There’s a small wooden cross staked into the ground on the side of the road

with the date of his death written on it.

Scotty would hate it. I bet his mother put it there.

“Can you pull over?”

The driver slows down and brings the cab to a stop. I get out and walk

back to where the cross is. I shake it side to side until the dirt loosens

around it, and then I pull it out of the ground.

Did he die in this very spot? Or did he die in the road?

I didn’t pay attention to the details during the pretrial. When I heard he

had crawled several yards away from the car, I started humming so I

wouldn’t hear anything else the prosecutor said. Then, to avoid having to sit

through details if the case went to trial, I pleaded guilty.

Because technically, I was.

I may not have killed him with my actions, but I definitely killed him

with my inaction.

I thought you were dead, Scotty. But dead people can’t crawl.

I walk back to the cab with the cross in hand. I set it on the back seat

next to me and wait for the driver to pull back onto the road, but he doesn’t.

I glance at him in the rearview mirror, and he’s staring at me with a raised

brow.

“Stealing roadside memorials has to be some kind of bad karma. You

sure you want to take that?”

I look away from him and lie. “Yes. I’m the one who put it there.” I

can still feel him staring at me as he pulls back onto the road.

My new apartment is only two miles from here, but it’s in the opposite

direction from where I used to live. I don’t have a car, so I decided to find a place closer to downtown this time so I can walk to work. If I can even find

a job. It’ll be difficult with my history and lack of experience. And,

according to the cabdriver, the bad karma I’m probably carrying around

right now.

Stealing Scotty’s memorial might be bad karma, but one could argue

that leaving a memorial up for a guy who verbally expressed his hatred for

roadside memorials could be bad karma as well. That’s why I had the driver

take the detour down this back road. I knew Grace probably left something

at the location of the wreck, and I felt I owed it to Scotty to remove it.

“Cash or card?” the driver asks.

I look at the meter and pull cash and a tip out of my purse and hand it

to him after he parks. Then I grab my suitcase and the wooden cross I just

stole and make my way out of the cab and up to the building.

My new apartment isn’t part of a huge complex. It’s just a single-

standing unit flanked by an abandoned car lot on one side and a

convenience store on the other. Plywood covers a downstairs window. Beer

cans in various stages of decay litter the property. I kick one aside so that it

doesn’t get stuck in the wheels of my suitcase.

The place looks even worse than it did online, but I expected as much.

The landlord didn’t even ask for my name when I called to see if they had

any vacancies. She said, “We always have vacancies. Bring cash; I’m in

apartment one.” Then she hung up.

I knock on apartment one. There’s a cat in the window staring at me.

It’s so motionless I start to wonder if it’s a statue, but then it blinks and

slinks away.

The door opens, and an older, tiny woman stares up at me with a

disgruntled look about her. She has curlers in her hair and lipstick smeared

to her nose. “I don’t need anything you’re selling.”

I stare at the lipstick, noting how it’s bleeding into the wrinkles

hugging her mouth. “I called last week about an apartment. You said you’d

have one available.”

Recognition flashes on the woman’s prune-like face. She makes a

hmph sound while looking me up and down. “Didn’t expect you to look like

this.”

I don’t know what to make of her comment. I look down at my jeans

and T-shirt while she walks away from the door for a few seconds. She comes back with a zipper pouch. “Five fifty a month. First and last month’s

rent is due today.”

I count out the money and hand it to her. “There’s no lease?”

She laughs, stuffing the cash into her pouch. “You’re in apartment

six.” She points a finger up. “That’s right above me, so keep it down, I go to

bed early.”

“What utilities are included?”

“Water and trash, but you cover electric. It’s on now—you have three

days to get it switched into your name. Deposit is two fifty to the light

company.”

Fuck. Three days to come up with $250? I’m starting to question my

decision to come back so soon, but when I was released from transitional

housing, I had two choices: spend all my money trying to survive in that

town, or drive the three hundred miles and spend all my money in this one.

I’d rather be in the town that holds all the people once connected to

Scotty.

The woman takes a step back into her apartment. “Welcome to

Paradise Apartments. I’ll bring you a kitten once you get settled.”

I immediately put my hand on her door to prevent her from closing it.

“Wait. What? A kitten?”

“Yeah, a kitten. Like a cat, but smaller.”

I step away from her door like it’ll somehow protect me from what she

just said. “No, thank you. I don’t want a kitten.”

“I have too many.”

“I don’t want a kitten,” I repeat.

“Who wouldn’t want a kitten?”

“Me.”

She huffs, like my response is completely unreasonable. “I’ll make

you a deal,” she says. “I’ll leave the electric on for two weeks if you take a

kitten.” What in the hell kind of place is this? “Fine,” she says, responding

to my silence as if it’s a negotiation tactic. “The month. I’ll leave the

electric on for the whole month if you just take one kitten.” She walks into

her apartment but leaves the door open.

I don’t want a kitten at all, ever, but not having to spend $250 on an

electricity deposit this month would be worth several kittens.

She reappears with a small black-and-orange kitten. She places it in

my hands. “There ya go. My name is Ruth if you need anything, but try not to need anything.” She goes to close her door again.

“Wait. Can you tell me where I can find a pay phone?”

She chuckles. “Yeah, back in 2005.” She closes her door completely.

The kitten meows, but it’s not a sweet meow. It sounds more like a cry

for help. “You and me both,” I mutter.

I make my way toward the stairs with my suitcase and my . . . kitten.

Maybe I should have held out a few more months before coming back here.

I worked to save up just over $2,000, but most of that was spent on moving

here. I should have saved up more. What if I don’t find a job right away?

And now I’m tasked with the responsibility of keeping a kitten alive.

My life just became ten times more difficult than it was yesterday.

I make it up to the apartment with the kitten clinging to my shirt. I

insert the key in the lock and have to use both hands to pull on the door and

get the key to turn. When I push open the door to my new apartment, I hold

my breath, afraid of what it’s going to smell like.

I flip on the light switch and look around, releasing my breath slowly.

There’s not much of a smell. That’s both good and bad.

There’s a couch in the living room, but that’s literally all there is. A

small living room, an even smaller kitchen, no dining room. No bedroom.

It’s an efficiency apartment with a closet and a bathroom so small the toilet

touches the tub.

The place is a dump. A five-hundred-square-foot absolute shithole, but

it’s a step up for me. I’ve gone from sharing a one-hundred-square-foot cell

with a roommate, to living in transitional housing with six roommates, to a

five-hundred-square-foot apartment I can call my own.

I’m twenty-six years old, and this is the first time I’ve ever officially

lived somewhere alone. It’s both terrifying and liberating.

I don’t know if I can afford this place after the month is up, but I’m

going to try. Even if that means applying to every business I walk past.

Having my own apartment can only serve to help as I plead my case to

the Landrys. It’ll show I’m independent now. Even if that independence

will be a struggle.

The kitten wants down, so I put her on the floor in the living room.

She walks around, crying out for whoever she left downstairs. I feel a pang

in my chest as I watch her searching corners for a way out. A way back

home. A way back to her mother and siblings.

She looks like a bumblebee, or something out of Halloween, with her

black and orange splotches.

“What are we going to name you?”

I know she’ll more than likely be nameless for a few days while I

think about it. I take the responsibility of naming things very seriously. The

last time I was responsible for naming someone, I took it more seriously

than I’ve ever taken anything. That could have been because the whole time

I sat in my cell during my pregnancy, all there was to do was think about

baby names.

I chose the name Diem because I knew as soon as I was released, I

was going to make my way back here and do everything in my power to

find her.

Here I am.

Carpe Diem.

I’m pulling my truck into the alley behind the bar when I notice the nail

polish still on the fingernails of my right hand. Shit. I forgot I played dress-

up with a four-year-old last night.

At least the purple matches my work shirt.

Roman is tossing bags of trash into the dumpster when I exit the truck.

He sees the gift sack in my hand and knows it’s for him, so he reaches for it.

“Let me guess. Coffee mug?” He peeks inside.

It’s a coffee mug. It always is.

He doesn’t say thank you. He never does.

We don’t acknowledge the sobriety these mugs symbolize, but I buy

him one every Friday. This is the ninety-sixth mug I’ve bought him.

I should probably stop because his apartment is full of coffee mugs,

but I’m too far in to give up now. He’s almost at one hundred weeks sober,

and I’ve been holding on to that one-hundredth-milestone mug for a while

now. It’s a Denver Broncos mug. His least favorite team.

Roman gestures toward the back door of the bar. “There’s a couple

inside harassing other customers. You might want to keep an eye on them.”

That’s odd. We don’t normally have to deal with unruly people this

early in the evening. It isn’t even six o’clock yet. “Where are they sitting?”

“Next to the jukebox.” His eyes fall to my hand. “Nice nails, man.”

“Right?” I hold up my hand and wiggle my fingers. “She did pretty

good for a four-year-old.”

I open the back door of the bar and am met with the grating sound of

my favorite song being slaughtered by Ugly Kid Joe through the

loudspeakers.

Surely not.

I walk through the kitchen and into the bar and immediately spot

them. They’re hunched over the jukebox. I quietly make my way over to

them and see she’s punching in the same four numbers again and again. I

look over their shoulders at the screen while they giggle like mischievous

children. “Cat’s in the Cradle” is set to play thirty-six times in a row.

I clear my throat. “You think this is funny? Forcing me to listen to the

same song for the next six hours?”

My father spins around when he hears my voice. “Ledger!” He pulls

me in for a hug. He smells like beer and motor oil. And limes, maybe? Are

they drunk?

My mother backs away from the jukebox. “We were trying to fix it.

We didn’t do this.”

“Sure, you didn’t.” I pull her in for a hug.

They never announce when they’re going to show up. They just

appear and stay a day or two or three and then head out in their RV again.

Their showing up drunk is new, though. I glance over my shoulder,

and Roman is behind the bar now. I point to my parents. “Did you do this to

them, or did they show up this way?”

Roman shrugs. “A little of both.”

“It’s our anniversary,” my mother says. “We’re celebrating.”

“I hope you guys didn’t drive here.”

“We didn’t,” my father says. “Our car is with the RV in the shop

getting routine maintenance, so we took a Lyft.” He pats my cheek.

“Wanted to see you, but we’ve been here two hours waiting for you to show

up, and now we’re leaving because we’re hungry.”

“This is why you should warn me before you drop into town. I have a

life.”

“Did you remember our anniversary?” my father asks.

“Slipped my mind. Sorry.”

“Told you,” he says to my mother. “Pay up, Robin.”

My mother reaches into her pocket and hands him a ten-dollar bill.

They bet on almost everything. My love life. Which holidays I’ll

remember. Every football game I’ve ever played. But I’m almost positive

they’ve just been passing the same ten-dollar bill back and forth for several

years.

My father holds up his empty glass and shakes it. “Get us a refill,

bartender.”

I take Bartenders. “How about an ice water?” I leave them at the jukebox

and make my way behind the bar.

I’m pouring two glasses of water when a girl walks into the bar

looking somewhat lost. She glances around the room like she’s never been

here before, and then when she notices an empty corner at the opposite end

of the bar, she makes a beeline for it.

I stare at her the entire time she’s walking through the bar. I stare at

her so hard I accidentally overfill the glasses and water goes everywhere. I

grab a towel and wipe up my mess. When I look at my mother, she’s

looking at the girl. Then at me. Then at the girl.

Shit. The last thing I need is for her to try to set me up with a

customer. She tries to play matchmaker plenty when she’s sober, so I can’t

imagine how bad the tendency might be after a few drinks. I need to get

them out of here.

I take the waters to them and then hand my mother my credit card.

“You guys should go down to Jake’s Steakhouse and have dinner on me.

Walk there so you can sober up on the way.”

“You are so nice.” She clutches at her chest dramatically and looks at

my father. “Benji, we did so well with him. Let’s go celebrate our parenting

with his credit card.”

“We did do well with him,” my father says in agreement. “We should

have more kids.”

“Menopause, honey. Remember when I hated you for an entire year?”

My mother grabs her purse, and they take the glasses of water with them as

they go.

“We should get rib eye since he’s paying,” my father mutters as they

walk away.

I release a sigh of relief and then make my way back to the bar. The

girl is tucked quietly into the corner, writing in a notebook. Roman isn’t

behind the bar right now, so I’m assuming no one has taken her order yet.

I gladly volunteer as tribute.

“What can I get you?” I ask her.

“Water and a Diet Coke, please.” She doesn’t look up at me, so I back

away to fulfill her order. She’s still writing in her notebook when I return

with her drinks. I try to get a glimpse of what she’s writing, but she closes

her notebook and lifts her eyes. “Thank . . .” She pauses in the middle of what I think is her attempt at saying thank you. She mutters the word you

and sticks the straw in her mouth.

She seems flustered.

I want to ask her questions, like what her name is and where she’s

from, but I’ve learned over the years of owning this place that asking

questions of lonely people in a bar can quickly turn into conversations I

have to maul my way out of.

But most of the people who come in here don’t capture my attention

like she has. I gesture toward her two drinks and say, “Are you waiting for

someone else?”

She pulls both drinks closer. “Nope. Just thirsty.” She breaks eye

contact with me and leans back in her chair, pulling her notebook with her

and giving it all her attention.

I can take a hint. I walk to the other end of the bar to give her privacy.

Roman returns from the kitchen and nudges his head in her direction.

“Who’s she?”

“I don’t know, but she isn’t wearing a wedding ring, so she’s not your

type.”

“Very funny.”

 Dear Scotty,

They turned the old bookstore into a bar. Can you believe that shit? I wonder what they did with the sofa we used to sit on every Sunday.

I swear, it’s like this whole town is one huge

Monopoly board, and after you died, someone came along and picked up the board and scrambled all the pieces around.Nothing is the same. Everything seems unfamiliar.

I’ve been walking around downtown taking it all in for the last couple of hours. I was on my way to the grocery store when I got sidetracked by the bench we used to eat ice cream on. I sat down and people watched for a while.

Everyone seems so carefree in this town. The people here just wander around like their worlds are right-side-up—like they aren’t about to fall off the pavement and land in the sky. They just move from one moment to the next, not even aware of the mothers walking around without their daughters.

I probably shouldn’t be in a bar, especially my first night back. Not that I have an issue with alcohol. That one horrible night was an exception. But the last thing I need your parents to find out is that I stopped by a bar before I stopped by their house. But I thought this place was still the bookstore, and bookstores usually have coffee. I was so disappointed when I walked inside because it’s been a long day of traveling here on a bus and then the cab. I was hoping for more caffeine than a diet soda can provide.

Maybe the bar has coffee. I haven’t asked yet.

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, and I promise it’ll make sense before I finish this letter, but I kissed a prison guard once.

We got caught and he got transferred to a different unit and I felt guilty that our kiss got him in trouble. But he talked to me like I was a person and not a number, and even though I wasn’t attracted to him, I knew he was attracted to me, so when he leaned in to kiss me, I kissed him back. It was my way of saying thank you, and I think he knew that, and he was okay with it. It had been two years since I had been touched by you, so when he

pressed me against the wall and gripped my waist, I thought I’d feel more. I was sad that I didn’t. I’m telling you this because he tasted like coffee, but a better kind of coffee than the prison coffee they served to the prisoners. He tasted like expensive eight-dollar coffee from Starbucks, with caramel and whipped cream

And a cherry. It’s why I kept kissing him. Not because I enjoyed the kiss, or him, or his hand on my waist, but because I missed expensive flavored coffee.

And you. I miss expensive coffee and you.

Love,

Kenna

...ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ...

“You want a refill?” the bartender asks. He has tattoos that slide all the way into his shirtsleeves. His shirt is deep purple, a color you don’t see in prison very often.

I never thought about that until I was there, but prison is really drab and colorless, and after a while, you start to forget what the trees look like in the fall.

“Do you have coffee?” I ask.

“Sure. Cream and sugar?”

“Do you have caramel? And whipped cream?”

He tosses a rag onto his shoulder. “You bet. Soy, skim, almond, or whole milk?”

“Whole.”

The bartender laughs. “I was kidding. This is a bar; I have a four-hour-old pot of coffee and your choice of cream or sugar or both or none.”

The color of his shirt and the way it. complComplementsskin tone are no longer impressive. Asshole. “Just give me whatever,” I mutter.

The bartender backs away to retrieve my basic prison coffee. I watch as he lifts the pot out of the holder and brings it close to his nose to sniff it.He makes a face, then dumps it out in the sink. He flicks the water on while refilling a guy’s beer while starting a new pot of coffee while closing out someone else’s tab while smiling just enough but not too much.

I’ve never seen someone move so fluidly, like he has seven arms and three brains and they’re all going at once. It’s mesmerizing watching someone who’s good at what they do. I don’t know what I’m good at. I don’t know that there is anything in this world I could make look effortless.

There are things I want to be good at. I want to be a good mother. To my future kids, but mostly to the daughter I already brought into this world.I want to have a yard that I can plant stuff in. Stuff that will flourish and not

die. I want to learn how to talk to people without wishing I could retract every word I said. I want to be good at feeling things when a guy touches my waist. I want to be good at life. I want to make it look effortless, but up until this point, I’ve made every aspect of life appear entirely too difficult to navigate.

The bartender glides back to me when the coffee is ready. As flinging the mug, I look at him and actually absorb what I’m seeing this time. He’s good-looking in a way that a girl who is trying to get custody of her daughter should want to stay away from. He’s got eyes that have seen a thing or two, and hands that have probably hit a man or two.

His hair is fluid like his movements. Long, dark strands that hang in

his eyes and move in whatever direction he moves. He doesn’t touch his

hair; he hasn’t since I’ve been sitting here. He just lets it get in his way, but

then he’ll flick his head every now and then, the slightest little movement,and his hair goes where he needs it to. It’s thick hair, agreeable hair, want-

my-hands-in-his-hair hair.

My mug is full of coffee now, but he lifts a finger and says, “One sec.”

He swivels and opens a minifridge and then pulls out whole milk. He pours

some into the mug. He puts the milk back, opens another fridge surprise,

whipped cream. He reaches behind him, and when his hand reappears, he’s

holding a single cherry that he places carefully on top of my drink. He

slides it closer to me and spreads out his arms like he just created magic.

“No caramel,” he says. “Best I could do for not-a-coffee-shop.”

He probably thinks he just made a bougie drink for a spoiled girl

who’s used to having eight-dollar coffee every day. He has no idea how

long it’s been since I’ve had a decent cup of coffee. Even in the months I

spent in transitional housing, they served prison coffee to the prison girls

with prison pasts.

I could cry.

I do cry.

As soon as he gives his attention to someone at the other end of the

bar, I take a drink of my coffee and close my eyes and cry because life can

be so fucking cruel and hard, and I’ve wanted to quit living it so many

times, but then moments like these remind me that happiness isn’t some

permanent thing we’re all trying to achieve in life, it’s merely a thing that

shows up every now and then,sometimes in tiny doses that are just

substantial enough to keep us going.