Chapter 9: Cal's POV

Cal's POV

I dropped Della at the tack barn and drove back to the house, and I sat in the truck in the dark for a long time with the engine off.

She had kissed me back like she meant it.

Then she had said I know, and gotten in the truck, and I had let her.

It was what I had earned.

I said I couldn't forgive the fire, and I had meant it, and I would have given a lot to take it back.

I went inside around one and lay on my bed with my boots on.

I must have slept, because the cold woke me.

The house was too still.

I walked down the hall in my socks and stopped at my father's door.

The bed was empty, and the blanket was gone from the wheelchair beside it.

The kitchen door stood open to the yard, and snow had blown across the floor.

"Dad!"

I ran out with my coat in my fist.

The yard light showed me wheel tracks in the snow, going away toward the north pasture.

The north pasture was where the barn had stood.

All that was left of it now was a rectangle of old foundation stones under the drift.

My father sat in his chair at the corner of it, in his slippers, with the blanket around his shoulders and snow in his hair.

He was shaking.

He was looking down the road toward town.

"Dad." I dropped to my knees in front of him and pulled my coat around him. "How did you get out here? Dad, you can't do this, you'll freeze."

"Girl," he said.

I stopped.

He hadn't said that before.

"Girl," my father said again. His good hand lifted off the arm of the chair and pointed toward the road. "Small. Red."

"Red what?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start I'm Done Being the Family Joke from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.