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Oh, he’s cocky. “Maybe I can’t. But I can leave.” I jump up and immediately hear his chair screech.
“What’s your problem, Hollie?”
I spin around. “Myproblem?”
“Yeah. I’ve got the money and I bought the battery. I want to help. So what?”
My face feels twitchy, my chest tight. I’m a grown woman who can hardly take care of herself, much less her own son when he has any need that falls outside the everyday norm. “Dinner. Lunch. And now this.”
John snorts. “I’m a real monster, aren’t I?”
Maybe if I’d slept more the tears would leave me be. Even now, I feel them making their way onto the launchpad. My fists ball. I wheel toward the bedroom where my suitcase lies, making it two steps before fingers wrap my wrist. I bat at them and pull, already hiccupping and breathless. “Let me go.” I yank, and John’s touch instantly falls away.
Concern digs in along the sides of his mouth. “Hollie…”
“You’re a bully!”
His hands spread. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”
A head of steam builds in my chest. “You don’t listen. You argue. You…you make me…you force…”Another trembly gasp for air makes its way out.
John’s palms lift, his usually sure face blanketed with confusion.
There’s movement in my periphery—but I can’t look at my son, lingering at the edge of the living area, seeing. The air in my lungs is in dangerously short supply. This hasn’t happened in ages, not like this.
Scooting the takeout container aside, John picks up the scrawled check, retrieves his wallet, and slides it inside. He speaks softly. “I’ll deposit it first thing in the morning.”
John
There’s a reason I live alone.
Not by myself in a practically empty house, but alone in life.Thatkind of alone.
And Hollie Carpenter has run headlong into both.
It’s my own darned fault. I’m the one who invited her in.
And you wouldn’t have it any other way, bud.
Am I sure about that? Yawning, I tip my head to the top of the puffy cushion at my favorite spot on the patio, scrubbing my palms down my face. Life is hard enough, and I muck things up every chance I get, at least when other people are involved.
The weekend was a doozy.
I kick my feet onto the iron and glass table. Crickets, surely soon to retire for the season, provide the background track for my self-therapy session, a peptalk to encourage wise decision-making.
Locking my fingers, I stretch my arms, arching the tight muscles in my back. Tomorrow—or later today—I’ll be nodding off in front of my computer if I’m not careful.
Insomniacs of the world unite at—I check my watch—one a.m.
So, buying a woman a car battery is a cardinal sin? I’ll have to remember that.
And Hollie? I’m sharp enough to know better than to tie myself to crazy any more than I already have.
A fist beats against the lining of my gut. Hollie isn’t crazy, and it scares the…crud…out of me to think what her over-the-top reaction today surely was. And at nothing, nothing more a car battery and a simple touch.
Lots of things in life can malfunction and wind up generating panic attacks, sometimes things that seem small. But…deep in the part of me where my best instincts reside, I know that Hollie’s are the result of something hideous. I’m piecing together clues and could venture a guess—but I still hope to sleep sometime between now and dawn.
And I pray I’m wrong.
