I hopped into the truck and waited for Nate to walk out of the diner. When he climbed into the driver’s seat, I asked, “Did she blow you in the back room?”

“What?” He looked down at his open zipper. “Fuck you. I was using the head.”

“I use my head too when someone’s sucking it.” I slapped the dashboard and laughed. “Let’s go. I’ve got shit to do.”

Nate turned the key and gunned the engine. “She likes you. She’s lonely. You’re lonely. It’s the perfect setup.” Dust billowed behind us creating a cloud.

“I’m not lonely. I’m alone—by choice. I happen to like my company more than anyone else’s.”

“Except mine. You like my company.”

“You’re all right, but I’m not letting you blow me. I draw the line for our friendship there.”

He pulled in front of The Nest and sat there while the engine idled. “Get the hell out of my truck, asshole. You need to get laid. You’d be nicer if you did.”

I opened the door and walked a few feet away before I flipped him the bird. He was probably right. I’d been a bear to be around lately. I always got that way around the anniversary of my parents’ death.

I didn’t bother going inside. I headed straight to my car and took off to the place that brought me peace. The old house sat abandoned, the grass shin high, the flowers strangled by weeds. How long had it been?

I trudged to the shed in back and pulled out the old push mower, a hoe, and a rake. I was halfway through the first flowerbed when Mona called from across the street.

“Is that you, Ryker?” She held her hand over her eyes like a shade and squinted into the sunlight. The woman was nearly blind, but I swear she saw better than anyone I knew. She never missed a thing. She pointed to a drink pitcher sitting on her front porch table. “You want some lemonade?”

I couldn’t turn down Mona Charming. She’d been my teacher when everything went down, and she was the first person who visited me in the hospital as I recovered.

I rubbed at the scar on my right shoulder. It still ached at times. Mostly when the weather changed, but it ached the most on the last day of April. Every year without fail.

I dropped the hoe and walked across the street.

“How ya doin’, Ms. Charming?” This was our game. I’d use some type of inappropriate word pairing or what she’d call lazy English, and I’d get a lesson. I liked Mona’s lessons; they brought me as close to feeling loved as I’d been in years.

“Say it right, Ryker.” She poured me a glass of lemonade and walked to the two wicker chairs in the corner.

I sipped at the drink and puckered my face. Mona didn’t use instant anything. She squeezed the lemons herself and made some kind of sticky syrup she kept in the refrigerator. When she saw me, she always made a pitcher.

“How are you doing, Ms. Charming?” I enunciated each word for her benefit. She didn’t like slang, and she didn’t put up with a lazy tongue.

“Come here, Ryker, and give this old woman a hug. And for God’s sake, call me Mona, otherwise I’ll feel like a damn pedophile. You’re not the third-grader I used to teach. You’ve grown into a fine man.”

I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed. She’d always been there for me. She wrote letters and sent cookies when I went to jail. She sent a car to pick me up and bring me back home when I got released. Once she’d even paid my back taxes so I didn’t lose the shop. Mona wasn’t blood, but she was family.

We sat in silence and sipped our drinks. I looked across the street at the peeling white paint and the unkempt yard, and shame consumed me.

“What do you think she’d be like now?” Her question floored me because never once in all these years had we discussed her.

I closed my eyes and pictured the little girl with brown pigtails and a yellow sunflower dress. Her smile could melt my heart, and her stubbornness could test a saint.

“I imagine she’d be gorgeous. Her mother was.” Her mother was a tiny little thing everyone called Finch. Not the prettiest name, but it fit her.

“What a tragedy. So many lives changed that day.”

“Not a day I like to dwell on.”

“Here’s the thing, Ryker.”

I knew I was in for a lesson. Anytime Mona started a sentence with, here’s the thing, there was some point she wanted to emphasize. “I’m all ears.” Hell, if I didn’t focus, she’d grab me by an ear and yank it until she had my full attention. I’d spent many a day with flaming red lobes.

“Pain that’s not transformed is transferred.” She sat back and smiled.

“Have you been listening to those Zen Buddhist tapes again?” Macular degeneration had taken Mona’s sight little by little over the past ten years. As an educator, she’d loved written words, but when her sight was stolen, she’d turned to audiobooks. Lately, she’d been listening to some singing monks from Tibet.

“No, I’ve been thinking about that day and how you’ve been living with the burden since you were eight years old. Isn’t it time you let it go? Turned it into something else?”

I set my glass down so hard it made the table shake. “How do you transform that situation into something better? Dozens of people died that day. Kids were orphaned. Women were widowed. Lives were ruined. I made a promise, and I didn’t keep it.”

“Oh, pish, you were eight. Cut yourself some slack. Stop being angry and start living your life. You’re worse off than those who died. You’re stuck in that day forever. Transform your pain. Find a girl. Fall in love. Make babies.”

“I’ll work on it.” I hated to lie to Mona, but what purpose did it serve to beat her with the truth? I would never move past the day an entire town was slaughtered because I couldn’t follow directions.

“I wish it was July,” she said with a dreamy tone.

I rose from my seat and leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. “July sucks. It’s way too hot. Why would you miss July?”

“That’s the month you mow shirtless. Even with my bad eyesight, I could see that.”

“I love you, Mona.”

“I know, Ryker, but I’m too old to have your babies.”

I left her on the porch laughing like a lunatic and went back to finish the job I started. This yard needed more attention than I was giving it. I’d let it wither over the winter.

I beat the ground with the hoe, hacking at the weeds that had choked out the life of everything beautiful that once lived here. Once the ground was turned and tilled, I moved on to the grass. When I finished the job, I stood on the curb and stared at the house. It was still empty and lifeless like my heart, but at least something good had happened today. I’d kept a promise to myself. The one that said I’d pay respect to her memory and keep it alive by doing what I could to preserve her home.

I closed my eyes one last time and brought back a memory of her playing in the flowerbed:

She picked a yellow daisy and brought it to me. “Here, Hawk.” She pushed the bedraggled flower into my hand.

“What do you want me to do with this?” I held it next to my nose and sniffed. Daisies smelled like dirt.

“Save it until we get mayweed.” She threw her arms around my legs and almost knocked me over. Nate was there that day and grabbed the flower and tossed it aside. Sparrow cried until I picked a new flower from the bed and gave it to her. I wished I’d kept the first flower.

Once back at The Nest, I cleaned up the tools I’d left lying around. Dad didn’t like a mess, and they were his tools. I could hear his voice in my mind. This is my garage and my rules.

Not anymore, I thought. These were my tools, and I liked things messy and cluttered. This was my garage, so I tossed a few wrenches across the cement floor just to prove a point to myself.

One slid to a stop in the exact place I’d failed Sparrow. The place where I watched her take her last breath. The place where her tiny life was snuffed out because of me.

I gripped the edge of the top-heavy tool chest and turned it over with ease, sending sockets and wrenches in all directions, before I slammed the door and ran upstairs.

I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and plopped onto the couch. Nate was right. My life was shit. I could see it. He could see it. Even Mona the blind woman saw the truth.

I reached for my guitar and pondered Mona’s question. What would Sparrow look like today had she survived? I strummed the chords without much thought. It was a song that played on a continuous loop inside in my head. Her laughter haunted my nights. The memory of her eyes haunted my thoughts. They were earth and sky no more. As a boy, I had pushed her away. As a man, I would never let her go. I loved her. I hated her. And twenty years later, I still mourned her.