𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙮 𝙛𝙖𝙩𝙚!

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚎

{ 𝙵𝚎𝚋𝚛𝚞𝚊𝚛𝚢 26𝚝𝚑, 1962 }

In all of her twenty years of living, Tanya had never lied to her parents. Up until this day, she never had a reason to. So it took a lot of courage on her part, to tell her mother she was going to study at the town library with Stephanie, that morning after breakfast. And for her to take the different, unfamiliar route to the dingy hardware store that sat at the edge of Huntman street. A spark of apprehension rattled her nerves, and her fingers tightened around the dark fraying edges of the cap.

Her fingers tightened around the dark frayed fabric, her mind running a hundred miles a minute. I can always turn back, she thought to herself, I don't owe him anything. I don't have to be here. A memory of a poem she had to read in her literature class suddenly recalled itself, it was a Robert Frost poem that dealt with being delivered two options, two roads. It felt like Tanya was standing at a crossroads, but this was no ordinary crossroads. Somewhere deep down inside, she knew this was a test of her fate, and whichever road she chose to take, would lead her to her destiny.

The bell jingled softly overhead as she tentatively stepped inside, and was immediately met with rows of shelves that displayed tools. Tanya eyed a rack of screwdrivers in curiosity for a moment, before she made her way down the aisles and toward an older man who stood at the register.

"Afternoon, little lady. There anythin' I can help you with?" The man asked with a smile that stretched his graying beard and brightened his withered eyes. There was something about his general appearance that felt familiar, and it wasn't until her eyes roved across the name patch printed messily on his shirt that she realized why.

Micheal Marbrook. This must be Jesse's father.

Tanya straightened her posture in the way she was taught when greeting elders and nodded politely. "Hello sir, I'm here to see Jesse...he told me to come here at noon."

"Ah yes, he's on break right now so he should be in the back room."

She nodded with a small smile. "Thank you."

Her low heels clicked against the floor as she followed Mr.Marbrook's directions towards the slim black door in the bottom right corner of the small store. She knocked gently, and after a moment of no answer, she knocked again a little harder, before finally deciding to push the door open. Tanya walked into the small breakroom, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion when she realized it was empty.

She huffed in slight annoyance. "That bonehead made me go through all this trouble to come here, only to not show up."

She decided to place the cap on the small foldable table in the center of the breakroom, her mind was set on leaving immediately after when a framed photograph caught her attention. It was a small group of people, standing outside of the auto shop. As Tanya got closer, she could recognize the tall man as a younger version of Mr. Marbrook, one of his hands wrapped around his wife while the other was placed on the shoulder of a teenage boy. A younger boy and girl were standing on either side of him, all grinning into the camera with a brightness only children could have. Unlike the state of the store now, the paint looked fresh and bright; not a chip or crack in sight, and the sign was glimmering. It was definitely a dated picture.

Tanya's eyes moved from the smiling family to another frame that was hung neatly above it. Another picture of Mr. Marbrook and the auto shop, and then her eyes moved to two boys who were sitting on the back of a pick-up truck, arms wrapped around each other as smiles adorned their faces. The smaller one she immediately recognized as Jesse, and her eyes widened. She has seen him smile, but it was always sardonically with a sarcastic whip on the tip of his tongue. It never reached his eyes like it did in this photograph, it was always coy or cynical. She looked at the older boy next to him, he had the same eyes and smiled as Jesse.