Age of Consent by Marti Leimbach Read Free Book Online

head. On the bedside table is a decorated tissue holder and June plucks out a few pastel tissues, then blows her nose. The little whiskey bottle is empty now. June holds up a second. “These are puny,” she says.
    “I’m driving you home,” Bobbie says.
    “No need. I’m fine. I can drive.”
    “No. No, you can’t.”
    June waves a tissue at Bobbie. “I’ve been driving myself around for the past thirty years without you. Now you show up, telling me what to do, show up looking…looking like…you show up looking like—”
    “Like
what
?”
    Her mother appears stricken. The evening has gone dead wrong and all her disappointment mixes with the alcohol and with the shock of being with her daughter now for the first time in so long. “Grown up!” June sobs. “I mean I knew you would be grown up but I missed out on everything
.
” Now she makes a sweeping gesture toward Bobbie, as though Bobbie were a large, loathsome creature taking up room where her little girl should be. “Do you realize what this sort of thing does to a person?
Do you?
”
    Bobbie says, “I imagine it is painful.”
    “Damned right it’s painful!”
    Bobbie pats the air with her open palm. “Don’t yell, Mother. We’re not the only people in this place.”
    “What do you care who hears? You’re willing to go to court and tell the world anything that comes into your head! You’re telling a courthouse about family matters that we should be working out ourselves!”
    No, Bobbie thinks. I am not talking about family matters. And no, I am not trying to work out anything at all.
    —
    ALL THE WAY back to the house, June complains about the stress of the trial. She says it has made her ill, that she does not sleep well, that her eyes do not focus as they ought to, that her heart races and sometimes she thinks she is about to have a heart attack. It’s been too much, she tells Bobbie. The trial with the girl who lost, thank God, and this new one. Her life has become a giant weight she can no longer carry. “One dead husband, a runaway child, now this!”
    The Chevy Impala has a dented front bumper and headlights at skewed angles. Bobbie drives steadily toward the neighborhood that was once her own, through streets that were once familiar to her. She notices the new houses that have sprung up, developments in places where there were woods, quaint little shops where there had been feed stores and gas stations. Her mother falls quiet as they approach her street and is no longer crying by the time they reach the house. Now it is Bobbie who feels emotional. She cannot bring herself to take the car all the way up the drive, to sit in her old driveway next to her childhood home. It is too much even to see through the tall conifer trees the lights in the rooms that once felt part of her. The trees have grown higher, the bushes gone wild. Buttercups have nearly taken over the lawn Bobbie used to mow.
    “You’re going to have to walk from here,” she tells her mother.
    “Come inside and talk to Craig,” June pleads.
    “Not on your life.”
    “Why don’t you stay here with us? No need to go back to that old guesthouse tonight. Be
our
guest—” She stops herself. “Hell, this is your
home
.”
    “That’s his car up there, isn’t it?” She follows the Chevy’s headlights up the long dirt drive where they reflect against the plastic casing of brake lights on a low red sports car. She can see the vanity plate with Craig’s initials. She can see the fat racing tires.
    June sighs, then touches her forehead, feeling for a headache. “He says you hate him because he wanted some money back. Money you stole from him. I know you don’t steal, so there must have been a misunderstanding. We just need to talk this out.”
    “No misunderstanding. There was money.”
    “You
stole
money?”
    “Yes.”
    “Are you going to
say
that? In court? Oh Bobbie! You’re going to
tell
them you’re a thief?”
    “I don’t know what I’m going to tell