“Good luck at PT. Bye, y’all,” Greta says, and then three beeps tell me she’s hung up.
Fuck.
“What’s that about?” Mom asks in the passenger seat beside me.
“Don’t know,” I grumble, braking for a red light and resenting the hell out of it.
When the light turns green, I gun the engine.
“Slow down, son,” Dad scolds from the back seat. “You don’t need to be jostling your mother and me around.”
I press my lips together, trying for patience. “Sorry.” What the hell. “I’m just worried.”
Dad huffs. “That’s obvious.”
I still have two full days in South Carolina before Liz shows up and I fly home. I’ve never wanted time to move faster.
When we arrive at the PT clinic, Dad waves his good hand at me. “You stay here, son. Call our Greta back and make sure she’s all right.”
He’s out of the back seat before I can respond. Dad opens Mom’s door. “Give her our love,” he adds, as he offers Mom a hand out of the car.
Before shutting the door behind her, Mom ducks her head back in. “Promise me if she needs you to go back home early, you’ll go,” she says, giving me a stern look. “We may be busted up, but your father and I aren’t invalids.”
I open my mouth to argue. Of course, they’re not invalids, but they don’t have a good pair of hands between them. But if Greta needs me, I’m gone. “I promise, Mom.”
They head inside and Greta, thankfully, answers on the first ring.
“Hey babe. What’s wrong?”
“Oh my God, Zach. I don’t even know how to tell you this—”
Pain lances through her voice. I’m awash in regret. I shouldn’t have left her.
“Greta, honey, what is it?”
“It’s Josh,” she rasps.
All at once, I’m sure he’s dead. That he’s been sucked out to sea off a Costa Rican beach or beaten to death by Argentinian drug dealers.
And it sucks that she’s grieving him, but I’ll be mature about it. I’ll be her rock.
“What happened?” I ask, putting as much concern in my voice as I can manage, which isn’t much.
She scoffs. “I haven’t asked. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
I frown. Because that's…weird.
“Well, who called you? Isaac?” I don’t relish the idea of reaching out to Josh’s drunk dad, but it would be the decent thing to do, given the situation.
“What?No one called. He just showed up here last night.”
Wait. None of this is making sense. I’m lost.
“What are you talking about, Greta?”
She lets out a frustrated sigh. “Josh showed up last night. Drunk. Dirty. A fucking mess—”
“Josh?!”I’m not hearing this. No way. No way he showed up.
