AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She turned and saw Dylan hovering just behind Justin. “Yeah?”
“Dad’s asking for you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Me?” Brooke said, staring at her brother in surprise. “Are you sure?”
Her father couldn’t speak. They must be confused about what he was trying to communicate. Either that or this was her mom’s way of trying to smooth things over.
Justin nodded and jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “He wrote your name on the whiteboard.”
“He really wants to see me?” Maybe he’d written her name for another reason, although Brooke couldn’t think of a single one that made sense. She wondered if they could have misread his handwriting.
“I asked him if he wanted me to get you,” Justin said. “He nodded.”
Brooke looked over at Teddy, who shrugged.
Dylan sat down next to her and took her hand. “You don’t have to do it,” he said, squeezing her fingers. “Not if you don’t want to.”
She nodded as she stared at their clasped hands, although she wasn’t convinced that was true. It felt like something you were supposed to do. What kind of heartless monster would refuse to see a father who was asking for her in the hospital?
“He’s right,” Teddy said. “You don’t owe him anything.”
She looked up at Justin, who offered a shrug that mirrored the one Teddy had given her. “Do what you want. I’m just passing on the message. I can go back and tell them you’ve already left.”
She didn’t want Justin to have to lie for her. And maybe…maybe she needed this.
If she didn’t do it, she’d always wonder what her father had wanted from her. There were enough unresolved feelings between them. She didn’t need to add more. Maybe facing him would give her some closure, at the very least.
Brooke stood up. “I’ll go.” She looked down at Dylan and tried to give him a brave smile.
“Are you sure?” he asked her.
She nodded. “I’m sure.” As she said the words, she knew they were true.
He gave her hand another squeeze before letting go. “I’ll be right here.”
The manin the hospital bed didn’t look anything like her dad. The man lying in the bed was much too small to be the tall, commanding man she remembered.
Her father had always been active and in good shape for his age. The man in the bed looked frail and shrunken. His pale skin hung loosely on his skeleton. Tubes and wires peeked out from under the yellow blanket, hooked up to machines that regulated his IV drip and monitored his blood pressure, pulse ox, and heart rate.
Most shocking of all, though, was the gray stubble that covered his jaw and throat. Brooke couldn’t ever remember seeing her father with more than a half day’s worth of stubble before. That, more than anything, drove home how helpless her father was in his present condition.
Her mother sat in a chair beside the bed. She waved Brooke into the room and laid a hand on her husband’s arm. “Ed? Honey? Brooke’s here.”
Ed Hilliard’s eyes opened. It took him a moment to focus on his wife’s face.
Brooke realized she was holding her breath, and forced herself to exhale, long and slow. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, and her stomach clenched into knots as she hovered just inside the doorway.
Perhaps this had been a mistake. Now that she was in the room, she wasn’t sure she was ready to face her father after all.
Before she could change her mind and flee, his head turned toward Brooke, and his eyes found her. They took her in, widening slightly, though whether in surprise or something else, she couldn’t tell. He gazed at her for a long, tense moment, and she gazed back at him. His expression remained impossible to interpret.
She knew she should say something—he couldn’t talk, so it had to be her—but she couldn’t force even the simple word hello out of her throat.
Her father’s mouth twisted, and her stomach sank instinctively, thinking he was scowling at her. It took her another moment to realize he was smiling.
His left side had been weakened by the stroke, so his smile was thin and lopsided, but her father was smiling at her. Not just smiling while she happened to be in the room, but smilingat her. For the first time in eight years, he looked glad to see her.
