To Build a Home

32 | Nothing, Everything

Like I said at the beginning, it gets worse.

I stormed past Sadie into the cottage, still enraged after the hour drive from Windber, unsure if I even parked the truck before jumping out. I picked up a hammer without slowing down and thrashed at the only remaining dividing wall in the living room where she was working. It wasn't my finest entrance.

"Hey, we're keeping that wall!" Sadie yelled. She stopped sweeping the floors and backed away with every bang of my hammer.

"Good," I said. I continued to beat the sheetrock until I was exhausted. There was a large hole in the center of the wall when I was finished and a lopsided pile of debris at my feet.

"I guess it didn't go very well with the lawyer," she said when I sat on top of the pile.

"Phil left him everything. Everything! And he knew! This whole time. And now he wants to buy me out and raise Noah and he loves me, or whatever, and I am completely freaking out." I put my face in my hands and fought tears for the millionth time that day.

"Slow down." She grabbed my hand and pulled me up from my spot on the floor. "Hey, Hector," she said as we passed him in the doorway, "We're calling it a day."

"It's only three!" he said as he continued inside.

"Bite me," she said.

Sadie didn't let go of my hand until we reached her truck. Any time I tried to say anything across the lawn, she'd make a zipping sound and yank me a little harder. She hoisted and stuffed me into the passenger seat like I was a child and ran around to her side, waving goodbye to the crew out front who was watching the commotion. I tried to speak inside the truck, but she held up her hand and took out her phone. "This is what we're going to do," she said. "Dolly Parton."

"Don't make me listen to more country music."

"Even better," Sadie said, tapping her phone. "Eighties-Pop Dolly."

"How is this going to help?"

"Just shut up and listen."

We drove in the direction of Windber, although I wasn't quite sure where we were going. We rolled down the windows and the scent of pine filled the truck as Sadie sped down the state road with the stereo at maximum volume. At first, I resisted the music––the eighties synths and the campiness––but eventually, somewhere between mile twenty and thirty, I couldn't help but embrace the loud ridiculousness of it and Sadie's husky voice screaming along. It made me feel like we were soaring through a time machine without the restrictions of gravity or emotions or memory. I let my arm float out the window and enjoyed the racing wind on my skin. But every time I felt almost happy, I suddenly remembered the reading of the will. I couldn't wrap my mind around how bombarded and betrayed I felt.

Sadie turned the volume down when she noticed I was no longer nodding my head along to the music and flying my arm on the breeze out the window. "Arguably one of her best albums," she continued. "Everyone always overlooks Eighties-Pop Dolly, but I know what's up."

"I don't see what this has to do with Darren lying to me," I said.

"Have you ever been to a wine tasting?"

"Are we going to a winery? Where are we going? What does this have to do with anything?"

"Rita always drags me to these swanky wineries. You're not supposed to drink the wine, they have these disgusting spit buckets, and the people look at me like I'm crazy when I down every glass. I'm drunk before we even get to the whites. Anyway, they have little palate cleansers, for those who can't party like me, between the different wines. It's so that the flavors don't mix and you can fully experience what each individual wine has to offer. Dolly was your palate cleanser. You had your taste of anger, now try something else."