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Dr. Sutton didn’t mince words when he was upset. He wasn’t mean, per se, but he also held no truck with mistakes that were easy to prevent. I rarely made them, but when I did, I felt like I would never get the hang of things and doubled down to work harder.
Even thinking about having a family with that demand on me was a lot to think about, and it had played into my avoiding even dating much. But with the news of Hawk, uncomfortable and painful memories that never really went away came back even harder. For that short window, I had thought he might be able to fill the missing piece of my life that I was now watching Malia have.
I tried to have fun at the bonfire, getting up and forcing myself to be sociable for a while. It didn’t really work, though, and I found myself bowing out even earlier than I planned. Malia was the most upset about it, since I hadn’t really spent much time with her either, and I felt guilty that I wasn’t factoring into her wedding plans in a bigger way than I was.
“I’m sorry, hon,” I said. “I just have work early, and you know how Dr. Sutton is.”
“I remember you telling me,” she said, pouting a little. “You asked for the day off for the rehearsal, right? We had to change it to the day before since the venue got double-booked.”
“I did,” I assured her. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you too, sis,” she said, giving me a big hug.
It wasn’t a lie. I did have work early, and Dr. Sutton was a bit of a hard ass. But I still thought of it as an excuse and felt guilty about being happy to have one. On any other night, I probably would have forced myself to stay, at least a little later. But with all the gushing and the talk about Hawk, I was happy to go home and stuff my face in a pillow.
9
HAWK
It was starting to get late in the evening on the second day of Kim being back home. The first night she fell asleep on the couch, not even making it to the bed after putting the baby down in the crib. I heard her once in the middle of the night getting up and feeding the baby, but if she did it more than once, I wasn’t aware of it, having crashed pretty hard. When I woke up that morning, she was in her bedroom with the door shut.
The day was spent mostly getting the nursery part of the bedroom together and hanging out. Kim was a little distant and spacey, but I tried not to ask questions. I was keeping a pretty close eye on her, hoping that I wouldn’t find any evidence of her being on anything, but as the day went on, I became pretty convinced that she wasn’t.
We sat in the living room, relaxing and watching television that evening, and I kind of figured she would zonk out on the couch again. She was dozing after dinner and eventually stood up, heading back down the hall. I thought she was heading to check on the baby when her head popped out of the room.
“Hey, I think I’m going to turn in early,” she said. “I’m feeling really run-down.”
“I bet,” I said. “It’s been a crazy couple of days. Go get some sleep. I’ll get up early and make us some breakfast tomorrow.”
Nodding with a slight smile, she turned and headed back into her room, quietly closing the door behind her. It was an odd smile, and it struck me wrong for some reason, but I tried not to think too much about it. She had been through a lot recently and was adjusting to a new life, one I was sure she was disappointed in having. No one wants to show up on their brother’s doorstep with a new baby and needing him to take care of you.
Then again, taking care of Kim was a common theme for me. She always had some drama that I had to take care of, and Mom trusted me to make sure it got handled when she couldn’t do it herself. The cancer treatments took so much out of Mom that by the time Kim was in high school, there was just an expectation that I would keep an eye on her and make sure she stayed out of trouble.
It worked, more or less, but mostly because she was a wallflower in those days. She stayed quiet and reserved, not making many friends and having trouble staying awake in her classes. When I went off to college, she apparently had a pretty good year, having good grades in a couple of her classes, but she also started a relationship that got dramatic quickly.
