There were hours yet before the sun would come up, but I couldn’t sleep. I’d slept the evening away after Leah Mae had gone, and woken up around midnight. Since then, I’d been tossing and turning, replaying everything in my mind.

What the hell had happened? I’d been angry, no doubt about that. But how had it turned into me storming off, leaving Leah Mae outside in the cold? Telling her I was going to Charlotte alone. And I’d called her Leah.

I’d meant to. Wasn’t proud of that. Lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling at four o’clock in the morning, I could hear how cold it had sounded. It had been downright mean, and I knew it. Too late to take it back, now.

Since I wasn’t sleeping anyway, I got up and went out to my workshop. Flicked on the lights. The place was a wreck. There was stuff everywhere—discarded bits of scrap, nails and screws, tools. It was typical for the aftermath of finishing a project. I tended to create a bunch of chaos while I worked. When I finished, I’d clean it up so I could start over again.

I couldn’t leave for Charlotte until I got my tire fixed, so I went to work on setting my workshop to rights. Put stuff away, returning bits of metal to their bins. Found new places for the smaller pieces that I could use later. Tools went back in their drawers or on hooks on the wall.

There was a stack of boxes over by the door that I hadn’t dealt with yet. Stuff from my dad’s place. I stood in front of it, my hands on my hips, eying it all with suspicion. More than likely, there was nothing in there but junk. Scarlett had said to save pictures, but everything else could be tossed out or given away.

I blew the dust off the top box and opened the flaps. There was an odd assortment of things. Faded papers, old bills, one of Scarlett’s report cards. A discipline slip with Gibson’s name on it. A half-empty roll of tape. Some brittle ribbon and an old sewing kit. I figured there wouldn’t be much else of interest, but I dug around a bit more.

At the bottom, I found a large yellow envelope stuffed with old pictures. Scarlett would want these, for sure. I pulled out a few and thumbed through them. Mostly us as kids. There were a bunch of Gibs. I could tell it was him by his big, cheesy smile. Didn’t see that expression on him often nowadays, but he’d always hammed it up for pictures. Got yelled at for it, too.

And then I found one of her.

My mama had been a pretty lady. Scarlett took after her. She’d had long auburn hair and freckles on her nose and cheeks. Big gray eyes. She was wearing a Sunday dress—all covered in pink flowers—and holding a baby. It was hard to tell who the baby was. One of us boys, to be sure, judging by the blue outfit. By her smile, I reckoned it was Bowie. He’d always been the easiest of us all. He’d probably made Mama smile all the time.

I blew out a long breath. I missed my mama. She’d been the only one in the house who’d really seen me. There hadn’t been much she could do about Dad, but at least she’d noticed me some of the time. When I’d drawn her pictures, she’d put them up on the fridge. Granted, they’d always seemed to get knocked down and trampled. But at least she’d told me she liked them.

Although, truth was, she hadn’t been the only one who’d seen me. I’d stayed out of Dad’s way as much as possible—life had been easier that way. Bowie had always been busy with all his friends, and Scarlett was the baby. We’d had to raise her ourselves for the most part.

But Gibson had paid attention to me, in his own way. He’d made sure I had a lunch every day. Kept the bullies at school off my back. Showed me the best hiding places for when Dad was drinking and it was best to be scarce. Maybe that was why fighting with Gibs was bugging me so much. Gibson and I didn’t fight. He kept a lookout for me and ignored me the rest of the time. Been that way since we were kids. I wondered if it would ever go back to that, or if I’d screwed it all up by dating Leah Mae.

I tucked the pictures back in the envelope and set it on a shelf. I didn’t much want to keep going down memory lane. I’d give them to Scarlett and she could do what she wanted with them.

The next box was the same size. I picked it up to move it to a shelf, but it was oddly heavy. Out of curiosity, I opened it up.

Looked a lot like the other box—papers and so forth. There was another big envelope and I peeked inside. Instead of photographs, this one had newspaper clippings. A lot of them, in fact.

The newsprint felt brittle between my fingers, so I pulled them out carefully. There was an article about Gibson playing football senior year at Bootleg Springs High School. Bowie winning an award. An announcement about the Bootleg Springs Historical Society charity lunch with a big photo of Mama and a smiling six-year-old Scarlett.

There were full newspapers, too, folded in half. Three of them. I pulled them out and my heart felt like it was stuck in my throat. The front-page story on two of them was Callie Kendall.

The photo I’d come to know so well from her missing persons posters smiled back at me from the front page of the Bootleg Springs Gazette. It declared her missing and seemed to be reporting on the search. The second paper was more of the same, from about a week later. I reckoned a lot of Bootleggers had kept these papers. It had been a defining moment in the town.

The third newspaper had me especially confused. I didn’t see anything about Callie on the cover. Spreading it out on my workbench, I paged through it, wondering why my parents had kept it. Then, on page five, I saw something that surprised me more than anything.

It was me.

Way at the bottom, there was a small photo of me standing in front of a sculpture I’d done. Wasn’t metal, but I’d worked with a lot of materials as a kid. This one was clay, and I’d entered it in an art contest. Won first place.

The article was barely a caption. Just my name, and age—eleven—and a sentence or two about me winning. I didn’t remember ever seeing this—didn’t think I’d known my picture had been in the paper. But my parents had kept it?

Couldn’t hardly be a mistake. There didn’t seem to be anything else of interest in the entire issue. And the fact that it hadn’t been cut out like the others made me wonder… had my dad hung onto this? Seemed like Mama would have cut out the little snippet about me, not kept the whole paper.

But that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. My dad had never liked me doing any kind of art. Said it wasn’t manly. I’d shown him things, but he’d always scowled. Had he kept this?

I folded up the paper and put it all back. That didn’t explain why that box had been so heavy, so I moved a few things out of the way.

And just when I’d thought I’d been as surprised as I could possibly get, I saw what weighed so much.

I pulled out a hunk of metal that was roughly in the shape of a dog. At least, that’s what I’d been going for when I’d made it. It was the very first metal sculpture I’d ever made. The thing that had made me fall in love with the medium.

I’d talked Clint Waverly, the local mechanic, into teaching me to weld after seeing a video at school about an artist who worked with metal. It had been fascinating to watch, what with the sparks flying and the heat and electricity coming together to forge pieces of hard steel together.

Once I’d gotten the hang of it, he’d let me come over and use his tools as long as he didn’t need them. I’d found some rusty old wrenches in the garage—stuff my dad had probably forgotten was even out there—and used them to make this. Didn’t look much like a dog, now that I looked at it through the eyes of an adult. But at the time, I’d been mighty proud of it.

I’d given it to my dad. And gotten yelled at for stealing his tools.

He’d asked me where I’d gotten the wrenches, so I’d told him. I could still see his face, getting red with rage. He’d said it was stealing, and no son of his was going to be a thief. He’d yelled that I’d ruined his perfectly good tools, grounded me for a month, and thrown the sculpture out the back door.

I held it in my hands and stared at the messy welds. They looked like frosting spilling out between the edges of a cake if you pressed down too hard.

But he’d kept it.

I didn’t understand what that meant. He’d been so angry at me, I’d been a bit afraid he’d smack me for it. Dad had never laid a finger on us, but he’d yelled loud enough, it had felt like being hit. Had to me, at least.

Why had he kept this all these years? Had he known it was in here, or had my mama rescued it and put it away? Somehow, I didn’t think so. Mama hadn’t been home when I’d shown him. I didn’t think she’d ever known about it. By the time I’d gone looking for the sculpture, it had been gone. I’d always figured Dad had thrown it away.

While I was upstairs, cowering in my bedroom, had he gone outside and picked it up? Dusted it off and tucked it away in his closet?

I’d never really understood my father, and I didn’t understand him now. But suddenly, I saw things a little differently. Maybe he hadn’t hated me like I’d thought. A terrible feeling, to think your daddy hates you. I’d thought it many times. The times he’d been nice, and even affectionate, had only confused me more. But maybe those times had been more true than I’d known.

Maybe my dad had been proud of me.

That was enough to get my chest worked up tight and my throat feelin’ thick. I swallowed hard and put the sculpture away. Maybe I’d get it out again and put it somewhere in the shop—a nice reminder of how far I’d come. But for now, I couldn’t bear to look at it any longer.

I finished tidying the workshop around the time the sun came up. I had a long drive ahead of me, so I got cleaned up, made some coffee, and packed my bags for my trip. Checked my phone, thinking maybe Leah Mae would have texted. Wondered if I should text her.

In the end, I didn’t. I put the spare tire on my truck and drove into town to get it fixed. Then without allowing myself to think too much about her, I got on the highway and headed out of Bootleg. It was probably better this way. I’d just disappear. Fade into the background and let her move on. I was pretty good at that—had a lot of practice over the years. Lord knew I had no idea what to do to fix things between us, or if they could be fixed at all.

Or whether I was worth the trouble.