Page 59 of Cherry Picking

“Yeah.” He gives a single, sharp nod. “I heard you.”

He goes quiet after that. He doesn’t say a word while she walks Briggs through the discharge instructions, or while the nurse delivers the paperwork. He just lies there with his foot elevated, taking it.

Briggs disappears to handle the billing, leaving the two of us alone in the quiet of the bay.

“All that work,” Murphy says finally, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “For three steps to the john.”

“You’ll get it back. It’ll go faster this time.” I pull the guest chair in closer. “The strength is still there, Murphy.”

“Is that right?” He turns his head to look at me then, his gaze sharpening. “Your shirt’s on inside out, sweetheart. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

My neck flashes hot. He watches the color climb with a look of pure, unadulterated satisfaction, the right corner of his mouth hitching into a grin.

“Merry Christmas to the happy couple.”

“Well, shit.” I shut my eyes, scrubbing a hand over my forehead. “Merry freaking Christmas, Murph.”

CHAPTER 17

BRIGGS

Christmas comes and goes in a ceasefire. Dad spends most of dinner asking when I plan to do something about Evie, and I spend most of it asking when he plans to stop test-driving the bathroom floor.

He’s got the foot in a walking boot, propped on two pillows he keeps rearranging. Every time I move to fix them, he tells me I’m doing it wrong, so I stop fixing them, and then he tells me I’ve given up on him.

By dessert, we’ve negotiated a mutual silence that holds through the dishes. Evie’s across town at Ray’s. She sends through a photo of a white plastic tree with half its lights out. I send her a picture back of my lopsided cookie.

It’s the smallest Christmas we’ve had since Mom died, just the two of us in a kitchen built for four. It hurts in a way I hadn’t expected. We grieve differently, the two of us.

While Dad likes to remember and reminisce, I prefer to pretend I can’t.

That doesn’t work as well on a holiday, when everything is already about the person who isn’t at the table. So I shut my mouth and let him recount stories of my brother.

We reminisce about how Ziggy used to swipe the expensive ornaments and arrange them like a trophy line across his dresser. How we’d spend every December fighting over who got to place the star, right up until the year we could manage the height without a kitchen chair.

It’s a shallow dive. We both carefully avoid the wreckage of the last two years.

Once Dad finally powers down for the night, I retreat to the pullout in my old bedroom. I lie there listening to the house settle, the last forty-eight hours running on a loop I can’t seem to kill.

Sleep is a lost cause; I manage maybe two broken hours before I give up at five, prep a pot of coffee, and sit on the sofa in the dark.

For hours, my brain keeps snagging on the same fragment of the other night—Evie’s hand fisting the fabric of the sheets and that sound she made when I got my mouth on her. Those few drawn-out seconds before the phone trilled where I actually thought: Vegas isn’t all that bad.

I haven’t been able to put the thought down since.

The rest of the morning passes in a series of repetitive motions—refilling the mug, checking a phone that has nothing to say, listening for the drag of the walking boot down the hallway.

“You awake?” Dad calls from his room around seven, catching me mid-thought.

“Yeah.”

“Come sit. Just for a minute.”

I oblige. He’s propped against the headboard with the bad foot elevated, the remote in his hand and the screen dark. I sink into the recliner in the corner.

We steer clear of Evie, the accident, and Zig entirely. Instead, he grills me on the season and whether Charlotte’s actually got the grit for a run this year. I give him real answers for once, skipping the deflections.

We sit in that quiet for a while, talking until I work up the will to go.