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Yeah, way too young.
“Shit. I didn’t know.”
For his part, my father looked as if we could have been talking about the weather. Clearly he’d gotten over it all a long time ago.
Or at least, spent a lifetime trying to dull the pain.
“Why don’t you go to rehab?” I asked for the first time since I’d been back. How many times had I asked that question? How often had I tried to no avail?
“Ahh.” He waved his hand at me. “Don’t need it.”
“No? You’re doing a pretty bang-up job without it, Dad. How are you planning to pay the bills this month?”
“I have an interview,” he said. “With a construction company. Tomorrow.”
Oh gawd. How pointless was that?
“And how long until your drinking interferes, even if you get it?”
Dad, doing what he did best, waved another hand at me and walked away. “Good-looking place. Proud of you.”
And that was it. My father walked out.
It wasn’t like he was shy with those words. He’d said them before plenty of times. They’d always felt so hollow to me. A son who didn’t follow in his footsteps and become another town drunk was something to be proud of in his mind. No place to go except for up.
A geologist.
I tried to imagine him, not drinking, in college with a wife and newborn son. Like a real family. Before she left.
Trouble was, I simply couldn’t. Not that it mattered. It was just a fantasy anyway.
My phone buzzed. Pulling it out, thinking for a second it might be Charlee, I stared at a text from my former partner.
Convoy mission turned to shit. Was shot, am OK
Fuck.
I sat down and texted back. Holding my breath. Waiting for Nate’s response. Okay could mean a lot of things, and Nate could easily be downplaying his injury.
Obviously, he was alive. But what kind of shape was he in? I looked at the time. Nate was seven hours ahead, so he should still be up. As if it would make him get back to me more quicky, I stared at our text thread.
Come on, Nate. Talk to me, buddy.
Talk to me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
charlee
I knocked at my father’s office door like I was a ten-year-old girl.
He worked most days, even weekends, and had since we were kids. Mom never seemed to mind, always doing her own thing. Golf, lunch with friends. Apparently, she had worked eons ago, but neither my sister nor I remembered it.
To each his own. I personally couldn’t imagine not working and leaned more toward my father’s tendency to overdo it. Either way, this whole thing with Lucas had begun and ended with my father, and after talking to Natalie last night and thinking about it all morning, this conversation needed to happen.
Sooner rather than later. And my father always said, no time like the present. So here went nothing.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in. What are you doing here on a Saturday?”
