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“You already know all my secrets.” Hearing his voice over the phone, coupled with my worry over Greg, twists a knife in my belly. I miss my friend. “I wish I was drunk, actually.” I glance up at the tasting room but can’t see Maggie. I’ll send her a text when I get in the car.
“What happened?” There’s a change in Nate’s voice, as if he sat up straighter. I can hear rustling through the phone, like he’s getting out of bed. “Is my mom okay?”
“Your mom is fine. But your dad…” I have to swallow past the lump in my throat.
This time there’s an urgency to Nate’s voice. “What?”
“He fell when he was out in one of the fields. He’s on his way to the hospital now.” I move through the house to their bedroom, snagging the toothbrushes that sit side by side in the bathroom, as well as Jackie’s contact solution and case. “I’m pretty sure he broke his hip.”
“Why aren’t you with him?”
Because I was busy trying to make a good impression on Theo and then blowing it by fighting with Maggie. But there’s no way I can tell him that, so I side-step the question. “I’m just grabbing some stuff from the house for your folks before I follow them to the hospital.” I pull the phone chargers from each side of the bed and add them to my collection. There’s some pajamas neatly folded on the bed that I consider grabbing, but I decide against it.
There’s the sound of Nate speaking in muffled French before he speaks to me again. “Did you see it happen? How did he fall?” His voice cracks on the question.
I pause my hunt for a grocery bag to put everything in. “I was up in the tasting room with—nevermind. No, I didn’t see him fall, he texted me from the field.”
There’s a long pause before Nate asks me another question. “They were there, weren’t they?”
The last thing I need is for Nate to pick a fight with me over the Suttons, so I move past the question as quickly as I can. Bag in hand, I go back to the bedroom to pack everything up. “Yes. Listen, that’s not important right now.” I take a breath, scanning the room once more for anything I should take. “You’re going to have to come home. A broken hip is no joke and I’m pretty sure your dad is going to need surgery. Plus, with his wrist—”
“What do you mean, his wrist?” There’s anger in Nate’s voice and I cringe. I hate that I’m the only one he talks to, because it means when he actually answers his phone, our conversations are always like this—me telling him things he doesn’t want to hear. But as little as he listens to me, he listens to his parents even less, especially since they sold to Sutton.
Locking the door behind me, I head to my car.
“Look, man, you need to come home. And you should plan on being here awhile when you do. We’re looking at nine months to a year recovery time.” I toss the bag on the passenger seat and switch the call to my car’s Bluetooth. Nate still hasn’t responded. “Hello?”
There’s a deep sigh on the other end. “Fuck. I don’t know how long I can stay.” Again, there’s the muffled French. I have no idea who he is talking to but I assume it’s a woman. While he’s busy talking to the unknown French woman, I send Maggie a quick text that I’ll call her tomorrow and not to wait for me. “Kel?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be there in a few days. Keep me posted?”
“Of course.” He hangs up before I can say anything else, which doesn’t surprise me. I call my own parents and Sydney as I drive, knowing they’ll want to know what’s happened. My parents are on standby to come help, but since it’s a hospital situation, everyone assumes I’m the best person for the job. Nursing never really leaves you, I guess.
“Are you okay?” Sydney is the only one who asks. Maybe because she hears my harsh inhale as I pull into the parking lot. “Are you at the hospital?”
“Yeah.” A cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck as the standard red block letters come into view. My chest tightens as I suck air in through my nose.
“Kel?” Sydney says my name a few times before I can answer.
“I’m okay Syd. I can manage.”
“Are you sure? Do you need me to come down there?”
I grit my teeth and keep breathing as normally as I can to keep the too-familiar feeling of panic at bay. “I just need a minute, Syd. But I’m okay.”
“Kel, I can be there in twenty minutes if you need me.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I’ll keep you updated, I promise.” I take one more breath while I wait for my racing heart to calm down enough to get out of the car and walk inside.
“Did you…did you call him?” Sydney’s voice is hushed, so quiet I’m not sure she wanted me to hear her question. She rarely asks me about Nate, and then only in carefully guarded generalities.
“I did. He said he would be here in a few days.” She’s never told me what happened between them and I’ve never pushed her to tell me, but if he finally comes home from France, they’re going to have to resolve their issues, whatever they are. “Are you okay?”
Sydney gives a little laugh. “I’ll be fine. Go take care of Greg and Jackie.”
Kel
