Hometown Read Online Free Page B

head. “I knew your grandma so well,” she said, and Border wished he’d paid attention to her name. “She put up with so much crap from your grandpa, and it just killed her to have her boy living so far away. We offered—didn’t we, Cons?—we offered to drive her to Canada to see your dad, but she was the good wife, always the good wife, your grandma, in spite of all the BS she took from him. She was just paralyzed, wasn’t she, Cons?”
    Connie nodded.
    “Oh, those were wicked times.”
    Border set some salsa in the cart. So he had a family with a past. Well, he’d always known that, but all these people in this grocery store seemed to know a lot more about it than he did.
    The strange lady with red hair (Border wondered about the color of her car) got a little choked up. “Gol darn it,” she said, “if she weren’t dead already, why it would just kill her to see you, all big like this, and those years you were little just gone and lost.”
    Lord, tears. And these were worse, coming from a stranger. Border reached for soup cans, two for $1.99, but he didn’t make it; instead, smack in the center of aisle five, he got hugged hard by a nice-smelling, red-haired lady.
    A Boy and His Car—
    It didn’t take long to settle in because they hadn’t brought many belongings. After all, the house was fully furnished. It even came with a late-model Oldsmobile in the garage.
    “You love the Volvo, so will this car be mine?” Border asked, hopeful. He pictured himself driving the Olds with a load of friends along, cruising down Central in Albuquerque, or heading out to the hills. A road trip to the Grand Canyon. Who wants to go? Hop in!
    He frowned. They’d need a special seat for Celeste’s baby.
    Border ran his hand over the hood, over the gleaming maroon surface.
    Of course! He would do what Connie did: He’d color his hair to match his car. Perfect.
    “ Your car?” his father said. “Are you crazy?”
    First Night —
    Border was in bed by ten—nothing else to do—but he didn’t sleep because his father was making too much noise prowling around the house. Around eleven he heard him talking on the phone.
    “It’s all so weird, Jeff. You warned me…”
    Border sighed and rolled over so that he could look out a window. When his father got talking to his old friend Jeff, Connie’s kid, sometimes they didn’t let go for an hour. He wondered if he’d have an old friend to call when he was pushing forty. Doubted it. What with all the moving around, the closest he’d ever come to having a best friend was this past year in Albuquerque, when he met Riley and the others. He couldn’t imagine calling any of them when he needed to talk. Hard to reach any of them by phone, of course. And then it had always seemed to work the other way; they called him.
    Border, I’m at the shelter, it’s a bad scene, come get me.
    I’m in labor, Border, and my mother’s too drunk to drive me to the hospital.
    Would you loan me ten bucks?
    He could call Dana. Awful, really, to think that he’d turn forty someday, and his sister would be his one friend. His sister.
    His father finished talking on the phone and, cheered, whistled as he closed down the house for the night. He paused at Border’s door, knocked, and peeked in.
    “You aren’t really asleep, right?”
    “Not now.”
    “I’m feeling okay about this. Are you feeling okay?”
    Dad, puh-leez. “Can I answer that later?”
    “Good night, Border.”
    Border burrowed into the bedding. Okay with this ? With bedtime at ten, spruce green curtains, Minnesota?
    Puh-leez.
    First Day —
    His father took the Olds to work.
    “Wait,” Border said, before he backed out of the garage. And he ran inside, found the camera, and returned to the garage to take a picture. “Mom should see this,” he said as he snapped. “You in a big new car.” His father didn’t think it was funny and made a face in time to be recorded by the camera.
    “Good luck,” Border said.
    “Go