Maggie's fingers curled more tightly around the steering wheel as her car bumped along the dirt road.
"What a stupid pilgrimage this is!" she complained aloud, though there was no one to hear. She felt as if some giant unseen hand was dragging her to her birthplace, the place to which she vowed she would never return. She braked sharply as a turkey hen with a brood of 12 meandered across the road ahead of her, the mother yelping loudly to keep them all in tow. It made her think of her own mother, gone 10 years already.
"Do you ever stop missing your Mom?" Maggie wondered. Subconsciously she rubbed her cheek as she remembered her mother's tears the day Maggie left home. Not that she wanted to leave.
"Why must I go back? It's over and done now." But that unseen force wasn't leaving her alone. It kept tugging at her heart. The car bounced over a pothole as she put the car in gear again and left the turkey family far behind, clucking and purring in the pines. She almost missed the driveway, it was so overgrown with weeds. Unwilling to park along the road, she clattered over the weeds and stopped the car several yards from the house.
"Well, isn't that appropriate?" Maggie muttered as she stared at the boarded up windows of the abandoned house, shuttered as if to hide even the memory of her existence. The vulture roosting on the chimney seemed to taunt her with her father's last words to her. "Get out! You're 18 years old now. Get out of my house and don't come back!"
She had thrown some clothes in her suitcase and fled to who knew where, vowing she would never allow him to hurt her again. She looked at the vulture so she wouldn't have to see her mother's sad eyes.
"If you're so smart, Mr. Vulture, tell me why. What did I ever do to deserve what he did to me?" But there was no answer and now there never would be.
Tall grass, weeds and brush covered the ground.
"Looks like good snake habitat and if there's a snake in here, I will scream bloody murder!" She almost chuckled, remembering the time she had picked one up by the tail thinking it was a stick. Warily, Maggie explored the backyard, wondering why she was compelled to be there.Abruptly, in mid-step, she stopped, rubbed her eyes and looked again. Among the overgrown shrubs, she had caught a glimpse of a bright, coral colored flower.
"The Tropicana rose," her murmur was barely a whisper and again she heard her father's voice. This time it was tender.
"Happy thirteenth birthday, my little pearl. See this? It's a Tropicana rose planted especially for you because I love you so much. Every time you see it, remember I will always love you."
Anger welled up and spilled from her eye. She slapped away the tear.
"Daddy, you said you'd always love me but you didn't. Why did you stop? What did I do to make you hate me? You never told me. If you had I could have said I'm sorry but you never did. Why, Daddy, why? You never told me and now I'll never know because you're dead! Dead, dead, dead."
Maggie sank among the weeds and the tears of pain and anger that she'd held inside for years, all tumbled out at once. Even the old house seemed to shake with her sobs. After the last tear had run down and melted into the dirt, she lay still for a long time. In the bottom of her purse, she found a pair of scissors and with them she gently snipped a long-stemmed Tropicana rose. As if by design, she found an old bottle nearby that she filled with water from the creek in which she and Daddy had played. With one last look at her old abandoned home, she took the rose, put the car in drive and never looked back.
Two weeks later the lawyer called to request her presence at the reading of the will.
"But he cut me out of the will," Maggie said. "Is it necessary for me to be there?" The lawyer assured her it was. It was a simple will.
"Being of sound mind, finally, and feeble body, upon my death all my assets are to be divided equally between my two daughters except for the Tropicana rose. It belongs to my daughter Maggie.I hope she can forgive a stubborn old fool."
