Second Chance at the Riverview Inn (Riverview Inn)

They drove four hours into the country, away from everything he knew, and that wasn’t totally a bad thing.

Finally, they pulled into gravel driveway and a nice man with glasses came out to greet them. But he took one look at Mom and went back into the house. A woman in scrubs came out with him. They helped Mom out of the car and the guy with glasses came around to Micah’s side of the car and smiled and said everything was fine.

But he had a pretending face, too.

Micah watched the woman in the scrubs lead his mom into a building. The whole back of Mom’s shirt was dark with sweat.

“Is she okay?” he asked the guy in glasses.

“She’s going to be fine.”

Yeah, he’d heard that before.

“What’s your name, son?” the man asked.

“Michael.” No one really called him that, but he didn’t want this guy to know him. Whatever this was, he didn’t want it to be real.

He got out of the car and ran past the man with glasses to the building Mom had gone into. The man with glasses stopped him from going inside. And he wanted to punch this guy with the glasses, but his mom was in that building and he couldn’t be sent away.

And that’s what happened when you punched an adult.

He learned that at his last school.

The guy with glasses offered to make him a sandwich and an ice cream sundae. A dog came by with a wet nose and wagging tail but he didn’t care.

“You can sit out here,” the man with glasses finally said, and pointed to some chairs. “Until the nurses are done taking care of your mom, and then you can go see her.”

He turned to the guy with glasses. “Can I be alone, please?”

The man blinked behind his glasses and then he finally did what Micah asked. And Micah sat alone on that chair waiting for his mom until he started to think… maybe he should just leave. Just run out into that forest behind them. One of the things mom and Peter always fought about was the trouble he got into in school. His behavior was part of the shit Peter wanted Mom to get together. Maybe, he thought, it would be easier for Mom if he wasn’t there. He had twenty bucks in his pocket and, he looked around, his guess was there was some shit in these buildings he could steal. He stood up, thinking he’d start in that big yellow farmhouse he could see through the trees.

“Hi,” a girl said, coming up the stairs to the porch where he was standing.

“What do you want?” he asked, his heart pounding so hard he felt a little sick.

“Nothing,” she said. She was a little older than he was, he guessed. She had blond hair up in a ponytail and red shorts and green eyes. She had boobs; he noticed that. Even in despair, he was aware of her.

“Want one?” she asked and held out a Popsicle.

Grape, his favorite. And he was suddenly starving and thirsty. He took it without thinking. “I’m Helen,” she said. “We don’t have to talk, but I thought I’d sit out here with you. So you’re not alone. Is that okay?”

Maybe it was the Popsicle, or the way the sun made her eyes glow, or the fact that he didn’t want to run away. Not really. He sat. He ate the Popsicle.

She stayed with him for hours.

It had been one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for him. Still was, in a lot of ways. It was the first time she’d saved him.

And she didn’t remember.

Thank you for getting in that closet with me.

It was fine that she didn’t remember. Expected, even. There’d been a lot of road between that week when he was a kid and right now. If he told her his real name…she might pull up the memory, but he doubted it. She had other things on her mind.

He sat on the edge of the stage with his thumbs over the screen, ready to say something. But in a rare moment for Micah Sullivan, he didn’t know what to say.

You’re beautiful. And brave. I’m sorry for everything that happened to you.

I want to meet you in a closet again.

“Hey!” Alex came into the rehearsal space and Micah put his phone in his pocket, and he didn’t do it in any kind of cool way, but instead in a kind of I’m trying to hide something from you way, and Alex, the asshole, saw it.

Alex, when he was being an asshole, saw everything.

Is every little brother like this? Micah wondered. Or was it their own special magic?

“What’s up?” he asked Alex.

“Jo’s calling the cars.”

Rehearsal was over. Danny’s first day had not gone great.

“You going back into the city?” Alex asked. Micah nodded. He’d been calling New York City home for a few years. They’d been touring so hard for the year before the pandemic that he had no fixed address. When it all shut down he’d been in NYC, so it turned into home.