“You should give Don Childs a call. He’s in Wasilla, near the old Sears. Just off the highway. Let him know I sent you.”
Tyler’s shoulders slump. It’s not the answer he wanted.
But it’s the only one I can give him.
“Thanks again for helping.” I rush out of there without another look back.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Grab me one of those, too, would ya, Marie?” my dad calls out around a bite of mashed potatoes.
I reach for the fridge handle to fish out a second bottle of Coors Light.
“Don’t you dare,” my mother hisses, her palm pressed against the door.
The moment she turns around, I flash Dad a sheepish smile and mouth, Sorry.
“I think I liked the hospital more.” He shoots a sullen look toward my mother’s back. “My nurses were a lot nicer.”
“That’s because you listened to them,” Mom answers crisply, filling a tall glass with water from the Brita. She sets it and a glass ramekin in front of him at the dinner table.
He glowers at the litany of prescribed pills in the little dish, as if deciding how much of a fuss he’s going to make. For a man so well-informed about the benefits of modern medicine, he’s never been good at taking a doctor’s advice.
With a heavy sigh, she pleads, “Come on now, Sidney. Don’t be difficult tonight. Please.”
It’s been two weeks since my father’s fall in Hatcher Pass, and everyone’s tired. He spent six days in the hospital. According to the doctor, as far as “bad breaks” go, it was a “good” one, and his leg should heal nicely with time. But it still required pins and a cast to just below his knee, and eventually, physical therapy.
He’s been home for more than a week, and the days have worn on both my parents—my father, because of discomfort and limitations; my mother, for playing nursemaid to a frustrated old man, twenty-four hours a day.
Liz has found an excuse almost every day for why she can’t make the thirty-five-minute drive over to help—Tillie’s ballet, Nicole’s art classes, Jim’s workload—and Vicki comes when she can, but with a fussy five-month-old baby attached to her, her help is divided and short-lived.
So it’s mainly been my mother, and me whenever I’m not working. “Remember when I suggested we skip Sunday dinner this week?” Liz spears Mom with a knowing look as she drops a spoonful of stemmed broccoli onto Tillie’s plate.
My niece’s mouth opens, disgust etched into her face.
“Do not start. Not one word of complaint, or no dessert. Both of you,” Liz snaps, dumping a helping in front of Nicole, too, who looks equally displeased. “Would you pass the salt, hun?”
On the far end of the table, Jim eats his dinner, tuning out everything and everyone around him, including his wife.
Don’t strain yourself, Jim. I reach across the table and hand it to her.
“But if you didn’t come, then I wouldn’t get to see my two favorite people, would I?” Dad steals a glance to make sure my mother isn’t watching and then, with a wink at his grandchildren, tosses a chunk of beef to Yukon’s waiting maw.
The girls erupt in laughter, and their giggles help douse the growing tension in the kitchen just as Vicki and Oliver emerge from the living room.
“Perfect timing.” Mom takes her own seat.
“Yeah, we’ll see how long it lasts.” Vicki sinks into her chair across from me, checking the buttons on her shirt as if to make sure she didn’t stroll in with a breast hanging out.
Molly has been a tough baby—first with colic, and lately with a string of recurring ear infections that will require ear tube surgery in a few weeks. I’ve never seen my little sister so tired before. She’s normally the one with fresh highlights and a well-chosen outfit. Now, her blond ponytail is frayed and sloppy, her oversized plaid shirt one of her husband’s.
“How’s work, Oliver?” Fishing charter season is in full swing again, and he’s gone from morning until night, seven days a week. This is the first time he’s made it to Sunday dinner since April.
“Man. Busy.” He stabs two slices of beef with his fork and drops them onto his plate. For such a lanky guy, he can eat more than anyone at this table. “My boss said we’re booked solid until September. All day, every day. It’s good, though. We need the money.”
I don’t doubt it. Oliver’s the only one working right now. Vicki has spent the better part of the last decade figuring out what she wants to do by process of elimination—three years waitressing before she moved to real estate, where it took her three years to decide that selling houses wasn’t for her; a year working in a health store while considering a naturopathic career; one semester in a college fitness and health program with her sights set on a degree toward becoming a personal trainer. She even did a brief stint behind the desk in the clinic when Cory took a few months off to travel across Europe. The place has never been more disorganized than during that time.