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* * *
In the afternoon, I leave for Topeka to pick up Charlotte, trying to get my head in a better place. For her sake, I need to find a way to fake good cheer.
There is paperwork to be filled out when I arrive, and they tell me—like the vultures they are—I’ll need to talk to finance about the billing issue. I’m not in the mood. I wish I hadn’t been avoiding their calls.
I’m ushered to a desk where someone named Lisa looks up the chart. “We’ve called you a few times. There’s a credit on the account,” she says.
“A credit?” I repeat. It must be a mistake. There’s a desperate part of me that is already considering letting them make it—my family needs the money more than they do.
“Right. We were wondering if you wanted it to apply toward the rest of your sister’s stay, but I suppose if she’s leaving, we’ll cut you a check.”
I sigh. As desperate as I am, having them actually give me money would be taking it too far. “I...think there must be a mistake. I haven’t even paid for Charlotte’s last month here yet.”
She taps something on her keyboard and peers at the monitor for a moment. “No, her entire stay was paid in full two weeks ago. We were told to credit back to you what you’d already paid.”
I blink at her. It takes me longer than it should to realize who paid it. Even after I left Hayes at the airport, saying I wanted nothing to do with him, he still spent almost fifty grand helping me get out of debt.
I’m swallowing hard as she submits a request for the reimbursement check. In an ideal world, this wouldn’t be the end of our story. But at least I know he cared.
It will need to be enough.
* * *
Charlotte emerges from the inpatient area with a wide smile, pretty as ever. She seems more like her old self, instead of the pale, destroyed girl who arrived here. A guy is on the other side of the door, watching her with lovesick eyes.
“Who’s that?” I ask, nodding toward him.
She waves goodbye to him. “Just a guy who was here,” she says. I suspect she has no idea of the effect she has. Of the three Bell sisters, she definitely got the looks.
We stop for Slurpees on the way home. It’s what my father used to do with us on the first and last days of school. “Do you think he did it because he wanted to celebrate?” I ask. “Or was it an excuse to have junk food without Mom yelling at him?”
Charlotte laughs. “It was totally about the junk food. Mom said they found like fifteen bags of Skittles in his desk at work. He was dead, but she was still so mad.”
We start exchanging stories, recalling the time when he couldn’t figure out Uber and ended up walking home ten miles because he didn’t want to admit it. The way he would demolish half a tub of ice cream and then later claim he’d barely eaten all day. The time he couldn’t get the hood of his car open and took a saw to it, destroying it in ways even the autobody shop couldn’t fix later.
It’s good being able to talk about him like this. Not in hushed, sad tones, and not as if he was infallible. But as the funny, loving, flawed man who raised us. It feels a little bit like getting him back, in an odd way.
Too soon, we arrive at home...to find a tiny orange Ford in the driveway.
“Who’s that?” asks Charlotte.
For a single, heartbreaking moment, I wonder if it’s Hayes. If he flew out here like the hero of some Nicholas Sparks movie to declare his love for me. And then I laugh at myself. There’s no way Hayes would rent an American car. Certainly not an orange one.
The door opens, and my niece Kaitlin comes running outside to us, throwing her arms around Charlotte and then me.
“We’re here for a whole week, Aunt Tali!” she shouts, squeezing my legs as I lean down to pick her up. I laugh. My chest still aches, but it’s hard to be entirely sad when you have a three-year-old wrapping herself around you like you’re her favorite teddy bear.
Liddie, who followed Kaitlin out, hugs Charlotte and then gives me a tentative smile. “It was last minute. I hope that’s...okay?”
I wince. I took things too far this morning if Liddie feels like she has to ask permission to be in her own home. “I’m sorry about what I said. I know the pregnancy thing matters to you.”
She shoves her hands in her back pockets. “Dr. Shriner asked me about it, after you stormed out. She says sometimes people create a problem or throw themselves into a project in order to avoid their own grief. It’s possible that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“But you’re allowed to create projects or problems,” I tell her. “Especially if it’s what you need to move forward.”
She shrugs and wraps an arm around me. “I can probably do it without acting like I’m the only one suffering, though. I’ll do what I can to get down here. We’re going to figure this out, but all of us, not just you, okay?”
I’m too choked up to do anything but nod.
