Page 22 of River
CHAPTER 6
Money
Noah
Peter was out again, but tonight I’d chosen to stay back in the small hut.
I sat on the porch in a beach chair with my feet up on the railing listening to the waves rolling in and someone laughing further down the beach where a group of backpackers sat with a guitar. Even from this distance, I could smell the weed they were smoking and shook my head a little. It wasn’t hard to find on this island, but most backpackers were unaware that the Indonesian laws on drugs were harsh and included life imprisonment and the death penalty for trafficking.
Taking a sip of my Sprite, I closed my eyes. For almost six months, I’d traveled and lived a carefree life. Beaches, bonfires, parties, and lazy days on the shore.
It was a long way from before I left Norway, and my thoughts went back to my colleagues in the police force back home. I missed Nala, my four-year-old German shepherd who’d served with me on the canine patrol.
It’d been a spontaneous decision to travel, a sort of desperate attempt to gain clarity after the death of my father. I still hadn’t come to terms with the changes his last will had brought to my life.
Pulling my feet down on the deck in front of me, I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees and letting memories of my last conversation with my father play out in my mind once more.
Eight months prior
“He’s been asking for you,” the middle-aged nurse said and pointed to a door further down the hallway. “It’s room eight.”
Not even the calming music, the tasteful art on the walls, or the many flower arrangements in the hospice could take away from the feeling of death that seeped along the walls of this place.
After a quick knock on the door, I walked in to see my father in a bed with his face turned toward the large windows. I wondered if the blue color on the walls was supposed to lead the dying patients’ minds to heaven.
“Hey, Dad,” I said and stopped by his bed.
In a slow movement, my father turned his neck and blinked his eyes as if he had to focus to really see me.
“Noah.” There was no excitement in his tone. “You came.”
“Yes. The nurses said that you wanted to see me.”
When he lifted his arm, the movement was slow and strained as he pointed to a chair by the window. “Pull it over here.” The last time I’d seen my father was almost six years prior, and back then he’d been fit for his age. Now his sunken cheeks made his dark eyes look too big and his skin was drawn tight over his bones like old papyrus paper left too long in the sun.
“I brought you chocolate,” I said and went around his bed, placing the box on the table next to his bedside before pulling over the chair as he’d asked me.
He ignored the chocolate and looked as grumpy as I remembered him from our few encounters throughout my twenty-eight years of living.
“I’m dying.”
His statement didn’t come as a shock since this was a hospice, and the nurse who called me had told me as much.
“Did they say how long you have left?”
“Days.” Holding a hand to his stomach, he muttered. “The cancer is everywhere now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Tsk.” He scoffed a little. “Don’t pretend you care. I felt only relief when my father died, and I expect it’s the same for you.”
I raised an eyebrow, not sure how to respond to that, but there was one question burning on my tongue.
“Do you have any regrets?” Tightening my fist, I waited for the apology that I deserved from him for being such a shitty father to me.
“I’m eighty-one years old, of course I have regrets.” My father’s bushy gray eyebrows drew close. “I’ve made deals I shouldn’t have, and I never learned how to surf or scuba dive.”
“Deals?” My tone was incredulous because I had hoped to hear something else.
