At 2:17 in the morning, I stepped off a Greyhound bus with my seven-year-old son, one suitcase, and no idea what I was going to tell my family.
AJ was asleep against my shoulder before the driver even pulled our bag from underneath the bus. He had asked me three times why we couldn’t just take a plane. I told him the tickets were too expensive. That wasn’t true. Then he asked why Daddy wasn’t coming. I told him Daddy had work. That wasn’t true either.
By the time the rideshare stopped in front of my parents’ house, I had rehearsed six different explanations and believed none of them.
Daddy opened the door before I knocked twice. For a second he just stared at me. Then his whole face changed. “Ally?”
I hadn’t heard him say my name like that in a long time.
“Hey, Daddy.”
He looked at AJ asleep on me, looked at the suitcase, and didn’t ask a single question. He took the bag with one hand and pulled me into him with the other. “My baby came home.”
Mama appeared behind him in her robe. Her eyes went straight from me to AJ to the suitcase. Mama had always been able to turn three seconds of silence into an interrogation.
“Allyson, what happened?”
“Can we just sleep?” I asked.
Daddy answered for me. “She said she needs to sleep.”
Mama’s mouth tightened, but then AJ woke enough to mumble, “Grandma?” and every question she had disappeared behind a smile. She took him from me like she had been waiting years to do it.
Granny was standing at the end of the hallway.
She lived with my parents now, although she described it as ‘staying until these people learn how to act.’ She had on a floral nightgown, one slipper, and the expression of a woman who had already decided I was lying.
“Girl Girl,” she said.
“Not tonight, Granny.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
That was all she said. Somehow it was worse than a question.
Nobody pushed me that night. Daddy put my suitcase in my old room. Mama tucked AJ into the bed beside me even though he was perfectly capable of doing it himself. Granny disappeared down the hall muttering something about people arriving in the middle of the night with luggage and expecting everybody else to mind their business.
I lay awake until sunrise.
The next morning smelled like bacon, coffee, and a childhood I had spent years pretending I didn’t miss.
AJ was having the time of his life. Daddy had already promised him fishing, a trip to the hardware store, and pancakes even though Mama had made breakfast. Mama kept touching his hair and asking questions about school. AJ answered every one of them between bites like he hadn’t noticed that his entire life had changed overnight.
For almost ten minutes, nobody asked me anything.
Then Granny put down her coffee.
“Girl Girl.”
I closed my eyes. “Yes, Granny.”
“What you got going on?”
Daddy sighed. “Mama.”
“Don’t Mama me. Your child rode a Greyhound across Georgia in the middle of the night with my great-grandbaby and one suitcase. Rich people don’t ride buses at two in the morning because everything is going well.”
“I needed a break,” I said.
“From what?” Mama asked.
“Everything.”
Granny leaned back. “Everything got a name?”
“Can we not do this in front of AJ?”
AJ looked up from his pancakes. “Do what?”
Daddy slid another pancake onto his plate. “Eat, man.”
I stared at my coffee. “Things have been stressful. That’s all.”
Mama’s voice softened. “Did something happen with you and your husband?”
My stomach turned.
Before I could answer, the television in the living room changed tones. Daddy always kept the morning news on too loud. A sharp music sting cut through the kitchen, followed by the words BREAKING NEWS.
Nobody paid attention at first.
Then I heard my last name.
Daddy turned toward the television.
The anchor was standing outside a gate I knew better than my own reflection. Behind her, blue lights flashed against the stone entrance of the Augusta house.
“We are following breaking news this morning out of Augusta, where Congressman Johnson has been found dead inside his family’s residence.”
Mama dropped her fork.
Daddy stood so fast his chair scraped the floor.
AJ looked at the television, then at me. “That’s our house.”
Nobody moved.
The anchor kept talking. Authorities had not released a cause of death. Staff had discovered him early that morning. The property was being treated as an active investigation.
Mama whispered my name. “Allyson?”
I couldn’t look at AJ.
Granny could.
She looked at him. Then at the television. Then directly at me.
“Girl Girl,” she said quietly. “What did you do?”
The terrible part wasn’t that my family had just learned my husband was dead from breaking news.
The terrible part was that I wasn’t surprised.
I already knew.