What She Wanted (12 page)

“What do you want?”

“I’ll do whatever you need to make a full recovery, and you’ll help me complete this list.” I opened Mom’s journal to the right page and set it on his lap.

He brushed his fingers over the faded pages, as if they would break or disappear. I knew the feeling.

“I’ve read her words a thousand times. I think I love her more than anyone can love a person they don’t remember, and I want to honor her. She left me that list, and if I can accomplish all those things, I’ll know her sacrifice wasn’t for nothing. I’ve spent my entire life with no idea how magnificent she was. Now that I know, I want to be more like her, but I’m not, and I’ll need help.”

Mark didn’t look up from Mom’s loopy script. He traced the lines with his finger.

“She wanted some very specific things from me, and I want to do them for her, or at least try. I can’t know her like you did, but I can honor her if you’ll help.”

Rose lifted her brows in question. “What’s on the list?”

I took Mom’s journal from Mark and handed it to Rose. He didn’t protest, or look up.

Rose’s eyes glossed with unshed tears as she read. She pressed a palm to her chest. “That’s beautiful.” She returned the book to me with a sad smile, squeezed Mark’s foot, and left us.

He blinked back tears and cleared his throat before nodding in agreement. He outstretched a hand to me.

It was the first time he’d ever shaken my hand.

Callouses from a lifetime of labor hardened his skin. “Deal.”

“Deal.” I’d stay with him until he didn’t need me anymore, and he’d help me honor my mother.

Joshua was on my porch when I got home.

I stopped at the end of the block. My heartrate picked up as insecurities plunged through me. My thoughts ran to Dean. He’d wondered why we let others have so much control over us. He had no idea.

I started forward with purpose. I was tired of feeling like that grieving little girl from the funeral anytime Joshua’s name came up.

He stood when he saw me. “Hey.”

“What do you want?” I asked, turning up our driveway at a clip. “Why are you sitting on my porch?”

He lifted his brows, as if I was the crazy one. “It’s your birthday.”

“I know that. I’m surprised
you
know that.”

“What do you mean? I was there. Of course I remember it.”

“You’ve had a funny way of showing it for the last eighteen years.”

He lifted a little bag off the porch beside him. “This is for you.”

I glared, hoping the bag would catch fire. Wishing I could yank it from his hand and smash him in the face with it. “No, thank you.”

“Katy. I know I screwed up.”

I guffawed, checking the neighborhood for nosy gossips. I didn’t want to have this conversation on the street, and I certainly wasn’t inviting him in. “I think it’s better if we don’t talk. You should leave. I’m sure you know how to do that.”

He sat with a thud, as though I’d squeezed the air out of him. He squinted up at me. “We have to talk.”

“No, we don’t. Whatever you want to say has waited this long. It can wait some more.” Maybe another eighteen years. “Keep your gift. You don’t owe me anything.” I sidestepped him, hoping I was right and his message could wait. In my family, it was possible he was dying.

“I’m an alcoholic.”

I turned on my toes and looked down on him from the porch. “You think I don’t know that? You showed up drunk at Grandma’s funeral.” How had he thought that looked? Not like a sober person, or someone who could
not
drink to deal with their life. “I don’t care what you are, so why are you telling me this?”

“A lot of reasons. So you don’t follow in my footsteps, for one thing.”

“I don’t drink.”

He set the present aside and stood. “I didn’t either when I was your age, but my dad did. He and my mom spent most of their time arguing about it. We moved to Woodsfield for a new start my sophomore year. It didn’t work.”

“I don’t care.” I forced the bite in my words. My heart wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to cry and sleep for years, not face my alcoholic father and hear how screwed up his family was. I had my own problems. I didn’t need any more of his. “Thanks for the tip. I have jacked-up genes. I won’t drink. I’ve got to go.”

“Wait.” He grabbed my hand and released it as if I’d burnt him. “Sorry. Don’t go yet.”

“Are you drunk now?” I made a crazy face. “I have a ton of awful shit going down right now. I can’t do this with you. You’ve had all these years, and you’ve still managed to pick the absolute worst time to come back and want something from me. You know what? Whatever it is. Take it.” I made arm gestures from my chest to his. “Take it. You want my approval of your new marriage? Done. Congratulations. Need my blessing for the baby you may actually
parent
? Here ya go.” I kept my arms moving, like the lunatic I was in that moment. “Want my acceptance of you moving to my town? The same town you ran from to get away from me? Fine. Take it. It’s yours, but don’t expect my forgiveness. You have no idea what life was like here. Alone. Butt of the town gossip. Orphaned.” My screeching voice choked and faltered on the final word. “Whatever else you’re looking for, it’s yours. Just, please, go away.” I spun and worked my key into the lock, praying he wouldn’t see the tears streaming over my cheeks.

“I don’t want anything from you, and I’m not drunk. I’m here to make amends. I’ve been sober for two years. I need to apologize to the people I hurt, and I can’t tell your mother how sorry I am for leaving when my parents split, or make Mark understand I’m not the same guy I was then. I’m not a scared, rebellious, hurting teenage boy. I’m not an out-of-control, drunken soldier. I’m a new person, trying to find a way in life that’s worth living.”

I walked inside and secured the door behind me, successfully shutting Joshua out. I slid down the door until the floor stopped me. I was a step in his path to recovery. He’d come to make amends, not to me, but for himself. The sobs came on fast, too fast to cull before they took over. I tipped onto the floor and let the pain do its worst. I was done fighting.

I woke to the sounds of my phone buzzing against the hard floor. Heidi and Dean were on their way with junk food and bad movies for my birthday. My eyes were swollen and my mood was flat. I was cashed, but I was also tired of being a victim.

I’d heard Joshua out. I’d given him what he wanted. I’d promised Mark I’d stay in the house and save him some money during his recovery. Now, it was time to get busy on something for me. Time to make memories I’d want to look back on someday.

* * * *

Between Rose and Mrs. Wells, Mark got another forty-eight hours of paid hospital stay before they kicked him out. The padding gave me time to scour and disinfect the house in preparation for his return. I cleaned things that hadn’t been touched in decades. I did baseboards and ceiling fans, windows and refrigerator drawers. Luckily, his bedroom was already on the first floor beside a bathroom, so I didn’t have to move furniture. I cleaned, scrubbed, and vacuumed until all evidence of our life there had vanished. Each room looked like a scene out of a magazine for poor country people, too perfect to be real.

I set the final place on our newly polished dining room table and checked the clock. “He should be here by now. The hospital shuttle was set to leave thirty minutes ago.”

Heidi doodled on the sole of her shoe. “He’ll be here. It’s not like they can keep him.”

I paced. “Dinner’s in the Crock-Pot. I moved the mini fridge from the shed into Mark’s room and stocked it with bottled water and fruit. I have a thousand heart-healthy recipes on my Pinterest board, and his medication schedule is taped to the wall beside the kitchen sink. What am I forgetting?”

“To relax for five minutes before you become full-time caregiver to a grouch? Sit down for a beat. You’ve been in motion for two days straight. We’re worried about you.”

Alarm froze me in place. “Who?”

She filled in a tiny heart-shaped butterfly on the toe of her knock-off Converse. “Me, Mom, Mrs. Wells, Dean, Sylvia, Mrs. B.” She ticked off fingers in time with her list.

That was a lot of people. I didn’t realize that many people knew what a wreck I was. “Don’t worry about me. I’m—”

“Fine. Yeah, we’ve heard.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Anyway, I’m still waiting on details, you know?” She leaned forward and blew gently over the fresh doodle.

“Details about what?” I circled the table, straightening silverware on napkins. I’d already unloaded all my Joshua drama on her and Dean over meatball subs and Monty Python.

“Dean, duh. You promised full disclosure and yet I know nothing. I feel a breach in the best friend clause. Check your copy.”

“You don’t have details because there aren’t any. Dean and I are friends, which is completely bizarre but also perfect. He’s been exactly what I needed, and I wouldn’t want to ruin it with a summer romance that can’t go anywhere anyway.”

I checked the clock once more.
Where is he?

A horn honked in the drive, and I dove for the front door.

She beat me to the porch and stopped in my path. “So, don’t marry the guy. I just want to know what his lips feel like. Are they soft and velvety or hard and unyielding? What does he do with his hands? I especially need to know that.”

The shuttle I’d expected was nowhere in sight. Instead, Dean’s battered old pickup sat behind Mark’s Ford.

I did
not
need to see Dean’s face after Heidi’s lips and hands questions. I was glad for his friendship, but I was also human.

“Stop.” I forced a tidal wave of dirty images from my head. “He’s here.”

Dean opened the passenger door on his truck and offered Mark a hand getting out. Mark slapped it away.

“Here we go.” I sighed.

“Do you see those hands?” Heidi lifted one palm into my view and wiggled her fingers. “They’re huge, at least twice the size of my hands. Do you understand the implications there?”

I shoved her hand away and waved to Dean and Mark. “Stop,” I hissed. “It’s not like that.”

“It should be. He’s basically perfect and obviously into you. What is there to lose besides your virginity?”

I flipped my back to the men walking up the stairs and stretched my eyes wide in warning. “Do not say virginity again. I will kill you.”

The floorboards creaked on the porch behind me.

She beamed. “Hi, Mr. Reese!”

I turned slowly, hoping to look casual and less guilty for the ideas racing through my head.

Mark lifted a cane in my direction. “Move it, would you? I need to lie down.”

I stepped aside, and he pushed past me and into the house. His navy work pants hung from his leaner waist. His hair was grayer. His gait was smaller. He was home, but he wasn’t the same.

“He’s a ray of sunshine,” Heidi muttered.

He shuffled to his room and disappeared inside.

“I guess a near-death experience only goes so far to improve a crappy attitude.” I gave Dean a welcoming look. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

“What happened to hospital transportation?”

He ran long fingers through his sun-kissed hair. “I was having lunch with Mom and saw Mark arguing with the shuttle driver over what the ride would cost, so I intervened.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Dean lifted a knapsack between us. “What should I do with this?”

“I’ll take it to his room. He’ll want it in there.” I took the bag from Dean and headed down our first floor hall.

Dean and Heidi followed.

I delivered Mark’s bag on the foot of his bed.

“Where’s all my stuff?” Mark crabbed.

“I cleaned. I put things away and made sure there was nothing to trip over.”

He set his cane aside and glared at the fridge sitting beside his bed. “What the hell’s this doing here?”

“I stocked it with water and healthy snacks.”

“For Pete’s sake.” He lowered his shaky frame onto the bed and shoved the bag I’d just delivered onto the floor.

Dean braced broad hands over narrow hips. “Something smells delicious.”

I released a long breath. “It’s a chicken and corn casserole. I put it in the Crock-Pot this morning. It’s ready if you’re hungry.”

Mark punched and mashed his pillow. “I think I’m going to rest.”

My heart sunk. “Okay. No, you should rest. You can eat when you’re ready.”

“They fed me at the hospital.” He closed his eyes, successfully shutting me out.

“Mark?” I took a step toward the bed. “Do you want me to read to you?” Mom’s words had made him different at the hospital. Why had it worn off so soon?

He wiggled his head against the pillow and hesitated. “Maybe later.”

Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. The first thing on Mom’s list was to love my grandpa. I shouldn’t have expected it to be easy, given our history, but somehow I’d thought this was a new start for us. “Okay.” Disappointment choked the word.

Heidi tugged me back into the hallway and rubbed my shoulders. “How about some cake?”

Dean pulled Mark’s door shut and followed us to the kitchen. “I love cake. What kind do you have?”

Heidi led the way. “Death by Chocolate.”

Dean rubbed his hands together. “Excellent.”

Heidi flipped the Crock-Pot to warm and shoved it back a few inches on the counter to make room for the cake. “Knife?”

I stacked three plates on the island. “Check the dishwasher.”

Dean pulled a fork off the dining room table and carefully scraped frosting letters off the cake where Heidi’s mom had carefully scripted Welcome Home Mark. “Mmm. Did you make this?”

Mark had deflated me so easily with his well-practiced, I-don’t-want-to-look-at-you style. It wasn’t fair. I fought against the urge to drag myself upstairs and crash. “Heidi’s mom sent the cake. Who wants ice cream?”

Dean pulled the freezer door open and thunked a half gallon of vanilla onto the counter. “Me.”

I scooped ice cream into plastic bowls and Heidi served slabs of chocolate cake onto paper plates. Dean grabbed three water bottles from the fridge.

Plates prepared, Heidi kicked the back door open with one foot. “You want to eat outside?”