them.
“What are you doing here?” Mama snapped at me. “I thought I made myself clear on our last call that I didn’t want to hear from you again, let alone see you.”
Her stare was intense and cold. For a moment, I felt as if I were that same little girl who’d taken on so much of her verbal abuse. For a moment, I went back in time and stood frozen in fear as my father stared at me as if I were a monster.
Then, a hand landed on my lower back. Oliver approached me with Reese, and he gave me a small smile. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Who are you?” Mama asked, her eyes going directly to Oliver, and in that moment, I found my confidence again.
“None of your business,” I said, standing up straighter.
“Mama, who is that?” Reese asked as she moved to stand behind my leg. She was hiding behind me, which was so outside of her normal. My little girl wasn’t one to be bashful. My protective instincts went up the moment I realized she was afraid.
My mother’s eyes widened with surprise. “Is that . . .” Her words trailed off as she shook her head back and forth. “It can’t be . . .”
I stepped backward, moving Reese back with me. Already I could tell where the direction of the conversation was unfolding, and I didn’t want my daughter to take in anything that my mother was going to toss out at her.
Dad hadn’t spoken one word at all, but his stare was on Reese’s every move. Studying her entire existence. I hated how it felt whenever I was around him. I hated how we could have been so close, yet he felt so far away.
“Well, I’ll be damned, if it isn’t Emery Taylor. It looks like it’s a Taylor family reunion,” a voice said with excitement. I looked over my shoulder to see Bobby, my high school friend, walking in my direction. If only he knew how bad his timing was in that very moment. “It’s been too damn long, that’s for sure,” he said the moment his eyes locked with mine.
He went straight for a hug, and I let it happen, mostly because I was in a state of shock. He completely missed the uncomfortable situation unfolding before us, probably due to the alcohol in his bloodstream. “How have you been?” he asked. “It’s been too long.”
Before that very minute? Pretty great. In that moment? Awful. “I’ve been good, Bobby. It’s good to see you.”
“Shit, you too, Emery. This town’s sure missing your face—and your cooking. Sammie has been cooking the meals down at the church after services, but it’s nowhere as good as your cooking. Maybe before you go, you can whip up some of that mac and cheese you used to make for—”
“Where is she?” I asked, turning straight to Mama as my stomach dropped. It felt as if boulders were sitting heavy in the pit of me, weighing me down from shock.
Mama shifted uncomfortably in her shoes as Dad looked away from me. They didn’t say a word. Guilt sank in Mama’s eyes, yet Dad didn’t show a blink of remorse for the news that Bobby had revealed.
“Where is she?” I asked again. A rage was building up inside me, and I didn’t know how it was going to explode from my system with the news my parents had been hiding from me. “I called you, Mama. I asked about her, and you didn’t say a word.”
“I don’t have to tell you a thing,” she said, crossing her arms as if her stance made any sense.
I turned to Bobby. “Do you know where Sammie is staying, Bobby?”
“Don’t answer that, Bobby,” Mama ordered, scolding him as if he were a child.
“Bobby.” I took a deep inhalation and locked my eyes with his. “Do you know?”
Bobby’s stare dashed back and forth between Mama and me, and his aloof persona was completely drained away as he began to read the seriousness of the situation at hand. “Oh man, look, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” he explained, ruffling through his curly hair.
“It’s fine, just tell me,” I said, trying everything to keep myself from shaking him out of fear. Oliver stood behind me with his hands on Reese’s shoulders. He leaned in and whispered that he was going to take Reese off to play a game to give my parents and me space to talk. I nodded in agreement.
As they began to walk away, Mama’s eyes widened in shock. “You’re just going to allow a strange man to walk off with my granddaughter?”
A strange man?
Her granddaughter?
She couldn’t have been serious in that moment. She couldn’t have been questioning my parenting skills, when she’d been lying to me about the whereabouts of my sister for who knew how long.
I didn’t even give her question the answer she was in search of. My eyes stared into Bobby. “Bobby?” I asked again.
He grimaced and rubbed his hand over his mouth and then shrugged. As he was about to speak and give me the information, Dad jumped into the conversation.
“I think it’s about time for you to walk away, Bobby,” he ordered.
Bobby took the command and ran with it. Literally. He jogged away and didn’t look back once.
Acid began to burn at the back of my throat as my panic rose. My little sister had been living in our small town for so long and had never reached out to let me know. She’d made it seem as if she was going off to find herself, not to return to my parents’ chains.