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And that made this house the only thing that had been ours. Ever.
I’d thought about quitting. Letting things go back to normal.
But one day I was delivering mail to the top floor of King Industries when two girls walked out of Hank King’s office. One a tiny little thing with huge eyes and short hair. The other just on the edge of womanhood, with laughing brown eyes and straight hair that fell over her shoulders like a cape. She smiled at the receptionist and then at me as she walked by.
I watched her go because she was glittery and pink and warm.
“You want to stop looking at her like that,” the receptionist had said. “That’s Veronica King and she is not for you.”
After that, all my thoughts of leaving were gone. I could handle anything at home if it gave me a shot at seeing Veronica again.
And that next spring Hank King hadn’t hired the old man. No one had. His drinking had caused too many problems.
No one hired him the next fall, either.
So he made drinking his job. Drinking and hating me.
As an adult I sometimes looked out my penthouse windows, or at the view from my office at King Industries, and tried to imagine what my father would say if he saw me. If he saw my world. My power.
I imagined him sometimes, covered in dust and smelling like old beer, walking in behind me as I made my way from reception to my office. I imagined him seeing the way a dozen employees stood up from their desks and said, “Good morning, sir.”
The sir made me cringe every time. But I didn’t ask any of them not to say it.
Because I had fucking earned sir.
“You should bring that girl of yours,” Dale said. “Veronica. I’d like to meet her.”
I looked at the old man long and hard and he looked at me right back.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked. The doctors had told me to stop doing this. To stop trying to pressure the memories back. It had been almost seven years; they weren’t going to come back. And why would I want them to?
Dale was better without them.
I was supposed to be better without them.
But I was a product of what my father and my childhood had made me. And now I was alone in that cold, bitter past because I remembered what the rest of the world didn’t. What the old man didn’t even remember.
“Your name is Clayton,” Dale said, smiling with half his mouth. “You’re a shit chess player.”
I forced myself to take a deep breath. To turn my face away from the old man and my old anger. It was worthless. Pointless.
But I couldn’t sit there anymore.
“Goodbye, Dale,” I said and stood up from the stool.
“We’re not done with our game,” he said slowly.
“I want to leave before the weather turns.” He nodded as if that made sense, and it would to him.
He held out his hand, frozen in a fist, and I shook the fist, trying not to think about what that fist used to do to me.
I pushed open the front door and found Maggie sitting at the table finishing some chart work.
I paid a crew of nurses and caregivers a small fortune to keep Dale in good shape, and Maggie was in charge of it all. She was a pretty woman, with black curls and a kind and patient smile. But she took no bullshit and I appreciated both those things.
“Good night, Maggie,” I said.
“Good night, Clayton,” she said. “Will we see you again next weekend?”
I wanted to say no. I didn’t know, really, why I said yes. Why I kept coming back. With the chess and the drool and the memories only I had.
But I nodded.
“Your father really does love it,” Maggie said.
There was some combination of those words that put my back up.
“He’s not my father,” I said.
“I know it may seem that way because of the effects of the stroke—”
I shook my head, swallowing a bitter laugh.
Dale was a sweetheart and a surprisingly great chess player.
My father had been a mean son of a bitch who shot my dog.
“Dale is not my father,” I said.
I just wished with all my heart that he had been.
14
VERONICA
Sunday night I was in the process of connecting some of my clients with another accountant in Austin so any pressing matters could be handled. Other clients preferred to wait for me, and I made promises about being in Austin in the next few weeks for meetings.
Clayton had said he would move. For me. And the thought of him boxing up that penthouse to move into my ramshackle dog-fur palace was ridiculous.
Five years ago, he never would have said that. Was it possible he’d changed?
The more pressing question, to me anyway, was—why was I still at the ranch? My sisters were gone. Bea was back in Austin, and according to her texts, coming back soon. But soon for Bea could mean anything. There was no reason for me to stay here.
