He’s figured out money is tight for me. But the reason I’m not staying has nothing to do with the money. And anyway, from the looks of his crumbling motel, he’s in no position to be offering anyone a discount. “Thanks,” I mumble.
“And the food won’t be any better,” he continues cheerfully, “but at least there’s plenty of it. Like that joke about the restaurant where the customers complain the food is so terrible? And then they say, ‘And the portions are so small!’”
When I don’t crack a smile, he adds, “You know, because why would you want a big portion if the food is terrible, right?”
I nod. “Yeah…”
He clears his throat. “Sorry, I’m just trying to get you to cheer up. I don’t think I told that joke very well.”
I manage a very tiny smile, just for his sake. I’m not feeling it though. “Don’t worry about it. Whatever food you give me is fine.”
“Like I said, my wife was the cook.” Again, he’s talking about her in the past tense. “It’s just hard for her now.”
Despite the cold, I wipe some sweat off my brow. Shoveling is hard work. On top of everything else, I’m going to be sore in all my muscles tomorrow. “So… this was her restaurant?”
Nick glances behind him at the boarded up building. “Yeah, it was. That was always her dream. To have her own restaurant. And for a while, it was doing really well. Really really well, considering it’s just a tiny rest stop on the side of the road.”
“What happened?” I blurt out.
He looks surprised by my question. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but we’ve been shoveling for over an hour. We’ve bonded through our manual labor.
“Well,” he says, “she got sick.” He hesitates a moment. “She has MS. Multiple sclerosis. She has this progressive subtype, and it’s just been downhill the last five years. She can’t even walk anymore, and I’ve been mostly taking care of her.”
“Oh no,” I murmur. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” But there’s a part of me that’s relieved he didn’t confess his wife has paranoid schizophrenia. Instead, she is too impaired to even leave her house. It doesn’t sound like there’s any reason to be afraid of her, even if she’s the jealous type.
“I wanted her to keep running the restaurant,” he says. “I said we could pay to modify the kitchen so she could use it in a wheelchair. But she never wanted to. She’s just stuck on wanting to do things the way she’s always done them, and if she can’t…”
“People can be stubborn.”
He nods. “I get that it’s hard for her. I’m not saying I would’ve taken it well if the same thing happened to me. But she could still do everything she used to do if she wanted to. Instead, she doesn’t want to do anything anymore. She just stays in the house all day, even though she’s going crazy in there. It’s driving me crazy.”
I flash him a sympathetic look, thinking of Derek. “We all go a little crazy sometimes.”
“Right, but…” He puts down the shovel for a moment and looks off in the distance, at his small house. “It’s a lot. On me. It’s hard.”
“I get it.” I bite my lip. “Have you ever thought maybe she would be better off… at another place somewhere?”
There’s a sudden flash of anger in his mild brown eyes. “Another place? You mean like a nursing home?”
“Well…”
“She’s my fucking wife.” His gloved hand turns into a fist. “She’s only thirty-five. I’m not sticking her in a nursing home. Are you kidding me? What kind of person do you think I am?”
I take a step back, my grip tightening around the shovel. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was just…”
I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until Nick’s shoulders sag. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped on you. You didn’t mean any harm. I shouldn’t have been complaining. It’s my fault.”
I’m shocked how quickly the fight went out of him. If this were Derek, it would have been the start of him screaming at me for hours and mentally torturing me for days. When I dared tell him once that his mother’s casserole was too salty, he changed the locks on the front door so I couldn’t get in the next day. （And believe me, that casserole was essentially a salt lick.）