Justice on the Run

When I was a kid, my family lived in this really old house in Virginia. Well, it was old at the time. Dad had bought it from an older lady who was selling it because she couldn't take care of it anymore. He ended up renovating it instead of selling it and we ended up staying there for years.

It was actually pretty cool living there. It had a lot of character and we converted some rooms into offices and stuff like that. It also made a great getaway location when my parents wanted to go on a trip somewhere but couldn't afford to rent a hotel room or something like that.

I haven't thought about that house in years. That's how I met Gloria though. I think I told you that my folks were divorced? Yeah, well, they were estranged too. They got married way before they were ready for it and things went downhill from there. My mom moved out west and my dad just sort of stayed put in Virginia but they never really got along after they had me.

Gloria came through town once and rented the guesthouse that we'd made into an office and storage room. We started talking and became friends easily enough, drinking coffee together every morning before she left for the day and sleeping together every night before nodding off on opposite sides of the bed. I never fell in love with her but she wasn't bad to spend time with so, you know, what's not to love?

Then one day (this is when I was in high school), my mom called me up all freaking out about some shit that happened back east with my dad. Apparently he'd gotten drunk one night and done something stupid enough to get himself arrested for aggravated assault or something like that. They hadn't let him see me or anything since I was a kid and technically wasn't supposed to have any contact with me anyway so I wasn't all that worried about it but she was convinced he needed help even though she couldn't do anything about it herself since she lived so far away by then.

I called Gloria up later to talk about this because like I said, we were friends and if there's anyone you want to vent to about your crazy family, Gloria is the one you want there by your side telling you to snap out of it because life goes on no matter what has happened or what might happen next.

She agreed that my mom sounded pretty stressed out so she said she would go back east herself and calm everyone down (if anyone can do that, Gloria could). She already had a bunch of work waiting on her so she wasn't too keen on taking time off but considering what we'd been through together I knew she'd be willing to make an exception if necessary so I asked her if she could meet me down there instead since I didn't have a car or anything else for getting myself anywhere near home without making her drive all over creation in traffic just to pick me up from some dead end gas station halfway across the state where I'd likely be standing waving a sandwich board at passing cars asking them for a ride home or something like that only dressed as if trying to look cute instead of crazy seemed like such an attractive offer at the time...

We shared a long hug on the way down because we were still kinda dating even though we didn't tell each other how much we loved each other very often or anything like that at this point in our relationship which was probably better than being miserable together most of the time at least... Unless being miserable together is more your style in which case, hey! Enjoy! You know what they say: misery loves company! ... Ha ha...