However, Nonna woke me up at five again with another list, this one much shorter than yesterday’s, and had me do those things before eight when she expected me to start my classes. At this rate I was going to start going to bed at eight every night in order to survive. No one should be awake at five in the morning. It wasn’t even light out yet.
I was almost done with the last item on the list, mopping the back porch, when Nonna came up to the house with a worried frown.
“You talked to Gunner?”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”
“You sure?” she asked in a more demanding tone.
“I swear. He came here Saturday morning, and I didn’t answer the door. He went away. He hasn’t been back.”
Nonna sighed and her shoulders sagged. “This is the second morning he hasn’t come down for breakfast. Yesterday morning his bed was unmade when I went to clean his room. But then I don’t clean on Sundays, so that could have been since Saturday night. He didn’t come get breakfast yesterday morning and this morning. When I went to make up his bed, it was untouched. Just like I left it yesterday.”
“Have you called the Higgenses? Asked Brady or his mom? Maybe he’s there.” That was hopeful thinking. He wasn’t there. He was gone. Gunner had run. Just like he wanted to. And it was my fault. I was all he had to talk to about this, and I had shut him out to save myself.
“I did.” She nodded. “They ain’t seen him either. I’m gonna have to tell his momma. She’s off in San Francisco at some spa.”
She didn’t say she needed to tell his dad. There was no point. He wouldn’t care. “Is Rhett still home?”
She shook her head. “No, he left Sunday.”
My heart hurt. It had taken my Nonna to notice Gunner was missing. He had known running wouldn’t affect them. They wouldn’t look for him. This was what he wanted. It’s the only way he thought he could find happiness.
“He’s run, Nonna. He hates his parents. He hates this town. So he left. He was threatening to do it that night I was at the tree house with him. He . . . he wanted me to go with him. I said no. I couldn’t. I had you to think about.”
Nonna stood there staring at me for several moments. Then finally she spoke. “Does that boy know, about his father?”
My nonna had been in that house for over thirty years. She knew a lot. She’d seen a lot. I just nodded.
“Who told him?”
“His mother.”
She shook her head. “She told that boy, then took off to California to a spa. Jesus, it don’t get no worse. Poor kid.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Knowing Gunner was gone and alone was hard. I wanted to go after him, but I had no idea where to start or even what to say. I’d pushed him the rest of the way out the door with that letter. If I’d just opened the door and talked to him . . .
“Do you think she’ll look for him?” I asked.
Nonna nodded. “He’s her cash cow. That’s how she sees him. She’ll look for him.”
I hated them all too. For hurting Gunner and treating him like he was an unwanted possession they had to keep. A part of me hated me for turning him away. Even though I was trying to stay close by doing it.
Gunner needed to find love. Maybe out there he would learn to love and find the happiness he didn’t have here. If this was what he wanted, letting him go was all I could do. But I wish I could talk to him just one last time.
“Go on back inside and start your schoolwork. I’m going to go back to the big house and make some calls. See if I can’t figure out where he’s taken off to before I call his momma. She’ll drag her heels doing it.”
Nonna turned and headed back to the Lawtons’. I watched her go, thinking she’d never find him. He hadn’t left without thinking about it. This had been planned, and he had the money to stay hidden.
“Be safe, Gunner,” I whispered, although he was nowhere near me. Then I turned and went inside to put the mop away and begin my first day as a homeschooled senior in high school.
It Was for Both of Us
CHAPTER 49
GUNNER
I stared at the toss phone I’d bought at the local Walmart before taking off. I had left my iPhone turned off and hidden in my room. Not that I thought my parents might want to actually find me, but if they did realize I was missing, then tracking me via my cell was easy.
Although I had over ten thousand dollars in cash, thanks to my father’s lack of creativity with the combination, I’d been able to take it out of the vault in the office, I was living cheap. The motel room I’d ended up at somewhere in Tennessee, about five hundred miles from Lawton, was only forty dollars a night, and it was for good cause. This place was a shit hole.
I didn’t have anyone to call, so why I had gotten the phone in the first place was stupid. Last night I’d considered calling Brady or West and letting them know I was gone for good. But I hadn’t.
Staring at it now, I wanted to call Willa. If anyone would be worried, it would be her. Did she even know I was gone yet? Would her Nonna tell her, since she was apparently under house arrest?
I kept going over that letter in my head. Wishing I hadn’t given it back but kept it. My pride had won out that day, and I’d shoved it back at her. My pride wasn’t winning out now though. I wanted to see her. Read her words. Talk to her.
God, I missed her.
Flopping back on the cheap-ass bed I was sitting on, I directed my frustrated gaze to the water-stained ceiling. Was this what I had wanted? Running across the country from one cheap motel to the next, alone? Sure didn’t feel free. Not living in that house with those people was a relief, but this wasn’t much better. It was lonely. Ms. Ames wasn’t in the kitchen cooking, and I wouldn’t get to go out on the field in the afternoons and play football.