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“You got any better ideas?” I snap.
Carter shrugs. “You sure it won’t just, like, heal on its own?”
I glare up at him. “It’s been a month, Carter. Does it seem like it’s healing on its own?”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Damn.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, pulling my hoodie sleeves into my fists. “I’m just nervous.”
Carter wraps a long arm around my shoulders and jerks me against his side. “You got this,” he says, planting a quick kiss on the top of my head. “If you think you can fix it, you can.”
I relax a little, soaking up his warmth and support like a dry sponge, but all too soon, we’re at the shoe store. Carter goes in first, leading me through the web of old shoe racks by the hand.
“The girls are sleeping here,” he whispers, pointing over a shelf at the clearing in the center of the store.
I look in their direction, but it’s pointless. It’s too dark to see anything more than a foot in front of my face.
“We put the old man in the back tonight. He snores like a damn freight train when he’s been drinkin’.”
“Drinking?”
Bright white teeth flash at me in the dark. Carter slows his pace and leans down to whisper in my ear, “I mighta scored a bottle of some very bottom-shelf tequila today. Thought it might help with the pain.”
His breath is warm on my neck, his fingers are laced through mine, and even though I don’t want him this close … I need somebody this close. Anybody.
Carter pushes open a swinging metal door, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear a construction crew was behind it, taking a jackhammer to the concrete floor.
“Jesus Christ. How much did he drink?”
“Let’s just say, this is the first time he’s slept through the night since we got here.”
Carter pulls a small flashlight out of his pocket to light our way. We pass a few floor-to-ceiling metal shelving units before finding Mr. Renshaw passed out diagonally across a surprisingly comfy-looking sleeping bag.
“What the hell? Y’all have sleeping bags?” I smack Carter on the arm.
He chuckles. “A couple. We packed them for our trip to Tennessee. With all of our relatives heading to my Grandma’s house, we thought there was a pretty good chance that we’d end up sleeping on the floor until … you know.”
“April 23?” I roll my eyes.
“Yeah.”
The air between us grows heavy as I start to think about the day he left. The gates on Fort Shit I’m Not Going to Think About Ever Again Because None of This Matters and We’re All Going to Die rattle, but they hold fast. That’s an outside-the-mall memory. We don’t allow those out anymore.
“Come on,” I whisper in the silence between snores. “Let’s get this over with.”
Carter and I follow the beam of his flashlight to a very unconscious James “Jimbo” Renshaw. Kneeling by his sock-covered feet—nobody goes barefoot around here—I take a deep breath and push the hem of his left pant leg up to his knee.
“Holy shit,” Carter blurts. The beam of light darts across the floor and up the wall as he jerks back in response to his daddy’s mangled shin.
“No, no. It’s okay. Look.” I gesture for Carter to shine the light back down. “See how his leg is bent right here?”
“Yeah, I fucking see it. I’ll never unsee it.”
“I think his bone just kinda cracked, like this.” I hold up one straight finger and then bend it a little in the middle. “It didn’t break the skin, there’s not a lot of bruising, and he’s still able to put a little weight on it, so …” I swallow, my mouth suddenly going dry. “So, I think he just needs that fracture reset.”
“What, like, we can just pop it back into place?”
“Well, it’s been a few weeks, so it probably already has a good bit of tissue growth on it …”
