Chapter 15: What I Wanted

Dad walked out of the hospital on Friday afternoon with a cardiologist's note in his shirt pocket.

It said he could leave the ward for twelve hours at a time, as long as he took his pills and kept off stairs.

It said his surgery was still on the fourteenth.

Colt pushed the wheelchair, because Dad was not allowed to walk to the curb.

"I can walk," Dad said.

"The nurse said no."

"The nurse is thirty years old."

"She's right, though," I said.

He looked up at me from the chair and almost smiled.

"Your mother called the unit a dozen times this morning," he said. "They stopped putting her through."

"Where are you staying?"

"Your aunt's."

My aunt's minivan was already at the curb with the engine running.

She got out in her good shoes and looked at the three of us.

She looked at Dad longest.

"Russ," my aunt said. "I made up the guest room."

"Thank you," Dad said.

She did not look at me.

She put Dad's overnight bag in the back and said to the air, "My sister will not come through my front door. I've decided."

Then she drove him away.

I stood on the curb with Colt, and neither of us spoke.

"She likes you now," Colt said at last.

"She likes Dad."

"She heard about the apple. Shelby told her the whole thing."

I did not know what to do with that, so I put it away for later.

That night I went to Abram's house to get Biscuit's carrier and the green mug.

That was what I told myself.

He opened the door in a gray T-shirt with sawdust on the sleeve.

"I'm fixing a cabinet," he said. "Come in."

His kitchen was warm and smelled of coffee.

There was a hinge on the counter and a screwdriver next to it.

I set my bag down.

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