Page 66 of Wild Abandon

He shakes his head and walks away. I curse under my breath at the rudeness.

Gone for days, and then you don’t even stay to see all the work I did? What an ungrateful—

“All right, let’s see that finger of yours.” Ed is back under the ladder, a pair of tweezers in his hand.

Where he got them, I have no idea. I lower my finger toward him, and he takes his reading glasses out from his chest pocket.

He tilts his head back to properly evaluate the injury through his lenses. “Oh. Oh my.”

“What is it?”

“We might have to amputate,” he says with a straight face.

Then, he goes to work, pinching my skin. I brush a stray curl away from my face and glare at him. And I smile, just a little.

I let out a breath through my lips, making a loud vibrating sound.

“For the record, I knew you were fine. You’re too stubborn to die. Ouch!”

He plucks the offending piece of pergola out of my skin, and when I look down at him, he’s got a smug little grin on his face.

He places the tweezers and his glasses in his chest pocket. Then, he hands me a new set of string lights that were sitting on the table. I take the lights from him and attach them to the lights I already hung.

“Where were you anyway?”

Without answering, Ed walks over to the table I just had restored. Using his good leg, he lifts himself onto a chair with his cane and maneuvers his other leg to climb on top of the table.

“Are you crazy?” I start to move down the ladder to help him.

“I’m fine. Like you just said, I’m too stubborn to die.” He thinks he’s being funny.

I push my shoulders and try to act indifferent. “I wasn’t worried about you. I just had that table redone, is all.”

I move the ladder to a new position, so Ed and I can finish hanging the lights.

Ed laughs off my comment, and with his free hand, he wraps the lights around the wood beam. We work in silence for a while. Having the help makes the project go faster.

The sun is just starting to set, the evening breeze making an amateur appearance. It’s quiet, and it’s nice. Turns out I really like having Ed around when I do my projects.

Ed lets out a deep sigh, his shoulders falling and his mouth pouting out in thought. “I was visiting my daughter.”

I nod and continue working. “Does she ever come home to see the ranch?”

Ed takes a pause, as if trying to decide on the right answer. “No. Ellie’s not well. Hasn’t been for a while now. I do what I can, going to visit her. Took me a while to accept, but she will never be my Ellie again. She’s just not there anymore. She used to have light in her eyes. That’s gone.”

My hands stop working for a moment. Of all the things I pictured Ellie as, I did not assume she was troubled. Spoiled, ungrateful, problematic? Sure. Troubled was not in my list of adjectives.

“I’m sure you’re doing everything you can,” I answer sympathetically.

We remain in silence as I come to the end of the rope lights.

I climb down the ladder and then help Ed down from the table. It’s more difficult getting him down than it was for him to climb up. I’ve been working all day. The sun is in its final stage of descent in the distance, which makes it a perfect time to see my masterpiece. I plug in the lights, and the pergola illuminates. Every inch is covered in white lights. It feels like heaven among the red sea of roses.

Ed takes a look around, and his eyes roam from one spot to the next, taking in the small projects I’ve accomplished while he’s been gone. The veranda is complete, polished and shiny, sparkling from the lights, vibrant from the planted flowers.

Ed places a hand to his chest and inhales. If I’m not mistaken, the old man’s eyes are a little misty.

Ed takes a breath through his nose. His mouth is pinched closed. He nods a few times to himself before turning to me. “You did good, kid.”