Page 8 of What's Left of Us

The girl thirteen years younger than me snorts in amusement. “What are you going to do? Arrest me? I’m eighteen, Lincoln. You used to drink all the time in high school, so get off your high horse.”

I close the grill and pass her the nasty fruit seltzer I bought specifically for her. “My house. My rules.”

“Hypothetically, if Iwereto broach a conversation about you-know-who,” she says, smiling innocently when I narrow my eyes at her, “I’d ask if you were okay.”

Choosing to play coy, I walk over to the table and grab the buns Mom brought to toast on the top rack of the grill. “I’d tell you that I’m perfectly fine and that your focus should be on passing your classes at college, not on me.”

The girl, who has only gotten sassier with age, takes the buns out of my hand with a frown. “I’m only asking because I care, and because Mom and Dad are worried. Come on, Lincoln. You were so screwed up after the separation with Georgia and then the shooting—”

“What makes you think I want to talk about it when I’ve avoided it all this time?” I cut her off. “Everybody is so worried about me, but they won’t respect my space.”

It was bad enough when my friends hounded me about my divorce because their wives wanted to make sure I was okay after the split. But I wouldn’t give them the answers they wanted to hear. Like, I wassadanddepressedand wanted totalk about my feelingswhen that was the last thing I wanted to do. Was I fucked up? Yeah. Who the hell wouldn’t be when they gave the best version of themselves to someone who didn’t think it was good enough to stay?

All I wanted was to drink beer, talk about why the New England Patriots needed to be brought down a peg by literally any other NFL team, and move the fuck on from the hellhole reality I trapped myself in.

When that goddamn shooting happened, it only made things ten times worse. Suddenly, it wasn’t only my friends and their wives trying to have impromptu therapy sessions with me, it was my family and coworkers too. I knew I was fortunate to have people in my life who genuinely gave a shit about my well-being. But I also needed room to breathe, which I found hard to get nowadays, with everybody looming over me like they’re waiting for the day I snap.

Thankfully, Hannah lets it go too. “Fine. But, for the record, we’ve given you plenty of space. Too much, if you ask me.” I eye her, so she lifts her palms in surrender. “I’m only dropping it because I have zero interest in dealing with your moody ass the rest of the night. You always get all depressed and poetic whenever you’ve indulged in a few drinks anyway, and none of us need you spewing your long-winded tangents.”

I’ll take a victory where I can get it. “Why don’t you go inside and get Mom to relax? She’s been cleaning my kitchen since she got here, even though I told her I’d do it when I had a free day.”

My sister snorts. “We all know you never have free time. That’s why she’s here twice a week, making sure your house doesn’t look like a homeless person broke in and started squatting.”

Lips curling into a ghost of a smile, I hide it behind my drink. I appreciate everything my parents have done for me over the years, even if it’s using the spare key I gave them in case of emergencies to do my laundry, dishes, and vacuum. Maybe I should be embarrassed about my mother coming in and doing Mom shit as a thirty-one-year-old man, but I have no shame these days. All of that disappeared when I told my parents that Georgia left me, then took a bottle of my father’s scotch and damn near drank the whole thing myself within a few hours. It was a dark time that only got worse after I’d been hospitalized.

Dad shows up at the back door with a tumbler of whiskey in hand that I poured him when he got here, replacing Hannah’s spot next to me.

“Burgers should be done soon,” I tell the person I look even more like as the years pass. I close the lid to let the cheese melt into the patties and finish my beer. “You liking retirement?”

“I’m bored out of my mind. Jim said he could take me back at the garage part-time if I wanted.”

That was short-lived. “You haven’t even been retired a full year yet,” I muse.

He harrumphs. “You try retiring and tell me how much you like it.”

The senior investigator gave me paperwork for medical retirement when he visited me in the hospital for the first time. He told me the state would take good care of me. When he left, I crumpled the paper and threw it across the room.

It felt like giving up.

Accepting defeat.

I wasn’t going to do that.

Dad watches me take the food off the grill, sipping his whiskey and studying the amber liquid he’s had a time or two before. “This is pretty good.”

“Johnnie Walker,” is all I say, glad he’s not pressing me on retirement. He and Mom told me I should consider it, but I knew that was fear talking.

They’ve been worried that I’ll go back and be put in the same situation, except next time,I’dbe the one carried out in a body bag.

“Huh.”

Huh.He knows who gave it to me and still doesn’t say a thing.

I pass him the plate of food. “Take that over to the table for me, will ya?”

He walks away with it, putting it by the paper plates Hannah set outside for me earlier. I put the toasted buns on a different platter and pass it to the man who’s picking at the deviled eggs Mom made.

“Food is ready,” Dad calls out to the women inside, putting the plates out at four different spots. “We expecting anybody else?” he asks, staring down at the extra one in his hand.

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