Page 197 of Halo

“Okay.”

I brush my thumb over her cheek. “You need anything before I go?”

She shakes her head, already sinking deeper into the pillow.

“Go. I’m fine.”

I kiss her once more.

“Get some sleep.”

Her eyes close as I switch off the lamp, and by the time I reach the door, her breathing has already begun to even out.

I leave Leah sleeping upstairs and wander through the house without any real destination, letting myself look at things I haven’t bothered looking at in years.

Eventually, I end up outside Dad’s office.

Nobody has changed much since he died. His desk is still angled toward the windows overlooking the pasture, the old leather chair tucked behind it, and the cowhide rug beneath my boots is the same one I used to lie on when I was little while he worked. I don’t remember when I stopped doing that. Probably around the same time I started understanding that Dad didn’t particularly want me around.

I step farther inside.

For most of my life, I figured Dad looked at me and saw the thing that took Mama away from him. She’d been a barrel racer before she had me. Horses were her whole life, and then I came along, the pregnancy went bad, and everything changed. She survived, but pieces of her didn’t.

Dad never blamed me out loud.

He didn’t have to.

At least, that’s what I always believed.

I’m turning to leave when something beside the bookcase catches my attention.

There are pictures pinned to the wall.

My pictures.

One of me graduating high school. Another from college. My medical school graduation announcement is tucked beneath a photograph of me holding my diploma, and beside that is an article about my residency. There are more after that, things I don’t even remember sending home. Newspaper clippings. Hospital announcements. A picture of me in scrubs somebody must have printed off the internet.

My entire fucking life is on this wall.

I reach for the medical school picture, but stop before touching it.

“Wondered where you went.”

My brother appears in the doorway.

I look back at the wall. “Did Dad do this?”

“Yeah.”

“All of it?”

He comes farther into the room and looks at the pictures like there’s nothing remarkable about them.

“Man, Dad loved the hell out of you.”

I laugh once, but there isn’t anything funny in it. “He had a funny way of showing it.”

“He had a funny way of showing everything.” My brother leans against the desk. “He was a hard-ass. Always was. But every time somebody came into this office, he found some excuse to tell them his youngest boy was a doctor.”