Page 66 of By A Thread
“Shut up and eat your dinner,” he said gruffly, pulling his hand away.
I picked up my now-cold half burger. Not to be compliant but because, after the tips, the food was a highlight of the job.
“How do you get home from here?” he asked.
“Train,” I said, taking a bite.
He reached for his wallet. “I’d rather you take a cab.”
“No.”
“No?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe I was so stupid, so impertinent.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m notyours, Dom. You don’t get to worry about me or play protector. You’re my boss. I’m your employee. Unless you’re forking up cab fare or Uber credits for all the admins on staff, the answer is no. No special treatment. No extracurricular sex. No seduction attempts. No flirting. The air is cleared.”
He stared at me a long beat. Those eyes impossibly sad.
It’s what he wanted.
So why did the man look so damn miserable?
22
Ally
It was early morning when I ducked in the side door to the Goodwin Childers Nursing Home as another family was exiting. I was on thin ice with the billing department, and I just didn’t have it in me to have another conversation with Front Office Deena about the importance of being timely with my payments.
This nursing home had the best dementia ward in a fifty-mile radius, and my father deserved the best.
Even if I couldn’t afford it.
Skirting the hallway that led to the front desk area, I snuck through the cheerful assisted living wing to the security doors of the memory ward.
Braden, one of my favorite nurses on the wing, waved through the glass as he buzzed me in.
“Ally! Good to see you back,” he said. “We missed you and your dad around here.”
“It’s good to be back,” I told him. “How’s he doing?”
“It’s a really good day,” he said with a grin.
“Really?”
“So good, he’s not in his room. He’s in the lounge.”
“You’re kidding?”
Braden lifted a finger in the air. I stopped and listened. The faint notes of Hilton Ruiz’s “Home Cookin’” reached me, tugging on the strings of my heart as a hundred memories flooded through me.
He grinned. “I’ll take you back.”
I followed Braden’s defensive line-sized frame as he maneuvered past glass that opened into an internal courtyard of turf and concrete. The fountain had been drained for the season, and the color of summer and fall was long gone, but the evergreens were decked in colorful Christmas lights for the duration of the winter, giving residents something to enjoy.
The piano got louder as we approached double doors propped open facing a nurses station.
And there against a wall of windows, wheelchair parked nearby, was my father behind the piano.
“Ally, my girl!”
