Page 12 of Merging Wright

“And . . .” I’m not certain how to explain the last fact. “You’re a serial dater. You’re probably open about what you want and what you don’t, which suggests you value honesty but have intimacy issues. You move on quickly from one woman to another, so you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.”

“Do you think I’m a womanizer?” Holding those eyes perfectly still, his voice rises with disbelief. He almost sounds offended. Focusing on my eyes with that eerie stare, he says, “As my wife, you’ll have to assume I’m faithful to you.”

“As your pretend wife, there’s no assumption. Keep it in your pants for the duration of the time we’re in your small town. I hate cheaters. Real or fake.”

Mach’s gaze remains on me for an uncomfortable length of time before he replies. “I would never cheat on you, Jane.” The words fall like a gauntlet between us. “As for keeping it in my pants in my hometown, there’s no fear of anything happening there. With anyone.” His lids lower just the slightest, and the implication is clear.

He won’t be with any woman, not even his wife.

8

Playlist: “Momma’s House” – Dustin Lynch

[Mach]

As we continue our journey, Jane stirs in the driver’s seat. She’s been responsible for driving this entire trip, and I’m silently grateful. Sitting in this old thing seems like a cursed miracle. However, with all the repairs to this classic Chevy, including the updated radio, and the replaced leather on the seats, it hardly feels like the same truck. Even the fuzzy dice Jane refused to let me remove are new.

“You can’t remove those,” she’d argued. “Fuzzy dice are for protection. Like a good luck talisman.”

“And you know this how?”

“My granddad told me. In World War II, pilots carried dice in their pockets for luck in battle. The tradition transferred to hanging fuzzy dice from rearview mirrors in cars.”

I don’t trust luck and we’re certainly headed for battle, but the newer feel of this truck is helping keep my memories at bay.

As we near Chillicothe, Ohio, the scenery changes from flatland to rolling hills and off in the distance are the mountains we’ll soon climb. When we cross the Ohio River, the natural barrier between Ohio and West Virginia, a sense of home hits me hard. Strange that I’m still calling this place home when I haven’t been here in over twenty-five years.

So much happened so fast when I was young, hotheaded, and twenty-three, and the tailspin I was in back then took me away from Wrightwood like a cyclone out of control. Once transplanted, I never returned.

I can’t say I know anyone who’s ever brought a woman home for a funeral. Most guys who introduce a girl to the family do it under happier circumstances. Like a family reunion or an engagement party. An introduction is a rite of passage in a relationship, but Jane and I are not in a relationship. Still, it feels strange to be bringing her home to Ma.

Jane and I remain silent, and an anxious quiet settles around us. The radio is back on, but the volume is low. I haven’t heard a single song the entire trip, but Jane has been tapping her fingers on the steering wheel or moving her lips, mutely singing along.

I need to prepare her for what she’s about to encounter.

“I have a twin.” Jane’s head turns so sharply, she swerves the truck a little bit and I reach for the dash. “Whoa.”

“Sorry.” She rights the truck and returns her gaze to the road ahead, but her mouth falls open, ready to ask questions.

“I don’t talk to him, but there’s a possibility he’ll be around.” He lives in the old quarters behind the main house. The place Ma was banished with her twin baby boys when she came back to Wrightwood, young, pregnant and without a husband. If it weren’t for her mother, Ma would have been homeless. We grew up close enough to that status, struggling for years before Myles charmed Fischer.

Myles was the favorite. Troublemaker. Instigator. Yet Fischer had doted on him.

“Just . . . ignore him. I will.” Panic suddenly overcomes me. Jane shouldn’t be anywhere near my brother.

My heart patters faster as the landscape becomes more familiar to me. A sign ahead reads “Wrightwood Rd. 1 mile.” My chest clenches. The rhythm behind my ribs picks up steam. I don’t need to point out the turnoff. Jane has had the map app on her phone guiding us.

We approach Wrightwood from the north on the road bearing the town’s name and I’m thrown back in time. Everything looks the same and yet it doesn’t. Nothing will ever be the same here again.

“Turn left at the rock.”

Jane softly laughs until she sees a small boulder marking a path. In the distance, a large, two-story house sits on a hill. A house that overlooks the town’s business district with a view of the river as well. Thankfully, we aren’t crossing the rainbow-arched bridge over the Kanawha River, but the structure comes into sight soon enough as we climb the gravel incline. My focus returns to the house—white clapboard with a semi-wrap around porch. The place might look storybook to some. To me, it’s a haunted mansion filled with disapproval, disappointment, and disillusions. How Ma can stand to live in the place now is beyond me.

Then again having a relationship with a father—positive or negative—is something I’ve never had. Raised by a single mother, ostracized by our grandfather for years, a father figure is an anomaly to me.

“It’s beautiful,” Jane whispers as she pulls beside the house and cuts the engine.

I stare out the window for a second, wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. Worrying about what I’ve dragged Jane into. She’s about to learn more than five facts about me and none of them will be pleasant. “I should have had you sign an NDA.”