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This is the final chapter in a series of stories that have run all week.

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The whiskey drowned out the couple on the other side of the wall in Room 3 at the Naughty Pine, but it didn’t do much for the memories that were bouncing from his head to his heart and back again. Every time the bed creaked next door, it rattled loose another regret. And the more he drank, the more vivid the past became—Shyla’s laugh, Lucinda’s lipstick, his mama’s voice on the porch telling him not to be a damn fool.

Eventually, the thud of June bugs battering themselves against the glass got to him. Not just the sound, but the hopelessness of it—those dumb little creatures drawn to a light they’d never reach.

Eddie Ray stepped outside, unscrewed the bulb above the door with a towel, and stood there for a minute in the dark. The bugs drifted off. The noise stopped.

Part of it was the silence.

Part of it was mercy—for them, and maybe for himself.

He went back inside, closed the curtain tight, and lay back down on the bed, bottle tucked under one arm like a lifeboat.

Sleep didn’t come easy. It hadn’t in years.

When it finally did come, it hit him like a freight train. He didn’t even remember closing his eyes, only waking up sometime mid-morning with a dry mouth and a head full of fog. The cheap plaid curtains did little to keep out the Texas sun, and when he finally managed to open both eyes, the light pouring in nearly blinded him.

He groaned, rolled over, and blinked at the cracked ceiling, where the water stain shaped vaguely like Nebraska mocked him with its permanence. Every inch of him felt sore, like regret had decided to roost in his bones overnight. The whiskey bottle was tipped over on the nightstand, its remaining contents pooling against the cap like it, too, had given up.

Outside, the town was already alive—horns honking, a lawnmower buzzing faintly somewhere down the road, and the low hum of a town that didn’t stop moving just because one of its wayward sons had returned to nurse a hangover and a broken heart.

He pulled on enough clothes to pass for decent and shuffled down to the motel office. Inside, Leon was posted up behind the desk, half-dozing and half-watching a black-and-white rerun of Andy Griffith on a TV that looked like it had survived the Cold War. The volume was low, but the whistling theme still cut through the hum of the box fan in the corner.

“Morning,” Eddie Ray muttered.

Leon didn’t look away from the screen. “Depends who you ask.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a place in town I could rent a car for a couple days, would you? My Caddy’s laid up at the Esso ‘til Tex can make her right.”

Leon finally turned toward him, eyes squinting like he was sizing up a suspect. He scratched his chin, then leaned back in his chair.

“Tell you what,” he said. “For forty bucks a day, you can borrow my mama’s old Granada. 1982 Ford GL Squire Wagon. Pastel Vanilla with the fake wood panelin’. Don’t get driven much since the cancer took her in her prime.”

Eddie Ray blinked. “She still run?”

Leon shrugged. “She runs like a widow at a church potluck. Not fast, but she gets there.”

“Deal,” Eddie Ray said. “I’ll try not to scuff the panelin’.”

“Good,” Leon said, eyes drifting back to Barney Fife bungling an arrest. “She didn’t like folks slammin’ the doors either. Just a heads-up.”

Eddie Ray crawled into the Granada wagon and immediately coughed. The smell of old cigarette smoke clung to the interior like it had taken up permanent residence—thick and sharp, with a hint of White Shoulders perfume that hadn’t been spritzed in at least a decade. Leon’s mama had been a smoker, among other things.

The analog clock on the dash still ticked, but it didn’t really keep time—not that it mattered. The real giveaway of the wagon’s age was the Squire-specific woodtone trim that had long since faded into something resembling overcooked cornbread.

When he turned the key, Eddie was treated to the coughing gasp of a 3.8-liter V6 that sounded like it had made peace with its own mortality. It choked to life with a sputter that eerily echoed the final rasp of its late owner.

“Atta girl,” he muttered, patting the dash like it might reward him with air conditioning.

He eased the wagon out of the lot and pointed it toward the Dairy Twin. He needed breakfast tacos and maybe something greasy enough to clear the throbbing behind his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, they’d have a breakfast burrito strong enough to scare off the ghosts still whispering in his ears.

Inside the Dairy Twin, there was almost as much chrome that needed a good cleaning as there had been in the Granada. The booths still had that cracked red vinyl, and the menu hadn’t changed since before Eddie Ray left town.

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Behind the counter stood Nellie, scowling and businesslike, with a pencil tucked behind one ear and a name tag that had survived at least two washing machine cycles too many. She looked up and smiled as he approached, but there was a squint of curiosity behind it.

“Wait a minute,” she said, pointing. “You’re Eddie Ray Sinclair, ain’t you? From that album with the desert highway cover? My mama used to play your CD on repeat when she cleaned house.”

Eddie Ray grinned, straightening a little. “Guilty. That was me. Still is.”

It gave him a lift. Even if just for a second, it felt like maybe the road he’d traveled hadn’t been all dust and disappointment.

Then Nellie glanced out the front window and spotted the Granada.

“Times ain’t what they used to be, are they?” she said, one eyebrow raised.

So much for his ego.

Eddie Ray sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “No, ma’am. No, they sure ain’t.”

Eddie Ray sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He ate his tacos, drank his coffee, nursed his bruised ego, and vowed to be back on the road Monday when the Coupe De Ville was fixed.

But before he got on Highway 10 and left Fort Stockton in the rearview mirror, he knew what he had to do.

He climbed back into the smoky pit that was the cabin of the Granada and lowered all the windows, trying to clear out both the smell of the car and the cobwebs in his mind. As the dry air rushed in, he focused on trying to remember the way Shyla looked the last time he’d seen her.

Lucinda had been a romp. Others had been diversions. But Shyla? Shyla had been the one.

At the peak of his fame, Eddie Ray had written songs about her—thinly disguised, maybe, but obvious to anyone who knew him. Every time he sang them, every time he heard the slide guitar swell or hit a line just right, it brought her back to him in a way that stung more than soothed. The memory of her—of what they had—was a tender spot in his soul he never quite let heal.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he got there. But he knew he couldn’t keep circling her memory like a vulture over something that still had breath.

So he turned onto the road that would take him toward her side of town.

Toward the one who had never really left his songs—or his heart.

The air felt cooler somehow as Eddie Ray guided the Granada toward Shyla’s place. The breeze coming in through the lowered windows gave him a chill that didn’t match the temperature—it had to be pushing ninety—but still, a shiver ran down his spine. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was ghosts.

When he arrived, the gates were open and the lawn was perfectly manicured. No surprise there. Shyla had always had a thing for order, for beauty that held together even when the world didn’t.

He pulled the wagon over to the curb, killed the engine, and closed his eyes.

The last time he’d seen her, she was in the seat right next to him. Her hair still damp from a shower, smelling like Herbal Essence shampoo and nerves. She was doing everything she could not to cry.

So was he.

They were on the way to her house. They had news. Heavy news. Life-altering news. And they had hoped—naively—that her parents would come around once the shock wore off.

Shyla was pregnant.

Eddie Ray gripped the steering wheel tighter, eyes still shut against the memory. That ride had changed everything. He’d promised her he’d stand beside her. Promised he’d be back. That music wouldn’t come between them. But the road had a way of turning promises into punchlines.

He exhaled slowly, like maybe he could push the weight of it all out through his breath.

And then he opened the door and stepped out, gravel crunching beneath his boots.

Except it wasn’t her house he’d come to. It was the cemetery.

He walked the path like a man in a daze, his boots heavy, heart heavier.

There she was. The stone was simple. Her name etched in script, clean and elegant. No mention of the child, of course.

They never made it to her house to tell her parents. The drunk driver came around the curve on Highway 10 and crossed into oncoming traffic, and that was that. In an instant, it was over. Two lives gone. Two futures erased, one before it even started. There would’ve been no point in telling her mom and daddy Shyla was pregnant when she died. They already blamed Eddie Ray for one casualty. Two might’ve made the loss unbearable.

Just like it was for him.

Enough to make him leave Fort Stockton. And enough to keep him from coming back for over twenty years.

He knelt down, fingers brushing the edge of the stone. “Hey, darlin’,” he whispered. “I’m sorry it took me this long. I should’ve been here sooner. I should’ve been a lot of things.”

The wind rustled through the live oaks, carrying the faintest whisper of a song he hadn’t sung in a very long time.

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