Chapter 13 - A New Foundation
By early November, the trees had shed their brilliant red and orange coats, leaving the Ozark hills looking skeletal and stark against the pale winter sky.
Our house had transformed.
The new roof shingles were a rich, dark charcoal gray that didn't leak a single drop when a heavy weekend downpour swept across Benton County. The kitchen ceiling was spotless. The front screen door no longer gave off that high, grating squeak when someone opened it, thanks to Dwight’s liberal application of WD-40.
Most importantly, the emotional weather inside our walls had completely shifted.
Cal was back to his normal, energetic self. The little pink line above his left eyebrow had faded into a faint, silvery crescent—a minor souvenir of a day that had changed everything. He had even finished his science fair project a week early: a much larger, more stable papier-mâché volcano built on a wooden base that Dwight had cut out with his table saw in the garage.
We didn't hear from my parents for three weeks. Then, around mid-November, Tamika mentioned casually over the backyard fence that she’d heard my father had picked up a part-time job driving a courtesy shuttle for a local car dealership down on Highway 71, and my mother had finally canceled her bridge club membership at Sycamore Glen.
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They were learning, the hard way, what it meant to live within their actual means.
Trisha had packed up her unsold inventory and moved to Tulsa to live with an old college roommate, taking a job managing the front desk at a commercial printing company. She hadn't called or texted to apologize, and I hadn't expected her to. Some bridges aren't meant to be rebuilt; sometimes, burning them is the only way to keep the fire from spreading to your own home.
