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“I don’t know. I think she’s just grumpy because she’s old,” Libby shrugged.
“Like me?”
“You’re not old!”
“I am so,” I said. “I’m forty years old. That’s old.”
“Old people have white hair and wrinkles on their faces,” she replied.
“I have some white hair,” I replied.
“I don’t see it.”
“You’re not looking very close then. See? It’s here and here,” I told her, showing her the grey and white hairs that now peppered my hair. Libby looked at my scalp where I pointed out the change in my hair color, but she still shook her head.
“You’ll be old when you’re as old as Grandma and Grandpa,” she said. “They’re old.”
“Oh,” I replied. “That’s how old I have to be before you’ll call me old?”
“Yup.”
“Fair enough.”
We were driving back home, and I was being careful, as usual. I had always been a confident driver, but ever since the accident, I was leery about cars. It wasn’t my driving that worried me, it was everyone else on the road. I could be the best driver there was, but if there was another person out there who wasn’t, then it could be a disaster.
Libby was on her phone, likely playing one of her games. I didn’t know how she could do that without getting carsick, but if she didn’t, she didn’t. It seemed so many of the kids out there these days were just acclimated to life with devices. Children didn’t get the same kind of headaches or motion sickness so many people closer to my age got when using them.
I glanced over at her again, marveling over how much she looked like her mom. She was tall for her age, and slender. Her dark hair hung loose over her shoulders, her bangs looking in need of a trim. I made a mental note to make an appointment for her to go in and get her haircut soon. God, I was a mess, involuntarily saying the word out loud as I slammed on the brakes. I had only looked away from the road for an instant, but in that span of time, a ball came rolling out between two parked cars.
Libby screamed.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said. “Sorry. I’m sorry honey, I didn’t mean to do that. That ball came out of nowhere, and I was afraid there was a kid right behind it.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
I got the impression she was talking more to herself than she was to me as I knew the signs of PTSD. And after what she had been through, it didn’t surprise me in the slightest that she dealt with a lot of residual PTSD in her day-to-day life.
In my opinion, the fact she was able to ride in a vehicle at all was a miracle.
“He needs a net or fence or something,” Libby said as she turned to look over her shoulder at the boy who had resumed playing basketball. “He’s going to wind up getting hit by a car or something.”
“Fucking stupid ass parents need to keep a better eye on their kids. Shit,” I muttered under my breath. I had half a mind to pull over and go tear the parents a new asshole after that, but with Libby in the car, I just wanted to get home. I spoke up so she could hear me.
“I agree with that,” I said. “People need to be careful.”
“Not everyone is though,” she said. “There are lots of people out there who aren’t careful when they drive. Or they’re distracted. Or drunk.”
I winced at the last word. She reached her hand over and placed it on her scarred shoulder – the shoulder of the arm she should have lost due to the severity of her injuries. Instead, she had managed to pull through with almost full feeling in all of her fingers, which gave the doctors enough motivation to perform several corrective surgeries.
Everyone was shocked the only permanent marks on her body were the scars she bore from the accident and the surgeries. Especially when the doctors and nurses didn’t even expect her to survive the night following the accident.
“Well, no one was hurt today, and that’s the important thing,” I said, trying to take a cheerful angle on the situation.
“I guess,” she said. “What’s for dinner?”
“Um, I don’t know yet,” I said. “I have a few more things to get done on the book today, then we’ll talk about dinner, how’s that?”
“What I’m hearing you say is I’m going to have what I can find in the fridge,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “You know once you get back to your writing, you’re not going to know what time it is until after I go to bed.”
