Does he even know I’m coming?
Oh, Angie, what were you thinking?
Eighteen
Henry
Earlier the same day…
I drive myself to the foundation this morning, and I make it without any headache or blurred vision.
Mom wasn’t happy. Dad was a little better after I did okay the past couple of days at work.
But I have to do something, even if working is more tiring than usual.
It’s better than the silence of the ranch house that vibrates in my bones. I can’t sit at Mom’s kitchen table one more morning, pretending to read while I count the seconds between my heartbeats and ask myself why a week feels like a year when your life suddenly has no shape.
I need shape.
The Steel Foundation gives me that.
As soon as I hit my office, my cousin is there once more.
“You here again?”
“Where else would I be?”
“You know where. Home. Resting.”
“Your concern is noted.” I slide into my chair and wake the screen. “Go do whatever it is you do here, Bradley.”
“What I do here is keep my idiot cousin from face-planting in a donor meeting.” He taps his finger on my desk. “Seriously. Two hours. Tops.”
“Eight,” I say again and click into the first proposal.
I answer three emails. Then eight more. At ten a.m., I hop on a call with a rural hospital that needs a grant for mental health services. At ten thirty, I sign five letters thanking people whose checks made last month possible and think about how money is both everything and nothing.
I open the spreadsheet that maps dollars against need and start shifting cells like I’m playing chess. The numbers line up.
At least some things in this world make sense. I can always count on numbers. They never lie. They never leave you for a surgical seminar after you tell them you can’t be in a relationship with them.
Except I guess those numbers line up, too, when I think about it.
Damn.
I bury myself back in the work, desperate to keep all thoughts of Tabitha at bay.
Brad appears in my doorway at noon with a sandwich from the deli on the corner. “Eat. Or I’m calling Aunt Marjorie.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I say, but I take the sandwich. “Thanks.”
Brad leans on the doorjamb. “Look, man. You’re good at this. At moving money, fixing things. But you’re not fixing you by pretending you’re a spreadsheet.”
“I’m not pretending anything,” I say around a third bite.
He rakes his gaze over me. “Your pupils say otherwise. Also your skin. And your charming personality.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Fuck off.”
