Liar's Bench by Kim Michele Richardson Page A

all times or else it won’t heal,” she’d said. “You can’t show anyone. Do you understand?” I’d nodded and sealed the promise with a kiss and two fingers, just like she’d taught me.
    But sitting on that old bench with her now, I couldn’t understand anything other than she was leaving me. I hooked my arm under hers and tightened, scooting closer to her. “No, don’t leave! Please stay, Mama.” I grabbed her hand, pulled it on top of Daddy’s and mine, and buried my wet face in the clasp.
    Mama stroked my hair. “Hush, sugar,” she quieted. “I’ll be back to take you shopping in the big city once we settle in. Now I’ve got to get back to Nashville and pack.” She untangled our hands, stood, then smoothed down the creases on her linen skirt and gave me a tight smile.
    Daddy jumped up, clasped her arms, his eyes sorrowful—pleading. “Don’t leave, Ella. Muddy is too young to have her mama so far away. She’s only nine, for God’s sake. Whitlock will just drag you through the gutters with him, and you know it. We can work this out if you’ll just give me another chance.”
    â€œDaddy will protect you from Tommy. Don’t leave us, Mama . . . don’t leave me.” I scrambled up from the bench, grabbing wildly for both of their hands. When I latched on, I held them together. “Please, Mama, I’ll be strong.” I pressed their hands firmly to show my strength. “Please stay with me, I promise—”
    But she turned her head, stiffening.
    I tried to run after her, but Daddy caught me. I watched Mama’s car head out toward Highway 24. Me and Daddy sat on Liar’s Bench for who knows how long—swapping stories, waiting, praying, and me, wearing off the tips of my fingers—all the while clinging to the ragged thread of hope that she’d turn her car back around at the Tennessee line.
    Â 
    Seems I spent most of August sitting on Liar’s Bench, waiting for Mama to cross the Kentucky line. It would be almost three months before I’d see her again.
    Mama and Tommy ended up staying in Chicago for close to seven years, until Tommy ran out of bartending jobs and his daddy took ill. They moved backed to Peckinpaw at the beginning of ’72, just in time for his daddy’s burial and Genevieve Louisa’s birth.
    I looked down to find my thumb gliding over my fingers, nervously tap-tapping away, doing its old dance. I couldn’t bear sitting in my bedroom another minute, thinking about the past. I had to get out of this house.
    I peeked out my door and heard Daddy rumbling around downstairs in the kitchen. Now if I could just find my car key, I might be able to make it out of here without having to face him. I meant all I’d said, but it had been easier with that door between us. Just the thought of looking him in the eye made me blush with shame.
    I needed to get out of here. “Where’s my key?” I grumbled. Scanning the room, I realized that Daddy must have hidden it after my little display of emotion at Mama’s house, afraid that I’d drive off and do something stupid in my grief.
    â€œDamnit, I’m getting out of here,” I said to myself.” The key wasn’t on the nightstand, where I thought I’d left it. I went over to my window seat bench and lifted the lid, thinking I might have tossed it in there with some clothes. I rummaged through the quilts in the big bench, finding an old picture album, a box of stationery, useless papers, and a few clothes. No key. “Where could it be?”
    Then, I caught the shine of my shotgun peeking out from beneath a quilt. It was the old .410 that Papaw had used as a kid. When I turned ten, he had passed it on to me for rabbit hunting, along with his favorite saying: “You can’t catch a rabbit lessen you muddy up those boots.”
    My fingertips touched the cool metal and in