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His eyes touched hers and she searched through those chocolate depths for a sign, a glimmer of the boy she knew, the man she’d loved.
You’re there, she thought, all those old feelings she thought she’d banished after Santa Barbara surfacing. I know you’re there and I know you came here for a reason.
You must feel something for me. You must.
“Leave me alone,” he said.
She blinked. Rocked back on her heels.
Right. Of course. How could she forget? Jack didn’t need her. Had never needed her. Happiness. Grief. Health. Injury. Jack did it all on his own.
“Screw you, Jack,” she breathed, and left him there.
To rot.
Walter stood outside his son’s bedroom door. Shut for two damn days. Fool boy was going to kill himself.
He wanted to pound on that door. Truly, he wanted to kick the door down, pull that boy up by the scruff and shake him until he started fighting.
Dying without a fight was a shameful way to go.
Walter knew, because he was giving it his best shot.
Hypocrite, he told himself, but the words didn’t even leave a mark.
Mia’s door opened and she slid out into the hallway. She seemed so short these days, smaller than usual. Which was saying something.
She looked like her mother. As the girlishness had left her face and womanhood settled in around the corners of her eyes and lips, that Mia was Sandra’s daughter became unmistakable.
Sometimes, in a certain light, after enough drinks, Walter was sure Sandra was back. In his home. To bring the warmth and laughter that had vanished when she left.
“He come out?” Mia asked when she saw Walter standing outside Jack’s bedroom like a crippled scarecrow, rooted to the spot.
Walter shook his head, gripping the rubber handles on the walker with his useless, trembling hands.
“You should go lie down,” she said.
Go lie down. Take a seat. Have a rest.
It was all he ever did.
That and think. And then drink to forget everything he thought about.
“He come here to die?” he asked, nodding toward the door and the boy he hadn’t seen in over five years who slept behind it.
Mia had always known Jack better than he did, and if anyone outside that bedroom door had an answer, it’d be her.
“He has a sprained knee and a broken hand,” she said. “He’s hardly about to die.”
But Mia’s eyes were dark. Her face was pinched and drawn.
They both knew that whatever was wrong with Jack was way worse than a sprained knee.
He’d survived an air raid by the Sudanese government that killed his best friend. Walter didn’t understand much about what was going on over there, or who exactly the bad guys were. They all seemed to be doing their best to blast the whole country to hell and back.
But Jack, who’d only been trying to bring clean water to a desert, got caught in the middle of it.
“It’s the only reason he’d come back here,” he said. He knew the truth, had lived with it every day, practically since Jack was born. “Victoria drove that boy away and I let her.”
Mia tugged on the sleeve of his old blue sweater. “Come on, Walt. Don’t you have some drinking to do?”
He shook his head and she stepped back to stand in front of him. Her eyes were skeptical. “You’re not drinking?”
“It’s seven in the morning.”
“Hasn’t stopped you before.”
He didn’t say anything; he just turned his walker around in tiny increments until he faced the hall leading toward the kitchen and dining room.
“Gloria is coming today,” Mia said. Gloria came and cleaned up and cooked every other day. Filling the freezer with casseroles and meaty soups to put in the Crock-Pot, and sweeping and dusting around him in the living room, like he was just another piece of furniture.
In the kitchen, he watched Mia pour coffee into one of the travel mugs and take a big slice of ham out of a bag in the fridge.
“You want something?” she asked and he nodded, pointing to the coffee.
She grabbed a mug and filled it with black coffee, setting it down beside him, and he collapsed into a chair.
He wanted to tell her to sit down, eat a proper meal. But he knew how much work she had to do and how many hours of sunlight to do it in.
Shame burned through his veins and his fingers twitched, searching out the weight of his whiskey glass.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she turned toward him, chewing her meat.
“For what?”
For drinking. For screwing up the money. For getting sick.
“Three days ago,” he said. “The pilot light.”
Her smile was sad, sweet, and that shame burned hotter. She deserved better. Hell, that boy locked up in his room deserved better. She shoved the last of the ham into her mouth and wiped her hands off on a tea towel. Then, from the windowsill, she grabbed three amber plastic pill bottles.
