Page 25 of Fall for Me

I stood up and went over to her. “I’m all right, Joyce,” I said through my tightening throat. I pulled her into a hug, trying not to wince as her tight squeeze met my bruised ribs. “Promise.”

Promise I’m alive, anyway.

Joyce hung on for a long moment, then finally backed away, clutching the door.

“Did you get a haircut?” I asked, wanting to pull the attention off me.

To my surprise, Joyce blushed. “Oh, you noticed.” She pressed a hand to her hair. “I’m going to the theatre tonight. Thought I’d put myself together, you know.”

I remembered, vaguely, that people had lives outside of work.

Joyce pulled her purse back up on her shoulder. “Anyhow, you should talk, young man. Even looking like you haven’t slept in a week, you look awfully handsome in that sweater.”

My first thought was I never sleep. Still, I looked down. I thought I’d pulled it on over my button-down without thinking this morning, but in that moment I knew why I’d worn it. Mom had knitted this sweater for me. She’d taken up knitting in the years before she passed. I had dozens of them, but this one was my favorite. I wore it when I felt like I needed strength.

It’s Irish wool, Mom had said about this one. Her eyes had been so sad. But she tried to be, if not happy for me, then strong. Came from a farm in County Cork, not too far from where your grandfather grew up.

Embarrassed, I looked back up at Joyce. She knew exactly where it had come from. She’d been good friends with Mom.

For a moment, it looked like she was going to tear up again, but she lifted her chin as if shaking it off. “Will you check in with your father tonight? He’s stressed to heck about this party, but refuses to let me help. It’s gone beyond the point of stubbornness.”

“Yeah, of course.” Dad was planning a party to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Reilly and Sons Contracting. Party planning was as antithetical to my father’s whole identity as it was to mine, but he insisted on doing it himself. “You’re bringing in most of the work these days anyway,” he said. It was true, though he didn’t know the half of what I was planning. I hadn’t even hinted at the possibility of the Jewel Lakes job.

Normally, Dad would get Joyce to help out with something like this, but she didn’t know the party was going to double as a surprise retirement party for her.

After the electronic chimes indicated Joyce had left the building, I stretched out in my seat, alone for the first time since I’d left home that morning. But as quickly as I did that, the thoughts I’d been shoving aside with work and keeping up my ‘I’m fine’ facade all day came flooding in hard.

Last night, my now-regular waking nightmare of the crash was interspersed with a new activity for my brain: going over everything that happened yesterday.

Eli at my place, more emotional than I’d seen him in a long time—and that guy knew how to show his emotions. Me seeing his fist flying at my face and not only not stopping it, but welcoming it.

Chelsea, jumping out of Jude’s jeep.

Chelsea, looking out over my ridge, that thing she said about sunrises sending something jagged to my chest.

The way she’d looked at me, like she was so lost.

Chelsea.

That last part—that’s what I replayed the most as I tossed and turned. It hadn’t been long, but each second had felt loaded with all the things I’d left unsaid.

I ran my hand over my jaw, feeling the stubble gathering there already.

I often regretted the few words I did speak. But with Chelsea, it had been different. All the things I wanted to say to her felt backed up in my throat. The worst part was that she didn’t hate me for what happened. While the relief of that had been overwhelming then, now it felt like a lie. I hadn’t told her everything that had happened before the crash, in the cab, because it hadn’t seemed relevant. But I couldn’t help thinking that if I had, maybe she’d hate me enough to see the truth.

That I was just bad luck.

I made a feeble attempt to work for the next half hour—checking to see if Cass had emailed me back about the Rolling Hills job, but of course she hadn’t. I knew things were delayed because of the crash. Then I started thinking about Chelsea again, and that’s when I threw it in. There was no point in staying. I locked up the office and headed for my truck. Soon I’d be home, where I’d maybe grab a cold beer and a paperback and settle into my hammock to watch the sun set over the trees.

The door to my truck made a loud crank as I pulled it open a few minutes later. I still wasn’t used to that, but it made sense—the vehicle had sat mostly unused for 20 years. This wasn’t my truck, of course. Mine was totaled, probably already squashed into a metal cube over at the Greenville auto-wreckers.

This was Kevin’s.

Dad kept it parked in the old barn at his place. Every so often, if I was over there helping him with something, we’d bicker about it. I’d tell him he needed to get rid of it, he’d grunt and say we might need it. I knew he just couldn’t let go of it. He’d bought the thing for Kevin’s sixteenth birthday. It was a jalopy, but he’d gotten me—at twelve—to help him fix it up in secret in that barn. Six months later, Kevin was dead.

Dad had turned up at the hospital in it the night of the crash. I’d had no words, not just about the truck, but about anything. I’d been even more shocked when he wrapped his arms around me and I felt the soft silence of his sobs.

“Goddammit, Seamus,” he said gruffly when he pulled away. “Goddammit.”

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