Page 30 of Take Me Home

“Are you guys okay for m—” He didn’t finish the question. His mother, usually a broken record insisting everything was always fine, had let some truth slip in one of her late-night calls. They’d started his first year of college, but the last one had been as recent as September. On these calls, she would hit him with a barrage of questions, wanting him to keep talking about his classes, his friends, football games, girls, work, until finally, she’d go so quiet he thought she was falling asleep, only to surprise him by saying, “What if this relapse is the turning point?” Or she’d say, “Your sisters. If he can’t walk at their weddings…” Or, “If he won’t take care of himself, what am I supposed to do?”

But in all these moments of unmasked worry, the one subject she never brought up was the financial burden of his father’s condition. He could dig for details about a lot of things, but money wasn’t one of them.

He turned his full attention to cutting into his meatloaf, watching the steam ribbon out. Did she know about the money he’d sent his twin sisters last month? He’d made Laurel and Leanne swear, one at a time on the phone, not to tell.

“Like I said,” his mother went on, “the furnace will be fixed tomorrow. For now, the portable heaters work just fine. In fact, go turn them on. The kids will be back soon.”

Ash rebuttoned his coat and strode to the sliding back door. “I can chop that firewood.”

She yanked him back by his sleeve. “Your food will get cold, and I won’t get a word in once everyone else comes back. We haven’t really talked in weeks.”

“If you already know what’s wrong with the furnace, I can probably fix it.” He flung a hand at the dormant space heaters and the tree that he knew had at least eight strands of lights threaded through its branches. “I’m surprised you haven’t tripped a breaker.”

She prodded him back to the island and his food. “If you tinker with it, it could affect the warranty. We will survive until tomorrow.”

“Fine, but after I eat, I’m gonna chop some wood,” Ash said, shoveling in a huge bite. It was still hot, and he had to suck in air to avoid burning his mouth.

“At least wait until your dad wakes up. And please, Ash, try not to rub it in.”

Ash chewed slowly.

“You know how he is.”

Yeah, Ash knew too well how his father was. Rather than tellanyone that he’d fallen off the ladder and hurt himself, the guy had army crawled across the front yard and into his truck, driven himself to the hospital, and waited until the broken hip was confirmed with X-rays to finally call and tell his wife where he was.

“He’s taking a nap?” Ash was fishing, and he knew she saw right through him.

“I told you, he’s fine. The pain meds make him drowsy.”

“I’m just—”

“You’re not telling me anything I really want to know. Like, if you’ve got someone special—”

He groaned and shoved more food in his mouth, burning his tongue all over again.

“Fine, then tell me how your internship’s going. They still planning to keep you on after you graduate?”

Ash shrugged, but not because he didn’t know. It was practically a done deal. “Yeah, probably.”

“The money will be better?”

“Yep.”

“Then you can quit the café? All your running around, you’re like a chicken with its head cut off.”

His back tensed. He didn’t want to talk about this. He knew the point of all this school and his internship was to start his actual career, but the café was the only thing lately that offset the isolation of living alone, working in a cubicle and freelancing remotely, delivering plans to city hall clerks who were usually too immersed in their jobs to make eye contact. He made enough money to cover his expenses without his café shifts, but he needed the security of that financial cushion. More than that, he needed to feel like a person.

He also felt possessive of his regulars. The old ladies who gossiped while they crocheted. Frank with his crosswords. Hazel inher chair. Ever since she’d come back into his life, he’d been alternately taking advantage of every small moment shared with her and trying not to get too attached.

Although…who was he kidding?

But, sure, he wouldn’t work there forever. He knew that. He’d take the next logical steps. After all, Ash was the stable one. Maggie’s husband traveled too much, sometimes to remote and dangerous places, leaving her to parent Cosette and Isabel on her own. June had bailed on college and lived with three other people in a two-bedroom east Los Angeles apartment, her audition-to-rejection rate nearly one hundred percent. The twins were typical roller coasters of teenage emotions. And his father…Well, Ash didn’t have the full picture of his father yet, but at the very least, the man was recovering from a hip replacement. Ash lived the way he did, saving what he could, following his plan, because he expected to be responsible for all of them at some point.

“You know,” his mother said, “if you had a nicer place to bring a girl back to…”

“Mom.”

She clutched nonexistent pearls. “Don’t look so scandalized. I was young once, too, you know.”

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