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“Fine. Sleeping a lot.” Dressed in jeans and a tee with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, Alexis looked so young, unusually vulnerable.
She’d graduated from high school early and fast-tracked her way through a four-year degree before physical therapy school. She’d achieved so much it was easy to forget how young she was. Alexis dropped into the seat across from Keely’s at the kitchen table.
“No surprise, given what he went through.” Keely had felt like she was moving in slow motion today, too. Although her reasons had more to do with a breaking heart than anything else.
“We need to talk.” Alexis folded her arms on the table. “Dad’s doctor told me he might only have a few years left. Or less.”
“We’ve known that,” Keely reminded her gently, knowing how upsetting it could be to talk to their father’s physicians. “I’ve been very up-front with you about all of his doctor appointments.”
“In the past, we thought he might get a liver transplant,” Alexis pointed out, her eyes red-rimmed. “But the more he declines, the less likely they’d do a surgery like that for him.”
“He drank before Mom left him, too. It’s a lot of years’ worth of damage.” She may have spoken with Alexis about it in the past, but she understood the way people could mentally shove aside information they weren’t prepared to deal with.
Alexis sniffled and swiped her eyes. “Well, I didn’t fully appreciate until today how dire things were for Dad.”
Reaching across the table, Keely squeezed her sister’s arm. “I’m sorry. In spite of the tough times, it still hurts to think about something happening to him.”
For all his faults—and Jimmy Harper had a lot of them—he’d been a good father through one of the toughest things children could face. Being abandoned by their mother had left an irreparable scar on them. But their dad had been a rock—and sober—when they’d needed him most.
“It does.” Alexis took her hand and squeezed back. “That’s why I’m going to come home and spend some time with him.”
Everything stilled inside her. “No. Alexis, you can’t do that. You have a good job. A life away from here—”
“He’s my father, too.” Her sister’s blue eyes glittered with a new fierceness. “I’m not going to live with the guilt of not having spent time with him when I still had the chance.”
In the foyer, the grandfather clock chimed the half hour. Why did it feel like she was running out of time on every front? Keely picked up her pen and flicked it in circles as she thought about how to convince her sister not to make a huge mistake.
“So take more time off,” she suggested. “Come home like you’re doing now. There’s no need for you to turn your whole life upside down—”
“Yes. There is.” Shooting to her feet, Alexis stalked to the refrigerator and pulled open the door. Finding a water bottle, she slammed the door shut again. “I’m a grown woman, Keely. I went to Houston because you encouraged me to find out what life was life outside of Last Stand. And I did that. But it’s time for me to make my own decisions about my future, and this town still feels like home to me.”
Keely blinked, swiveling in the kitchen chair to keep an eye on Alexis, trying to decide if she’d heard her correctly.
Hadn’t her sister just expressed the same exact thing Keely had tried to tell Nate the night before? That she wanted to focus on her own dreams. She could hardly deny her sister the same agency in her life that Keely craved.
“I understand,” she forced herself to say, even though she couldn’t suppress the worry she felt for her sister returning home. “Better than you think.”
“Thank you for saying that. I know it’s not what you would have chosen for me. But I can get work here as easily as I could in Houston.” Taking a long swig of the water, Alexis recapped the bottle. “I saw Nate today.”
Instantly alert, Keely tensed. The pieces of their conversation reshuffled with that new information in place. She said nothing.
“I stopped by the baseball camp before I went to the hospital. I didn’t speak to him, but I know he got traded yesterday. The whole town knows.” Setting the water on the kitchen counter, Alexis returned to the table but didn’t sit down.
Too raw to talk about this, Keely shook her head. “There’s nothing to say about Nate.”
“Honey, he looks like a man who lost his best friend.” Her sister knelt in front of her, peering up into her face. “He’s walking wounded.”
“What do you think I am?” she blurted. “Do you think I want to say goodbye to him?”
“So don’t.” Alexis took the pen out of Keely’s hand and set it aside. Then she held both Keely’s hands in hers. “You didn’t go with Nate last time because of me, because I was a minor. You sacrificed everything for years to be sure I got through college and could afford my bills.”
“And I wanted to,” Keely reminded her. “We’re family.”
“We are.” Her sister smiled and brought Keely’s hand up to her cheek, pressing it there. “And that’s why I need you to let me do this. Let me be the one to spend some time with Daddy while I still can. It’s your turn to go live your life. Find your happiness.”
“What if my happiness is here too? Just like you?” Keely couldn’t think of the words to say that would make her sister change her mind. There was a quiet sense of purpose in her words, a certainty and maturity she hadn’t seen from Alexis before.
But then again, she hadn’t spent much time with Alexis in years, keeping her at arm’s length to ensure she had all the tools she needed to live a good life in Houston away from the family drama in Last Stand.
