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I wasn’t entirely sure it was a lie.
Brody opened his mouth to speak, but another cough came, then another. And another. Too many to count, over and over, as if he were suffering from the worst kind of virus. Phlegm and spittle coated the back of his hand as he struggled to get a breath in. I handed him a wad of Kleenex, trying to help in some small way.
Quick footsteps echoed through the house as Lottie rushed down the stairs. “Dad?” she yelped, nearly tripping over herself as she ran to his side. He kept coughing over and over, each one thicker than the last. She helped him to sit upright and gently leaned him forward, whacking the top of his back with an open palm.
The coughing calmed.
“Jesus, Dad, you’ve got a bell to ring when you need me, use it,” she said, her lips pressed firmly together as she helped him lean back into the raised portion of the bed. She glanced at me, a solemn look in her eyes that said it’s getting worse.
“Sorry, sweet pea,” Brody coughed. “I thought it would go away.”
“I’ll get you some water,” Lottie sighed. She disappeared around the corner into the kitchen, the sound of a cabinet opening and closing filtering through the space.
A key in the lock made me jump, but Brody didn’t seem to care. I’d forgotten how normal it must feel to him now to have a nurse popping in and out of the blue, even in his own home. “Heya, Carol,” he called, not bothering to look as a tall woman with brown skin and black hair stepped through the door.
“It’s Sarah, actually,” she said.
Brody’s hand wrapped around my forearm, dragging my attention back to him. “Do me a favor, Hunter,” he said, his voice low enough that Charlotte wouldn’t hear from the next room. “Get Lottie out of here for a bit. Take her mind off things. She’s been all over the place today.”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “You’re not planning on dying while we’re gone, right?”
His laugh was genuine. “No. I’ve still got some fight left in me.”
————
Lottie fought me on it. She didn’t want to go too far after his coughing fit, even with a nurse present. So I’d agreed we could stay on the property as long as we got far enough away to take her mind off of things, if only for a moment.
“This was our stable,” she said, her boots slapping in the mud as she came to a stop in front of an old, dilapidated wooden structure. “We stopped keeping horses about ten years ago after Amy died.”
“Winehouse?”
Her little snort told me she was already beginning to feel better. “No, asshole. Amy was my horse.”
She led me around the back of the stable as she pulled her jacket tighter around her. “This is where I used to play while my parents tended to the horses,” she said.
An old, rusty play set barely stood in the open field. The swing dangled from one chain, the slide rotted and twisted. The monkey bars appeared strong, but the moment my hand touched the wood, termites sprung from it. Maybe not so strong.
“It’s kind of gone to shit now. I think Dad was hoping to fix it up before I had kids so they’d have somewhere to play whenever they came over.”
She stared at the broken pieces of her childhood, her eyes looking through it more than at it as they glassed over. I wondered how many memories she had of this spot, how many times she’d been out here with both of her parents, then just her father, and then at some point by herself before she just… stopped.
“I know it’s not quite as, uh, grand as your property?—”
“My property is shit,” I said, cutting her off before she could disparage this place any further. “My parent’s place isn’t any better. This, though… it has character, Lottie. Stories. Memories. That’s worth more than any land money can buy.”
Her eyes met mine. I couldn’t read her even if I wanted to. She was caged, hiding behind a wall not too dissimilar from her brick one, but at least I could see through this one. More open this time, like she’d carved a little door into it and slipped me the key.
She started walking again and I followed her in silence as we stepped past the tree line and entered the woods that surrounded her property. Aspens and maples littered the area, their sticks and leaves covering the ground. Birds chirped all around us, crows and bluejays and others I couldn’t name. The cloudy skies above promised rain at some point, but this deep into the foliage, I wasn’t sure it would even reach us.
After a few minutes of walking, the trees and bushes parted into a clearing. At the very center, an old fire pit barely stood, surrounded by a handful of time-worn massive logs that once served as benches. Behind it, the mountains were close, the base of them rising just beyond the blowing leaves on the other side.
“We’d camp out here sometimes,” Lottie said, breaking the silence. “When I was kid, Dad would bring out the tent and all the supplies. Occasionally I’d have parties out here with my friends during high school. But mostly, I just came out here to think.”
Her boots crunched in the mixture of gravel and grass as she crossed the clearing toward the fire pit.
“There was one time Dad called the cops because he couldn’t find me anywhere. I didn’t even realize he was worried until a police officer stepped through those bushes right over there,” she chuckled as she pointed. She sat down on one of the log benches and motioned for me to do the same.
I sidled in next to her, keeping a bit of distance. I wasn’t sure where she was at mentally, it was all affecting her, but I didn’t want to push her in any certain direction. Not when she was so emotionally fragile.
