Page 28 of Second Chance Serenity

With a roll of her eyes, she climbs back down the ladder and gives me a big hug. Since I get all my height from her, she’s only about six inches shorter than me, and three inches taller than my dad. “You showed up right in time.”

“I usually do.” I wink at her and climb up the ladder, then bring the box back down with me. It’s heavy, though not obscenely. Still would have given her a massive struggle trying to get down the ladder. “What is in here?”

“Old pictures. I told your grandmother I’d mail some to her.”

“You know I can get all that scanned for you and you can just email them.”

“Your grandmother will lose her mind if I email anything, you know that. I don’t think she even knows how to turn on that computer we bought her.”

“Fair enough.” I laugh. “Dad inside?”

“He is.”

I don’t have to ask to know what kind of day it is. The dark circles beneath her eyes tell me everything. Shortly after I’d left for the Army, my dad was in an accident that nearly took him from us altogether and robbed him of his ability to walk.

Ever since, he’s struggled with depression, anxiety, and thanks to the head injury that had him in a coma for three weeks, he has moments where he forgets that he can’t walk and then gets furious all over again.

He’s struggled with his temper his entire life, and although he’s never been physical with any of us, the man can make you feel two inches tall with his sharp tongue.

“I’ll head in, then. This going too?”

“Yes, please.” She falls into step beside me. “How is Reyna doing?”

I swallow hard. My mother adores Reyna. She’d considered her another daughter and had honestly been just as furious at me as Carter was for leaving Reyna behind. If only she’d known that the man she’s married to is the real reason I left. “She hired a bodyguard.”

“One of you boys?” she asks.

“Jaxson.”

“But not you.” She narrows her gaze.

“You know how she feels about me, Ma, and I can’t exactly blame her.” We walk through my mother’s colorful garden and up the back steps onto their porch. The soft music from handmade wind chimes fills the silence as we move into the house.

I can hear the television going, a football game my dad has recorded and rewatches almost daily, since he refuses to do anything else. I cannot even imagine how hard it was for a man like him, who’d spent his entire adult life as a police officer, to go to no longer being able to care for himself, though I wish he’d realize that he didn’t die in that accident.

Sometimes, it seems, he forgets.

“Hey, Dad,” I greet as I step into the living room. He’s seated in his recliner, the wheelchair he uses to get around right beside him. There’s a harness dangling from the ceiling that I installed a few years ago so that he could sit more comfortably whenever he didn’t need to be mobile.

“Michael,” he greets, turning toward me. His eyes are sunken in, his expression hollow.

“How’s it going?” I take a seat on the couch and stare at the game. My heart sinks. It’s a home video of one of my old high school games. He’s standing at the edge of the field, having stepped in to be an assistant coach when Coach Miller was ill.

“Fine, son, you?”

“Going okay. Did you hear about Reyna?” I hate even asking him about her, hate even mentioning her name in his presence, given the final fight we had before I left for the Army, but I know he used to love her like another daughter.

A long, long time ago.

“Yes. It’s good you were there when you were.”

“Yeah. Agreed.” I glance to my right, not at all surprised to see my mother hovering, her expression tormented. Years of watching the man you love all but give up on life has eaten away at the joy she’d once exuded. “How are you feeling? Up for some fishing later? I can take you out on the dock.”

“No. I don’t think so. Maybe next time.” It used to be his favorite thing to do, and now whenever I invite him, it’s the same exact answer. No, I don’t think so. Maybe next time.

“You sure about that?”

“Yes,” he replies, a bit more sternly now.

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