Page 81 of Take Me Home

“No, not for fun.”

And then a silence opened up that she waited for him to fill. He’d brought her out there for exactly this—this chance to explain in the only way he’d ever really known how to talk abouthis father. It was time. But her stomach had growled loudly, and he had promised to talk once they’d had lunch.

Even now, he wanted to stall again. But for how playful she’d been before, explaining her psychology theory, the need for reciprocal disclosures, he understood she felt the scales were out of balance when it came to this.

“Travis and Derek’s dad sold their mineral rights to some oil company about five years ago. It was a bad deal for them.”

Hazel hummed sympathetically as she sliced into a block of sharp cheddar.

“Around that time was when my dad…” He drummed his fingers on the counter behind him. “He wasn’t diagnosed right away, but he was having symptoms, seeing doctors, running tests. They initially thought it was ALS. That was senior year.”

“When we met?” Hazel asked, surprised.

He nodded and chose to ignore the little frown she cast at the cutting board.

“From pretty early on, he’d lose feeling in his feet, his balance. Once, my mom tried to help him to his bed. You’ve seen their height difference. He was heavier back then, too. He knocked her down, and she broke her wrist.”

Hazel’s hands, now arranging precooked bacon on a paper towel, froze.

“After that, I did most of the physical stuff. His legs would go numb, or he’d be so fatigued, I’d have to haul him to his bed. They were still trying to keep the worst of it from June and the twins. Maggie was away at college, and my mom wouldn’t let us tell her. And we weren’t supposed to stress him out because stress can make it worse, so we just…didn’t talk about it.”

Ash’s jaw clenched as if in residual resistance. He’d stood in almost this very spot the day of the broken wrist. His momwrapped an ice-filled towel around her arm, her back to him at the stove, then cracked eggs one-handed into a skillet for breakfast while June overslept and the twins bickered through the bathroom door. “Are you hurt?” he’d asked, and she’d turned around, blotchy-faced and teary but with a cheerful smile. “Everything’s fine. Eggs?”

Only once he was away at college did she talk—in those panicky, breathless dumps over the phone, like she could only admit the full scope of her fear with distance, her worries so much heavier than she’d ever let on in person. Although he wanted to know the truth and wanted to help, some part of him walled off at her crying.

Again, he regretted the way he’d thrown this like a weapon at his parents in the hospital earlier.

“Anyway,” Ash said, realizing he’d gone quiet. Hazel had assembled two sandwiches, and the butter on the bread sizzled in the skillet. “I went over to Trav’s one night, and he and Derek and their dad were hitting golf balls at that pump and getting trashed, and it seemed like as good an idea as anything else to deal with how—” He clasped the back of his neck, the word stopping in his throat. He swallowed. “How angry I guess I was. And then, for a while, when I felt that way, I went and tried to hit that pump. Sometimes, when we drank too much and couldn’t aim for shit anymore, we’d talk.”

“You and Travis?”

“He’s got his own stuff. I guess everyone does. But yeah, he knows more than anyone else what things were like back then.”

“Even Justin?”

Ash hesitated. He still wasn’t sure how sore a subject Justin was for her. “You know my dad coached all our Little League teams growing up?”

“No.”

“Justin was good. Natural talent. But his dad also pushed him hard, got rough sometimes.”

She nodded. “He yelled a lot at games.”

“Yeah. He was worse when we were little, if you can believe that. Justin spent most of his time at my house, avoiding him. He would talk my dad’s ear off about baseball. We’d run drills in the backyard. We were practically brothers. I mean, every memory I have from childhood, he was there. With so many sisters, it was nice to have another guy around. My mom used to call us peanut butter and jelly. I was a shy, careful kid. He was always looking for fun, or making it himself.” He nodded at Hazel. “Youknow. He brought out some different sides of me, and I kept him mostly out of trouble. But when my dad got sick, he stopped coming around, just like that. He didn’t get why I was distracted, why I quit the club season right before senior year.”

Ash swallowed. He never talked about this. “Early that summer, my dad had one of his first bad episodes and, uh…wet himself during a game. I saw it from home plate, my mom trying to help him down the bleachers. Justin didn’t notice until my dad wasn’t there for our usual postgame breakdown. He was such an ass about it. I was trying to get ahold of my mom to find out what had happened, and Justin was mad my dad wasn’t there to heap praise on him.”

Ash shook his head, the frustration of that day fresh. “I got it. His dad backed off when mine was around. But he wasn’t…there. For us. For me.”

“I hate him for that,” Hazel said quietly.

Ash didn’t like to think about it.

“When everything came out at graduation,” he said, meaning Justin’s college plans, “and you guys broke up, we went to a party a couple weeks later. He acted like he’d done nothingwrong, and I lost it. It was justeverything, all year. He never got what was going on with my dad, or me. He only cared how it affected his game. When I got benched for missing practices—because my dad was having these flare-ups—and he pitched that bad game—”

“When he tackled his own catcher,” she recalled.

“Yeah. And that coach rescinded his verbal offer, Justin blamed me for not playing. Said he would have pitched better to me. Even if he didn’t, I would have kept him from losing his cool. And I actually felt guilty about it. I mean, shit. He didn’t have other options. College ball was his dream since forever. I guess that’s why I kept quiet for him with you, even though I didn’t like it. But I snapped at that party. We beat the shit out of each other, didn’t speak again all summer. When I see him here, we pretend it never happened, but we’re not close.”

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