Mercury

by Amy Jo Burns

As she drove away with her mother shrinking in the rearview mirror, Marley understood a bit more of what motherhood meant, this continual opening of every door for children to pass through, stay a while, leave, and return.

They had been married for over four years, yet Marley knew now that marriages were not measured by time. They were tracked by disappointments, by hurts. Betrayals and apologies.

“Listen,” Jade said. “I know Waylon loves you, and he’d die just to keep what you have. But he’s got to live for it, too.”

He said it because he’d been taught that roofing was the bucket he could dump all of himself into—his emotions, his pain.

Patrick was different. All Patrick wanted was to let it go, and he tried every convention to rid himself of it. He flirted with girls, played football, lifted barbells, and—dare Shay admit it—Patrick became a cop. Anything he could slap a badge of masculinity on, this sad, narrow, quicksand view of what it meant to be a man. Patrick was as trapped as Shay, in the end, though it didn’t keep him from trying to free himself.