Page 7 of Ghost
Regret barrelsinto me like a freight train. I shouldn’t have answered the call, but now that I have, I’m stuck. Sure, I could hang up and pretend that my world didn’t just shift on its axis, and that would make me a coward… Which I’m not.
Sure feels like you are.
I glance at the TV where Dean Winchester is frozen with his mouth open on a scream. This is my favorite episode ofSupernatural, and I wish I would’ve kept watching instead of pausing it.
“Is… Is this… Parker?”
My voice sounds tiny, and I silently berate myself for it.
The man on the other end of the call swears under his breath. “Em?”
The way my shortened name rolls off his tongue sends shivers down my spine, shivers I thought I lost fifteen years ago.
“You’re the friend Addi wanted a nurse for?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around what’s happening.
“And you’re the nurse,” he replies, resignation in his tone.
I take a deep breath, then another and another. How had I not put two and two together when I ran into Addison? I’ve known for a while now that Parker was back in town, but it never occurred to me thathe’dbe the potential new client.
Not Parker… his mother.
My stomach twists as realization dawns. Mrs. West was always one of my favorite people growing up, and it makes me physically ill to know she’s sick.
“Em? Are you still there?” Parker asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Uh, yeah. So…” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “How’ve you been?”
“How have I been?” he bellows, his voice rougher than I remember. “That’s all you have to say to me?”
Anger surges in my blood. “You called me, remember?”
“I didn’t know I was calling you!” he shouts. “If I had, I’d have…”
“You’d have what?” I demand when he fails to continue. “Run to another state?”
“That’s not fair. Don’t make this about what happened between us.”
“What else would it be about?”
“Ya know what? Forget it. I’ll find someone else.”
Parker always did have a penchant for shutting down when things got tough. “Parker, wait,” I blurt before I can second-guess myself. “Addison said your mom’s in need of a full-time nurse.”
He sighs as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and I can picture him running his fingers through his chestnut hair, tugging on the ends in frustration.
“It’s getting bad, Em,” he admits.
I steel myself against the pain in his voice. I’ve suffered enough because of this man, and I refuse to go down that road again. But…
“Tell me what’s going on,” I say quietly, knowing in my heart of hearts I might regret it.
Again, he sighs.
Fuck, that sigh.
“She’s got Alzheimer’s.”
And if I thought this conversation was hard before, I was wrong. Those three words turned hard into gut-wrenching.
