You're Still the One Read Online Free PDF Page A

load to a company that shreds paper. I passed the giant steel goat statue in the curve of the road. I liked that goat, and it gave me my only smile that day.
    When I came back, I cleaned. As I cleaned, I cried.
    I hadn’t seen my dad in years. He was a tall, beefy man with black hair, and my mom said he used to be handsome. They had met, ironically enough, when she was in college on spring break in Florida. He was a bartender. She said she was bowled over by his tough-guy demeanor. He had scars on his forehead, left cheek, and chin. He was also charming, which soon faded, and aggressive. My guess is that she was a young, impressionable, innocent girl having a wild spring break and became pregnant. She was from a conservative family, was humiliated and scared, and married him. Her parents were livid about the marriage.
    My dad tried to contact me a few times in past years—sadly enough, on my birthday and my mom’s birthday—but I did not return his calls because I refused to be terrorized by him for one more day.
    In the last six months, he called several times and left messages, asking me to call him. On one of the messages he said he loved me. It was the first time in my life that my dad told me he loved me. I did not return that call, either. The “I love you” part should have come years ago, minus the backhanded slaps to my face and the total neglect.
    Now I was in his house, next to an apple orchard that he had bought with an inheritance from his wretched father, a man exactly like his son in personality and temperament. I remembered Grandpa Tad. He was hell on wheels, too.
    I scrubbed the bathroom and thought of the tiny bathroom in our trailer, how it smelled of my dad: beer and alcohol and unwashed man.
    I scrubbed the kitchen sink and thought of all the times I’d spent at the sink in our trailer, trying to cook with whatever we had in the refrigerator, which was usually next to nothing. He’d come home drunk and scathing when I didn’t have dinner ready. Without money, it was hard to buy food.
    When I swept the floors I cried again. I could never sweep that trailer clean enough for him.
    While I scrubbed the floors, I thought of how dirty the floor of our trailer would get each day, how he would yell if it wasn’t clean enough, but he always dragged in mud.
    I washed the windows. I stripped all the droopy curtains and put them in trash bags. I dusted.
    On the third day, when I was finally done, it was a whole new house, open, white, and clean. I left only a table and chairs, shelves, a couch and two chairs in the family room. Much better.
    I found the red-and-white flowered quilt in a closet. It had been my mother’s. I remember being on that quilt with her while she read books to me. I took the quilt out of its zippered plastic bag, shocked that my dad still had it, fluffed it out outside, and laid it over the couch. I sat on the couch and shook.
    Bob and Margaret climbed into my lap. Margaret whined at me until I found her stuffed pink bear, which was under the couch. The cat, Marvin, climbed on, too, and settled on the pillow next to mine. He meowed at me; I meowed back.
    My dad’s urn was propping open a bedroom door.
    I ran my hand over the quilt. So much had died with my mother.
    I blamed him.

Chapter Four
    On Tuesday morning—well, barely morning—Mr. Jezebel Rooster cock-a-doodle-doo’d again and I’d had it. I whipped on my black farm boots over my flannel pajama pants and stomped out toward that pesky rooster sitting on the top of a fence post screeching so proudly.
    “I am not a country girl, you stupid rooster, and I don’t want to be up this early!” I knew that my annoyance was totally irrational and ridiculous. He tipped his head and stared at me as if I were beneath him. “Stop it! Stop your stupid cock-a-doodle-doodling!”
    He was silent for a minute, then thrust his neck back and announced, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
    “No.” I pointed my finger at him, stalking closer.