Page 46 of The Infinite Light of Dust

I didn’t respond; there wasn’t anything to say outside of warning him that if he didn’t get his shit together, I would kill him, but he knew that. After he scarfed down the noodles, I made him a couple of eggs to get his protein up. The color slowly returned to his cheeks as he ate. I didn’t fully trust him and never would, but I hoped our heart-to-heart had made him get a grip on what was at stake.

“Go lie down. I’m going to work some but will keep the noise down as much as I can. If you wake up and I’m gone, don’t come find me. And remember not to do anything dumb.”

He stretched his thin arms into the air and twisted his spine.

“I won’t. I won’t,” he promised, and I hoped for his sake that he would keep it.

Chapter Twenty-three

Kael

When I walked out of my house to head back to Karina’s, my least favorite person was waiting for me. Karina’s dad was idling in my driveway in his brand-new, shiny Ford truck. He rolled the window down as I approached the vehicle.

“Are you stalking me now?”

“I can’t deny that, sitting here in front of your house.” There was a harmless sarcasm in his voice that was completely new to our dynamic.

“What do you want this time? It’s barely been forty-eight hours, I haven’t managed to convince Karina to leave the county yet.” I looked around my quiet street as a semi with a moving company logo drove by us. Military families kept them in business around here.

“Her mom is back,” he said blankly. I jerked my head toward him; there was no way I’d heard him correctly.

“What did you say?”

By the unsettled way his face twisted and how much anxiety was in his voice as he repeated himself, I could tell that it was true.

“When did that happen? And why?” I didn’t know what questions to ask, or how to process this.

“Seems like she’s been here for at least a month, maybe two. I don’t know the why yet.”

My heart rate spiked. How much more would life throw at Karina? It wasn’t fair. Was this a good thing, or another traumatic relationship for her to try to navigate? “How do you know?”

He let out a deep breath. I could instinctually understand that he was unsure if he should share more information with me or not, but he didn’t have much of a choice. On the outside he was a high-ranking officer who demanded respect with a single glance, but deep down he was a lonely man with no one on his side when it came to the outside world, and no connection with his daughter. This served as a reminder to him that regardless of his rank and status, things like family and death couldn’t be controlled, which I was sure drove him mad.

“I saw her. She was at the PX near my house. I thought I was losing it or the meds my doctor put me on were making me hallucinate. I never thought I would see her again, but after six years she’s here, and I don’t know what she wants. Or how long she’ll be here.”

A small part of me was thrilled at the idea of Karina seeing her mother after years had passed. A woman who’d made a mistake now coming to town to atone for abandoning her children and making up for the time lost—but a much bigger, more logical part knew that was naïve and not likely to be the case. If it was, wouldn’t she have found Karina by now?

“And what do you want from me?” I asked, genuinely curious what the hell he expected me to do about his ex-wife coming back.

His shoulders slumped a little and his phone rang through the truck speaker. Estelle’s name displayed on the screen. He seemed worried, and since he was unable to hide it in front of me of all people, that made me worried too. What kind of woman was Karina’s mother? I’d heard at least a hundred stories about her, and none of them made for a promising reunion.

“I didn’t come to ask you to do anything this time. I came to warn you, so when she steps into the light in Karina’s and Austin’s lives you can be there for them, especially my daughter. She was much more affected by her mom leaving, and I don’t want her to get her heart broken again.”

“Did you talk to her? Your ex-wife? So I know what kind of headspace this woman is in. Do you have any information that can help me help them?”

He shook his head. “The only information I have is that she won’t stay, and she was never ready to be a mother. Her headspace . . . that’s going to be interesting to figure out if we can. Her mental health was more than complicated leading up to her departure.”

The way he threw outdeparturein such a nonchalant and calm way was ridiculous. He made it sound like she’d simply gotten on a train for a vacation, not left her family in the middle of the night.

“How was she at the PX? Would she still have an ID card?” I asked while trying to dissect the details out of the tiny bit of information I was given.

“No idea. I haven’t gotten any notification that she ever applied for anything. She might still be using her old ID, it might not be expired. But she sure as hell was on post.”

“Was she alone?”

“I couldn’t tell. She was walking out as I drove by, a bottle of Pepsi in her hand,” he told me, as if that meant something to me.

“Pepsi. Got it.” I tried not to roll my eyes. For such a “great” officer, he sucked at paying attention when it mattered. “Did she look like she was on anything? Drinking or drugs?”

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