AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m just glad he didn’t make it extra weird by shaking my hand or something. “Good to be back.”
He nods at the stairs. “The hospice nurse is watching over her. She’s sleeping for now.”
“Okay.”
A long pause.
Henley rubs his jaw. “Your mother went into the office.”
“Right.” No surprise there.
“Charlotte is at school.”
“I figured.”
Another stretch of silence.
“Dani should be here soon.” He looks over my shoulder at the front door, likely wishing for Dani to materialize and rescue him from this uncomfortable dialogue with his grouchy stepson. “She said she was coming over as soon as she finished with some conference calls.”
Somewhere in the distance, Total lets out an ear piercing whine of despair because he’s being left out of the greeting.
Henley’s head swivels toward the sound. “I should let him out. He’s been kenneled since Charlotte left for school this morning.”
I jerk my thumb at the stairs. “Mind if I go up and look in on Cecile?”
“Not at all.” He seems relieved. “And you don’t have to ask, Micah. This is your house too.”
That’s funny. It’s so funny that I nearly bust a rib trying not to laugh in his face.
This hasn’t been my house since I was hauled out of here in cuffs before my seventeenth birthday. After that, it seemed like Henley and Matilda couldn’t wait to paper over my existence. Whenever I come here it’s never for my mother and her husband. The only reason I play nice is for Charlotte’s sake. And for Cecile.
Jogging up the stairs, a thousand memories threaten to crowd in. I shove them all away. I don’t want to be nostalgic about this freaking place.
The door of my former bedroom is passed without a second look. It’s unrecognizable anyway.
Cecile’s door is partially open. My grandmother lies in the middle of a bed that looks like it grew, but that’s only because she has shrunk. Her mouth is open and she wears her sunglasses, but it’s clear she’s asleep.
Cecile flinches in her sleep and mumbles an indistinct word. The nurse who has been quietly sitting at her bedside gently checks her pulse and then tucks her painfully thin arm back inside a knit blanket.
Taking a quiet step back to avoid disturbing the scene, I retreat and go back the way I came.
Downstairs, Henley is no longer in sight. I’m tempted to just go hide out in my car until someone else shows up to break the tension but that’s kind of a dick move and I’m trying not to be a dick anymore.
Following the sound of Total’s bark, I find Henley and the dog in the backyard. Total comes running. He wiggles and even cries. When I take a seat he claws his way into my lap. Then he spots a bird on the far side of the yard and leaps away to go hunting.
“Charlotte sure loves that little guy,” Henley says. For a writer, he’s pretty crappy with words.
Not that I’m any better. “Yup.”
I feel like I should ask him about what he’s writing but I’d rather not admit that I haven’t read a single one of his books.
“How was Vegas?” he says.
“Obnoxious. Decadent. Glad to be done with it.”
He shifts in his chair. Hard to say which one of us is cringing harder over this sorry excuse for a conversation.
“Your mother will be happy to see you.”
