“Good. He had a great laugh.” A pause. “Are you mad at me?”
“Yes.” It comes out quicker than I plan. And I’m not sure I even knew I was angry until just now.
“That’s fair.”
Wind lifts the damp hair at my neck. I look out into the trees. “Do you—” I try again. “Do you regret it?”
“I’m too old and tired to have regrets,” she says.
I press my lips together. That’s not necessarily a no.
Something in my chest twists. “You could have called. Checked in on me. Dad had custody, and Mom adopted me, but you could have tried to see me, Francine.”
“Frankie.”
“Right. Frankie.”
“Let me ask you this.” Her voice develops an edge. No longer is she hitting me with one-liners. “Do you think your life would have been any more complete if some ridden-hard-and-put-away-wet woman had come around asking to see you? Pulling you out of your white-picket-fence life? I did you a favor, Henry. I stayed away.”
“You were paid to stay away.”
“I was paid to give up my parental rights. Nothing in that agreement said I couldn’t try to see you.”
I let out a breath. “This was a mistake.”
“It was a phone call,” she says. “You’ll survive it.”
“Right,” I say. The word tastes like copper. “Goodbye, Franc— I mean Frankie.”
“Goodbye.”
The line goes dead. I stare at the phone until it fades to black, and then I stare at myself in the reflection until that fades too.
Why do I keep thinking this woman holds all the answers? That getting to know her will fix everything wrong in my busted-ass head?
She’s been a crutch. My Hail Mary in the final quarter. The thing I held on to even though, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t put me back together again.
The only person who can fix me is me.
And maybe I can do that with the support of the woman I’m sharing my family’s cabin with.
Inside, Tabitha is still at the table with her tablet and notes. “Work?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I lie.
I return to my laptop and fill the last few hours until dinner with grants and financials.
I try to read after. She pretends not to watch me pretend to read. The fire pops. Zach snores. The day stretches thin and tight as old elastic.
By late afternoon, the cabin feels too full. I chop wood I don’t need to chop just to make something split. Sometimes there really is no substitute for good old-fashioned manual labor. When I come back in, Tabitha is on the couch with her tablet.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says without looking up. “Whatever it is. Not yet.”
I mentally drop my jaw. Am I that transparent? To her, apparently.
“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it.
An hour later, I fry some burgers and open a can of corn. Hardly gourmet fixings like my mother would make, but it does the job. I don’t mention the phone call I made to my past. In fact, we don’t talk much at all.
