I remember, my grandmother used to call me doll, in her Southern accent, standing over me in those sun-soaked mornings at her house, when the light filtered through the pink cotton curtains and painted everything in rose, and the house smelt like cinnamon and oranges. I was sent there, after The Event, as I called it, nineteen with lanky legs and a chest too broad for my liking. She cut my hair, calling it a country hick mullet, and would not let me in the kitchen.

I do not believe she hated me.

She loved me, and she loved God, and the Devil was inside her, telling her it was inside me, wearing my father's old clothes, two sizes too big on my skinny frame. She called my glasses too feminine, and would not let me wear them, on my mother's orders. I called her on the landline the day I arrived, and then never again. It wasn't a pleasant conversation. When the sun rose, and she placed a home-cooked breakfast, bacon, eggs and grits, hashbrowns and a cup of coffee, all delicious, because it was Nana's cooking, and she still loved me, she told me she had applied for a job on my behalf.

I arrived at the lumber mill with the sun smearing my already failing retinas into bright puddles of light. The paper bag in my hand held a corned beef sandwich and an apple, a can of soda jostling around inside as if setting me up for certain embarrassment later in the day. A large man exited the mill, arms bursting with muscle, and he waved me over with all the authority of a cop. I trudged over.

"You the new hire?"

I nodded. "Name's El-"

"Elliot Hanson, I know 'ya. You Gertie's boy?"

I swallowed. "Grandson." The word slid past my lips like sandpaper.

"Well, I'm not sure what she was thinking. You ain't hauling shit with noodle arms like yours," he grasped my bicep suddenly, laughing all the while. "I'm Hank."

"Hi, Hank."

Hank sighed, and waved me inside. "Alright, son. I'll put you on some easy work for now. You'll be with Robin," he led me to a desk with a girl stood at it, bundling lumber into piles for shipment, and left me there.

"Hey, new blood. What's your name?" She asked, her strawberry blonde hair specked with sawdust. Her hands were calloused as they deftly wound a zip-tie around another bundle. It struck me suddenly that she may have been the prettiest girl I had ever seen.

I looked down as I said it, already fiddling with the plastic tail of a zip-tie. "Ella."