Page 22 of Defending Casey

Strange how she felt she had to remind him of that fact.

He felt it too, leaning back and away as if she’d slapped him with her words. “You don’t think I know that? Of course I do, Casey. But who came to help you when you needed help setting up her crib? Who helped you and your dad when you expanded the house to make more room? It certainly wasn’t Hale Foster. No. No, it wasn’t. It was me, Casey. Me!”

“I know it was you, Brian. I do. And I’m so thankful for everything you’ve done, but that doesn’t change who Hale is. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s her father or that I… I’m sorry that you’re worried about me and Nora, but it’s not like I can ignore the facts or turn off my feelings.”

Oh god, she’d come so close to saying the words that she swore she’d never say again.

She’d very nearly said, ‘I love him.’

Just the realization of it snatched the air from her lungs and the strength from her knees.

Casey leaned against the arm of the couch and struggled to keep breathing, in and out.

Brian was still standing next to her, seemingly wrapped up in his own thoughts.

When he spoke, he surprised her with the soft tone of his voice and the rough scratch that it made in his throat.

“I get it, Casey. I do. If you didn’t feel like that about him then you wouldn’t be you. You wouldn’t be the woman that I care about.”

The tightness in her lungs eased a little and she gave him a hopeful little smile. “I care about you too, Brian. I-”

“But not enough, Casey. Not the way I feel about you.”

There was so much in those words and Casey couldn’t seem to fully grasp what he was saying. She was just suddenly so exhausted. “Brian, I…”

“Don’t, Casey.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we should talk right now. I’m going to go home and… I’m just going to go.”

Instead of a hug or even a friendly kiss on her cheek, Brian walked straight for the door.

Just outside the screen door on the front porch, he turned around and looked at her one last time before he left.

There wasn’t time to wonder what he’d meant. Wasn’t time to worry about that, not at that moment. She had to go and see Nora and hold her baby.

She had a feeling that Nora wasn’t the only one who needed a hug. She needed the solace of her daughter’s embrace just as much as Nora needed hers.

* * *

Hale heardZeke before he saw him. Some would call it situational awareness, but it didn’t feel like an adequate description of what he felt.

It was survival to him, pure and simple.

It started when his mom passed.

Mrs. Lafferty, the older woman who played piano for the services at Divine Chapel had told him that he’s likely to hear things in the house for a while. She told him about the noises she’d hear at her home after her husband passed away. She’d smell his pipe or hear him clearing his throat from another room. It was meant to reassure him, but it had also terrified him.

The problem was, he would have been perfectly fine with having his mother lingering around the house. He’d always loved her perfume and the way she’d hum as she did chores around the house. He’d never complained about helping her because he could be near enough to hear her sing under her breath to the radio or murmur songs he didn’t know, but obviously had great meaning to her.

Instead, he’d started to think of his father as a ghost in the house.

When he wasn’t passed out drunk in his bed, he was drunk enough that he resembled a zombie more than he did a real, live, human being.

The way his footsteps became heavy, plodding treads through the house let him know exactly where his father was.

Sometimes it was the heavy, crushing sighs.

Or when things were the worst and he’d become too inebriated to do more than lift his head, Hale would hear the low, keening cry of a man who had lost his soul and didn’t care to get it back.

He learned really quickly to get out of the way.

---