Page 47

She nods, sympathetic. “That’s understandable. Seeing someone like this, after so long… it can bring a lot to the surface.”

I nod again, but this time, my gaze flicks down to where my hand still rests on his arm. His skin twitches beneath my touch, a subtle reminder that he’s still in there. Trapped, mute, watching.

And then Erin speaks again, softly, without judgment, but the words hit harder than I expect.

“Forgive me if this is too personal, but…” She hesitates. “It’s a small town. People notice. You haven’t visited. Not once. That must have been… hard.”

I freeze.

Hard?

No. Deliberate.

I pull my hand back, slowly, as if it’s been burned.

“I had my reasons,” I say, quiet but firm. The words come out sharp. Sharper than I meant.

Erin holds my gaze for a beat longer than is comfortable, then nods and doesn’t press further.

I turn my focus back to the exercises, completing each one with robotic precision. But inside, I’m unraveling thread by thread, not from guilt, but from suddenly being this close, this near, to the man who ruined everything and now looks more like a shell than a monster.

And yet…

Even a shell can still cast a shadow.

By the time we’re done, my body feels as heavy as his, weighed down by more than just the session, by everything pressing in from the edges, everything I can’t shake.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

November has settled into the bones of the house. The radiator clicks on, groaning from somewhere behind the wall.

The van rumbles up the gravel driveway, its engine low, tires crunching over the uneven ground. I stand on the front steps, arms crossed tight against the morning chill, watching.

The house is nowhere near ready for my father to return. I could’ve done it weeks ago. The room could’ve been ready, the ramp installed, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I made a phone call to the discharge coordinator, Celica, telling her exactly what I thought she needed to hear. It’s the same thing I’ve heard countless time when we get ready to discharge patients. Wheelchair access, ground floor accommodations, even though the only room on the ground floor was my father’s office, it didn’t do me any harm calling movers, telling them I need a room dismantled. She had a waiting list of families that needed my father’s bed, a bed he spent far too long occupying. With a few promises from care giver to care giver, she didn’t ask twice.

Behind me, the house looms, not broken, but tired. The white paint has peeled back in long, curling strips, exposing sun-bleached wood beneath. The porch dips slightly at one corner, sagging like it’s exhaling after holding itself up too long. Weeds choke the walkway. The shutters hang uneven, one swaying in the breeze like it’s waving a white flag.

I don’t move. I watch as the wheelchair lift groans to life. The man driving the van comes around as a nurse gets out of the passenger side of the van. My father is so thin and sunken, hardly the man he was. He blinks against the daylight, eyes darting around the yard like he’s just been dropped at the edge of a memory he isn’t sure he wants back.

I’m sure he’s screaming inside his head.

“Not quite how you left it, huh?” I raise my voice just enough for him to hear. The man pushing him up the walkway smirks, like he’s in on my secret. The nurse, she scans the house, a file pulled close to her chest. She passes me, heading up the porch.

I take this time to give my attention to my father. His eyes bore into mine, a flash of something, annoyance, maybe even anger, cutting through the fog. Good. Let it simmer.

I turn back to the house, pushing open the front door. The hinges groan in protest, and the stale air hits me like a wall. Mildew, dust, something sour buried in the corners. Like the house has been stewing in its own silence for years, waiting for him to come home.

He wasn’t supposed to come home.

A sheet I forgot to pull down still hangs over the corner window. I grab it and yank. Dust bursts into the sunlight like ash, and I cough, waving it away. “Sorry, I missed that one when I came by the other day to check everything out,” I say, waving the dust from my face. I turn around, thinking the nurse would already be inside the house, but she’s not there.

I hear the squeal of wheels and the muffled strain of voices as the driver and the nurse maneuver him inside. A sheet of plywood angles up over the porch steps, the one concession I bothered to make. Even so, the threshold catches the chair. It takes effort, grunting, adjusting, lifting, to get it over. I say nothing. Just watch.

I’ll have to get a real ramp, eventually. Add it to the list.

Not because I want to make things easier. Just… necessary. Bare minimum. Nothing more.