Page 50 of A Fighting Chance

The next week rolls by,full of watching. Watching and waiting.

I watch Lyla help settle Paw in when we first get him back home, taking care to be gentle. I watch her wrap blankets around him in his recliner, adjust his pillows, bring him food. I watch her make him decaffeinated tea and fuss with him for an hour each time, insisting he can’t have caffeine while he argues that he’s a grown ass man who can have what he wants.

I watch her have impeccable patience.

I watch her inevitably win him over each time.

On this particular evening, I watch her help Harper with the dishes.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drinking my night cap, relieved tomorrow is Saturday. This week, without Paw, had been strenuous. Not because I couldn’t handle the farm myself—I could—but because his sudden ailment and needed recovery had everyone talking. I had to field the onslaught of questions. About the events, how he’s doing now, when he’ll back to normal, and so on. I could nearly script it at this point. Almost the exact same questions in the exact same order by everyone who came by to ask.

Part of me finds it endearing that there are so many worried, but the rest of me just wants them to shut the fuck up about it already and move on. Such is my method with almost everything. Shove it away—so far away that you forget about it—and move forward. I make no claims of it being the best or healthiest way of dealing with stuff, but it does work.

“Charles is coming by tomorrow.”

Harper’s voice cuts through my thoughts with the mention of her ex. I don’t like that guy and I definitely want to know if the asshole is making an appearance here. I sit up a little straighter, paying a bit more attention. I watch Lyla stop what she’s doing.

She places down the plate she’s drying and turns toward Harper. “Can’t we just put his shit in the driveway with a little note that says ‘fuck you’ and call it a day?” Lyla asks her sister, her tone more serious than joking.

I smile, fighting back the urge to laugh. I love how sassy she can get.

“No, we can’t,” Harper responds. “That wouldn’t be right. Even if it’s what I want to do.”

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to do what he did but that didn’t stop him,” Lyla counters, her tone harsher than I’ve ever heard it.

I haven’t seen this side of her until now. She’s protective, defensive.

Harper looks down then, almost as though Lyla’s words have wounded her, which they might’ve. “Lyla,” she says simply. But the implications in only saying her sister’s name, in the specific tone it carried, has said everything and then some.

“Look, I know you don’t want to see him,” Lyla says. “I know you don’t. You’re just trying to be nice. Tell you what, I’ll give him his stuff and you stay out of sight, okay?”

But Harper is already shaking her head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking me. I’m offering,” Lyla says, shrugging her shoulders.

I admire this sort of care for her sister. I really do.

“Are you sure?” Harper asks her.

“Positive,” Lyla answers without hesitation.

The thought of Lyla having to face that jackass alone makes me uneasy. I don’t like the idea, but I also don’t think he’d hurt her or anything. He doesn’t look like the type to, but you can never truly tell with people. Intentions are a strange thing. You mean one thing, do another. Say one thing and mean another. You can never assume to know a person, their intentions, or what they’re capable of when their intentions melt away from them and leave them desperate to make a move. Knowing that, I decide to make myself conveniently available for this exchange tomorrow and be at the right place and time. Just in case.

“What time do you want him to come?” Harper asks.

“Tell that asshole—I mean, tellChuck—to be here around ten A.M.,” Lyla says. “I don’t want to spend my whole Saturday wasting time with freakingCharles.”

I smile again, bigger this time. We definitely have one thing in common: we both think Charles is an absolute asshole.

I’d seen him around here, before the split. He was always so uptight. To say he’d ever helped with the farm would be a gross overstatement. He’d mainly just walked around, pointed at things that needed to be done, and then delegated them to other people. I’d bet the man had never seen his hands dirty in his whole life.

And the way he treated Harper? Like she was invisible most of the time?

I heard him talk over her more than once, as though what she was saying wasn’t important or worth hearing at all. Sometimes he’d look at her after she’d say something, and he’d just give a long sigh and start talking. Not even in response to her comments, but in general. Sometimes, he’d change the topic completely.

I watch Lyla hug her sister, and then Harper leaves the room.

Lyla goes back to finishing her task, drying the last of the items. Then, she sits the towel down on the counter. She reaches back and rubs her neck, twisting her head side to side.

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