WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18
There’s a restaurant in town with a truly obnoxious name that serves pretty solid food Wednesdays through Sundays. We met my mom for lunch and it was here, before locals and antiquing elderly and probably God himself, that Megan had her first chicken fried steak. I’m told it was life-changing.
My dad remarried when I was five and they had their first daughter together when I was 10. I reached over the side of the plastic hospital bassinet to touch her inky little foot and imagined driving her around town in my convertible and putting her hair in side ponytails while she told me all of her secrets. When she was a toddler and we’d visit my dad’s side of the family for holidays, Leah would hang on me like a spider monkey. We’d sit together and read her Sesame Street books while our grandmother’s house buzzed with grownups and rowdy cousins. After a couple of years she’d be buzzing around with them and I’d be stuck answering awkward questions about school and my “social” life, but for a while there it was just me and her.
On Wednesday night Leah’s boyfriend Kyle grilled ribs and made his famous baked potatoes, which are not to be underestimated. I drank a Natty Light with dinner because why the hell not. He has two adorable daughters and they fell in love with Megan immediately, as one does. There were several games of hide-and-seek before and after dinner, and those girls are good at hide-and-seek.
One day I’ll talk about how it seems like everything in Tennessee is tied directly to a person who’s gone, and how that makes everything feel unreal and endless, but not today. Sometimes it’s like all I ever really talk about is dead people, even when I’m not trying to. My sisters and I have scoops of our hearts in little urns in our bedrooms. Leah has his art tattooed on her shoulder and Abby has this note he left her tattooed on her forearm. I have my deer. We all have each other.
