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“Ah. Right.” I clear my throat. “About that—any chance you can show me how to clean it myself? Maybe with a mirror, and if I stretch, I bet I can reach it.”
I try to demonstrate, but I can’t get anywhere near where I need to be, and the movement is excruciating. A little whimper of pain slips out.
“Honey, no,” the nurse says, coming toward me and tucking me back into the bed. “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you here.”
“I can’t spend Christmas in the hospital,” I say, hating the begging note in my voice. “Please.”
He gives me a sympathetic look. “It’s not ideal, I know. But bright side, I’m working a double. I’ll come visit lots, and I may be known to sneak in cookies.”
You don’t understand, I want to plead with him. My dad died in the hospital on Christmas.
“Okay?” Cookie Nurse says, giving my arm a little pat.
All I can manage is a weak nod as I look out the window so he can’t see my tears.
What do you know, the meteorologists got it right for once.
It’s started to snow after all.
TWELVE
TOM
December 23, 12:59 p.m.
If you’d have asked me this morning if I was a good guy, I’d have said absolutely. I might even have been a little smug about it because, damn it, I really do try.
I hold doors. Call my mom. Give generously. Speak to my colleagues with respect, even Alan, who I once saw pull a Tupperware out of the office fridge, toss the sticky note in the trash, and then chow down on homemade lasagna that clearly wasn’t his.
Hell, if you’d have asked me an hour ago, I’d have said I was a good guy.
Right now, though? I’m a little less sure. As I step out of Katherine’s hospital room, I certainly don’t feel like a good guy.
And pulling out my phone to call a car seems to take superhuman strength, as though the universe is saying, Really? Really, Tom?
I ignore the universe and then wince because the surge rates are astronomical. And the wait time for a car means that even with the flight delay, it’s going to be close.
Katherine was wrong, by the way. I didn’t book this flight two years ago. Airlines don’t allow you to book flights more than 331 days in advance.
So. I booked mine 331 days ago.
It’s like I’ve said. I’m a planner. Most people find this fact to be somewhere between impressive and endearing.
Katherine, on the other hand, has always managed to make me feel like a jerk for it.
Which is unfair. It’s not as though I’m a prepper with a secret bunker stocked with beans and batteries. I just have a knack for looking ahead to the future and figuring out what needs to be done to ensure that I have the life I want.
I’m also pretty good at avoiding snags, dodging things that don’t fit into the plan.
But Katherine is a bit more than a snag. And though I’ve managed four years of dodging her, apparently my time is up.
Because while there are about a million reasons why I should be heading to the elevator, I find myself loitering outside her hospital room, blatantly eavesdropping on her conversation with the nurse.
A mistake. Because her quiet plea makes my chest ache.
“I can’t spend Christmas in the hospital. Please.”
I drag a hand over my face because I know—I am perhaps one of the only people on the planet who does—that her entreaty is more than the standard hospital aversion.
I never met Daniel Tate. Katherine’s father passed away a couple years before we met. If I’m being honest, I hate that I didn’t have a chance to meet the man who raised a woman like Katherine all on his own. A man who sacrificed everything to get her through law school. Who loved her, even when, let’s be honest, it wasn’t the easiest thing to do.
But I’ve heard enough of Daniel to feel like I know the important things about the man. I know he was short and fair and looked nothing like his daughter—Katherine got her dark hair and eyes and taller-than-average height from her mother, who passed away when she was a child.
I know that Daniel was kind and patient. That his favorite Christmas movie was Scrooge from the 1950s. And that he vehemently discounted Die Hard as a Christmas movie, and I regret never having the opportunity to state my case because I’m confident I could have convinced him.
I know that Daniel Tate got sick with terminal pancreatic cancer.
And I know that he died.
On Christmas.
In a hospital.
I close my eyes. Damn it.
My phone buzzes, notifying me of what should be good news. My Uber driver has made better time than estimated and will be here in three minutes.
I force myself to conjure Lolo’s face in my mind. My girlfriend, who at this minute is with my family, all of them eagerly awaiting my arrival. My girlfriend, who in two days will become my fiancée, and eventually . . .
