Me at 10's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

Dad drives out of Nashville without saying where they're going next. She watches trees blur past the window and doesn't ask. The car smells like cigarette smoke and the vinyl seat sticks to her legs. She pulled herself away from him back at the Grand Ole Opry and now the distance between the front seat and the back feels like something she chose instead of something that happened to her. He pulls over near a gas station and rolls down his window. A man in black walks past carrying a baby and Dad leans out asking directions to some mansion he saw on a brochure. The man stops and listens and then points down the road. She can see the rain starting through the windshield, fat drops hitting the glass. The man tells Dad to follow him and walks toward a black car parked under the trees. Dad starts the engine and follows. The rain comes harder and the man in black leads them past big houses with gates and long driveways until he pulls over near a small wooden building with a sign that says Doctor's Office. Dad gets out and the rain soaks through his shirt immediately. The man in black stands outside his car holding the baby under his jacket and Dad walks over. She watches through the streaked window as they talk. Dad is nodding and laughing and the rain is pouring down his face but he doesn't move. He stays there in the storm talking to this stranger like he has all the time in the world. She sits in the back seat and understands something new. It isn't just her. Dad will stop for anyone. He'll drive strangers anywhere, stand in the rain with men he doesn't know, laugh at their jokes while water runs down his neck. She thought the problem was that she wasn't good enough to be picked first. But watching him out there with that man and his baby, she sees the truth. There is no first. Dad doesn't pick anyone. He just moves from one moment to the next, stops for whoever crosses his path, and she's been sitting in cars waiting for him her whole life. The rain pounds the roof and she stops waiting.