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Carlos just grinned. But when Xavier really looked, he saw that it wasn’t a real grin. There was tension in his best friend’s face.
They were all nervous. It’s not just me.
It’s just me that’s acting like a fool about it.
His shoulders slumped. “What do you want me to do, ma’am?”
Willa Mae took one of those... things of yarn from her bag. It was twisted, looking like a fancy loaf of bread. She shook it, revealing it to be a big circle of yarn. Which she then draped over the chair’s back, then held out one end to Xavier. “Wind it into a ball.”
Xavier stared. “Wind it into a ball? Why?”
She nodded. “Because it’s soothing.”
Xavier looked around the room. His mother was hiding a smile behind her hand. Carlos, Manny, and Burke weren’t even trying to hide theirs.
“Soothing for who?” Xavier demanded.
“Whom,” Willa Mae corrected. “And soothing for us. You can worry all you like, but take out your energy on the yarn. If you keep pacing, you’ll need to buy Burke a new rug because you’ll have worn a hole in the one he has now.”
Sighing, Xavier took the yarn and began to wind. And, like the tai chi, it was surprisingly soothing.
Willa Mae sat back down and resumed her knitting.
And the clock ticked.
“It’s a hard thing to strike from your mind,” Willa Mae murmured. “The image of that poor doctor.” She sounded like she spoke from experience.
“You’ve seen murders like that?” Xavier asked.
“Pictures,” she confirmed. “More than I want to recall. Especially when I was a prosecutor. Burke probably saw them in the war and with the NOPD. Your mama sees them, too, in the ER. The victims that are still breathin’, anyway.”
He glanced at his mother, making sure he continued to wind the yarn. It was blue like the sky, and that was soothing, too. “You do?”
Cicely nodded. “Stabbings, shootings, and beatings. I have to compartmentalize away the horror so that I can save their lives. You’ll have to do that, too, when you become a doctor.”
He’d known that but had never really stopped to contemplate it. “Oh. Wow.”
“I won’t,” Carlos said with a shudder. “I’ll just see wires and conductors and shit.” He winced. “Sorry, Mrs. M, Miss Willa Mae.”
“Burke?” Xavier hesitated to ask, but he was curious about the man. “Did you see wounds like that in the war?”
“I did,” he confirmed, then closed his eyes again.
All right, then. Conversation over. They went back to their activities, the tension in the room no longer as high as it had been. It was still tense, but Xavier could breathe once more.
The silence was broken by the barking of a dog.
Burke abruptly closed the recliner and leapt to his feet, startling Xavier’s mother into a gasp. “Sorry, Cicely. They’re here. That’s Rocky’s dog.” He faltered, grief flickering over his face. “I mean Gabe’s dog.” With a sigh, he stalked to the front door and slipped out.
Xavier kept winding the yarn because he didn’t want to look at any of the others’ faces at the moment. Not until he could clear the tears from his own eyes. There were some times that he also forgot that Rocky was dead, only to remember. It had been like that for the longest time when his father had passed. His birth mother, too.
Grief sucked.
The door opened and a brown-and-white dog bounded in, wagging its tail like there was no tomorrow. It was medium-sized and might have been a Lab with a bunch of other breeds thrown in. He ran straight for Xavier, tongue lolling.
Xavier’s chest constricted. He recognized the dog. Rocky had brought him when he’d visited them in Houston. He dropped to one knee. “Come here, Shoe. There’s a good boy.” He buried his face in the dog’s neck, letting his tears seep into his fur. Then let Shoe go when the dog started wiggling eagerly. “Go on. Say hey to everybody. Everybody, this is Shoe.”
Everyone in the room smiled as the dog made the rounds, getting pets from them all. Shoe had settled into Burke’s old recliner when the door opened again and Burke appeared, holding three grocery sacks in each hand. Behind him were Gabe and Molly, also carrying groceries. Antoine was next, but he had computer bags hanging off of him. André brought up the rear.
