Page 70 of Our Hearts Knew Better

She has a reason to be. He doesn’t.

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I have a photo of my dad hanging from the rearview mirror of my truck. He’s giving a thumbs-up, smiling double, and I keep it with me to still have his encouragement, which I need each time I roll up Floyd Kinnison’s driveway.

He grunts at me when I shoulder and knee my way through his front door, my hands filled with bags of heart-healthy groceries. I grunt back as I kick the door shut, waiting for his smile—and there it is, small in the corner in the light of the TV.

He can stomach me and the food I bring him more than he feigns otherwise.

“Easy,” he carps at the slight slam of the door. “This house is older than me.”

“Yet it isn’t the house on its last legs,” I say back with a note of challenge in my voice he’ll rise up to accept. And getting him upon those legs is the goal.

He clicks the remote in response, eliminating the light fromFamily Feudand slowing my trek to the kitchen as I step around the furniture, but his chair also creaks with his released weight. “I’m not, either,” he argues, following me with pride in his walk, heel to toe, no more dragging since we’ve worked the strengthback in with daily, then weekly treks up and down the street. He’s finally taking them himself, not that I haven’t offered to keep accompanying him, but he wanted me off his back a little, doing some things now without my hustling.

And I hustled,hard, in the beginning. He wasn’t risking another heart attack on my watch, especially when I’m the one who found him when he had his first.

He lashed out at me, said I’d stolen his chance to see his wife again. I countered that with this being his second chance to make things right with his daughter.

When he responded withmaybe, after beats of consideration, that was when and why I vowed to keep him alive.

For Summer.

Even if she hates me when I have to come clean and removes me from her life.

Just the thought of her is a heart-splitting, full-strength sensation that always puts me on my ass for how I was an ass.

I won’t say Adam deserves to have her, but I deserved the pain of seeing her move on.

So did her father, but now he can get her back.

And if he doesn’t do right by her, we’ll both wish I hadn’t been driving by when he collapsed.

This street was originally my nostalgic, regretful, longing for the past detour back home at the end of the day, and I happened to be driving by at the right time to see Floyd in the yard as he fell over.

As I deposit the bags on the counter, pride frames my own grin for helping to get him this far. He can do most of this on his own now, but that doesn’t mean he will. I don’t trust he will. And he won’t admit it, but he likes having me around. His health took a hit and he’s not locking the door to the only person who knocks.

Facing death can change your view on life. I’m choosing to trust it’s changed his.

I open the fridge to start shelving, and he slips in in front of me to fill a glass with the filtered water from the dispenser I ordered he get, then had to pick up and install myself. He was using it the next day, declaring it was cheaper than buying bottled water every week, owning the decision like it was his idea.

He can take credit for all of this if it means he’s swallowing what I tell him to.

“What you got?” He still asks, when it’s a lot of the same foods, with some variety. But I show him each item as I fill up his stock, here, then the cupboards.

I divide the meals—breakfast, lunch, dinner—so he has a balance, which, thanks to me, he said, he’s getting better at. He was gratefulandgrudging.

He denies liking fish, but he’ll eat sardines, which are some of the fishiest fish, but I keep my mouth closed so his will stay open to at least two servings a week.

I turn my head at the right second to spy him covering a yawn at the table. They used to have sound until I started questioning him about his sleep, and now he works to hide them.

“Tired?” I ask, unable to help my half smile ofgotcha.

“I slept fine and I’ll sleep fine tonight.”

“Did you get a nap?”

“Did you get a nap?” he repeats, bringing me back to the sea and my smile to full.

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