“Sorry it took me so long to get here, John,” I said as I approached the table, my words as tentative as my steps.
He stirred, and his gaze almost immediately moved in my direction. Even his eyes looked more corpse than living. What I guessed he meant to be a smile dawned on his face.
“Scout.” My name took a few tries to get out, and one syllable became three.
I could tell he wanted to say more, but I also knew talking had become difficult, if not impossible. Parkinson’s was a bastard, the devil in disguise. It attacked a person’s motor and sensory functions for years, even decades. It crippled them to the point where a person might have preferred death, but the son of a bitch wouldn’t give the host that one small mercy. Parkinson’s didn’t kill a person, not directly at least, but it made a person wish it would.
Instead, Parkinson’s eventually invited someone else to the party and let them be the executioner. Parkinson’s had annihilated John, but something else would ultimately kill him. People said that a person died with Parkinson’s, not from it, as if that should be comforting. Nothing about that sentiment was comforting to the people who lived with the disease or lived with the loved ones who carried it. Chance hadn’t mentioned in his message what would be listed as John’s cause of death on his death certificate, but I didn’t have to be a doctor to know that John Armstrong was advancing to his grave at a rate that only gave me weeks, maybe days, to say good-bye.
“I missed you.” When I found myself close to choking on the last word, I looked away from the man I didn’t recognize and focused on the fireplace and the blazing fire crackling within it.
“Me.” John’s voice didn’t sound the same either. It wasn’t even a shadow of what it had been before. “Too.”
I nodded, swallowing back the ball that had formed out of nowhere in my throat. I was still focused on the fire, but from the corner of my eye, I saw his hand extend. He was reaching out for me. He wanted me to take his hand and give him a hug and sit next to him and pretend like the reason I was there wasn’t because he had a fast-approaching appointment with his maker. I hadn’t known seeing him would be so difficult. If I had, I might not have gotten on that plane.
Remembering one of the most important lessons I’d learned during my time there, I didn’t do what was easy and flee from this room—I did what was hard and moved closer. I forced a smile and reached for his hand when I was a step away. I hadn’t expected his hand to still be warm—the sagging skin draped over jutting bones didn’t look warm or even alive—but I exhaled when I realized that even if John didn’t look it, he was still alive. If nothing else, I’d get to share one last dinner with him.
“I like what you did with your hair.” I touched a piece of his white hair. It felt fine and brittle, like it wouldn’t take much to break it. “Very stylish.”
His hand tightened around mine. Even though I could tell it didn’t possess a fraction of the strength it had once had, he gave me enough of a squeeze to make me feel as if I were that young girl again when John had promised to look after and protect me as he would his own children. It was like that was what he was trying to relay right now.
“Welcome . . .” The word came out in a rush of air, as if John had to force it up from deep within his chest. “Home.”
I nodded because that was all I could respond with unless I wanted all those tears to stream down my face now. “You didn’t have to wait for me to have dinner, you know. Don’t want this feast Mrs. Baker prepared to get cold.” I swept my arm down the table at the spread that looked as though it was meant for a party of fifty instead of five. Or, well, four.
John’s meal had already been dished onto his plate, but it didn’t look like any of the foods in the serving bowls and trays spaced down the center of the long table. Instead, pureed was the theme of his dinner, the colors as unappealing as the texture. It looked like baby food had been spooned onto a plate, although, God bless her, Mrs. Baker had tried to make it look not so miserable. A chunk of butter leaf lettuce was situated at the top of John’s plate, where a plump raspberry surrounded by a circle of blueberries all topped by a sprig of mint was sitting. He might not have been able to chew, swallow, or digest any of it, but the fruit gave his plate a touch of dignity that I knew a man like John Armstrong appreciated.
The swinging door that led from the kitchen burst open, producing a squat round woman decked out in a lavender sweat suit and matching eye shadow. “Dinner started thirty minutes ago. You’re late.” The woman was on the crest of middle age and had hair so red it didn’t look real. Her narrow lips got narrower when she pursed them like she did now.
“My flight got in late. I’m sorry.” I stopped myself from saying anything else when I realized I had no idea who the woman was or what her role at Red Mountain was. Back when I’d lived there, Mrs. Baker ran the kitchen, which we kids thought was too hysterical given her last name, and Mrs. Benjamin kept the household. “I’m Scout. Who are you?” I supposed I could have phrased that more politely . . .
She didn’t stop hustling until she was beside John. “I’m Faye. I’m Mr. Armstrong’s nurse.” She was carrying a small clear cup with a plastic spoon and some substance that looked even less appetizing than John’s dinner inside. “You must be the adopted daughter of sorts he talks about all the time.”
John nodded, but his head bobbed more violently than I was sure he intended. If Parkinson’s could magically turn into a stick, I’d have broken it over my knee and flung it into the fire.
“That’s me.” I watched as the nurse scooped some of the goo into John’s mouth. “What is that?” Besides toxic sludge.
“His medication. Everything has to be pureed or liquefied or else he’ll choke on it.” She winked at John. “And we’re not going to let him escape that easily.”
What I guessed was a laugh for a person in the late stages of Parkinson’s vibrated in John’s chest before he opened his mouth to take his meds.
“Do you know where the guys are? Where did they scatter to after inhaling their dinners?” I asked, hoping Faye knew where I could find one Armstrong man I could hug without wondering if it would be the last. I loved John, but he wasn’t the man I remembered. The disease had taken the man I remembered and left one I’d have to get used to in small doses. Otherwise, all of that strength I’d worked to accrue all these years would run out fast.
“What dinners? You’re the first one to show up for the seven thirty dinner John was so looking forward to and Mrs. Baker took so much time and care to put together.” Faye glanced at the old grandfather clock across the room, her eyes narrowing when she saw the time.
“They haven’t even been here yet? None of them?” I had an excuse. My 747 had gotten delayed in a holding pattern—there wasn’t exactly much I could do other than strap a chute to my back and jettison out the exit door—but the three Armstrong brothers? Someone had better have lost a limb and be in danger of bleeding out. “Where the hell are they?”
Faye’s narrowed eyes flicked my way, probably because I was a woman who had just threaded a “curse” into a sentence as though it was second nature. She struck me as the kind of person who didn’t think women should curse, drink, or have sex in any position other than missionary.
“That has been the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I started visiting John,” she said. “Other than the sweet one, I’ve barely seen hide or hair of the other two.”
I didn’t need to clarify who the sweet one was. Unless a woman was crying in bed, the word sweet didn’t apply to Chase, and the opposite of sweet had been created to describe Conn.
“Good-byes are hard, but you only get so long to make them before you lose your chance.” Faye inclined her head at John in his chair. He looked asleep again. “See if you can get that message across to them better than I can, okay?”
Faye and I shared a silent exchange right then, one that helped me see past her stern looks and no-nonsense approach. I knew she wasn’t just concerned about John
’s physical well-being but his mental too.
“Okay,” I replied, backing toward the hall. I wasn’t sure where I’d find any of the boys, but I’d start in the library and work my way around the place from there.
That was where he kept the good scotch, and his sons knew it. Times like those warranted digging into the good stuff. My inspection started at the back corner of the library because if any of them were in there, they’d be staggered around the pool table.
I didn’t expect to find what I did. His back was to me, his head fallen far enough forward I couldn’t see it, but I knew who he was. I’d have recognized that wide back anywhere.
“Chase?” I approached him slowly.
The library was dark, the only light scattered coming from the fire dying in the fireplace. He didn’t seem to have heard me, so I moved closer. Chase was sitting on the pool table, smack in the center of it, staring at something in his hand. The firelight wasn’t bright, but it was enough to see that, like John, this wasn’t the Chase I remembered. No, this Chase looked as if he’d been terrorized by tragedy for so long he might not be able to recall the sound of rushing water or the feel of the early summer sun on his back or any other good, pleasant memory.
“Chase?” I said it louder, and combined with my hand connecting with his arm, I finally got his attention.
His body shifted in my direction some, but his focus stayed on whatever it was in his hands. With him angled more my direction, I made out the gleam of the eight ball in his grip.
“It seems so small and insignificant, doesn’t it?” His voice was a note above a whisper, raspy from what I guessed had been a prolonged amount of silence.
“What?” I asked slowly, as though I was approaching a caged animal. “The eight ball?”
“It’s just a shiny black ball with the number eight stamped on it. By itself, it’s nothing to worry about, but when you play its game, it becomes dangerous.”
Chase still hadn’t acknowledged me with his eyes. For all I knew, he was talking to himself, but I kept going. “Why’s it dangerous, Chase?”
He traced the number eight with his thumb. “Because all it takes is one wrong move to lose the whole game. Put this thing in a pocket before you’re supposed to, or put it in the wrong pocket when it’s actually in play, and you lose. Just like that.” Chase snapped his fingers, turning the ball over in his other hand. “It’s just a ball until you decide to play its game, and then it owns you. It’s . . .”—I knew the word he was searching for before it formed on his lips—“cursed.”
I exhaled through my teeth. I’d heard enough about curses, one in particular, during my five years there to last five lifetimes. It wasn’t a topic I was eager to broach during the first conversation I’d had with Chase in years. “What are you doing in here? Dinner was supposed to start over a half hour ago.”
When it became clear that Chase had no intention of moving off that pool table, I hopped up with him, hoping I’d be able to get through to him sometime this century. The way he was behaving was more along the dramatic lines of Conn. I wasn’t sure what to say or do to pull Chase from such a funk.
“I don’t want dinner.” He sounded more like a stubborn five-year-old than a grown man.
“Well, too bad, because dinner wants you. Not to mention so do your dad and I. You know, Scout, that girl who lived here for half a decade? The one you used to sneak an extra scoop of ice cream to and yell at when she left her wet towels on the bathroom floor?” I nudged him but still got nothing. He was somewhere else with someone else, and I guessed it was a place I couldn’t find my way into.
“I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.” Chase’s hands swallowed the eight ball, squeezing it so hard his hands quaked.
“Can’t do what?” I winced when I saw the veins and sinews of his muscles break to the surface of his forearms as he fought a losing battle. The only way he was going to crush that eight ball was if his hands magically turned to steel.
That was when the light of the fire caught on something else I hadn’t noticed: a wide golden band circling Chase’s finger. The ring finger of his left hand.
“Holy shit, Chase, did you go and get married?” I didn’t blink as I stared at the ring, unable to make it compute. As the marrying type went, Chase Armstrong was at the very end of the line.
“I went and got married, yeah.” He finally stopped trying to decimate the eight ball and studied his ring with me.
“To who? Please don’t tell me yourself because that would just be far too disappointing, even though I believe I prophesized it years ago.”
Besides the fire itself, Chase’s ring was the only thing that seemed to light up the room. It was a simple band, no diamonds cut into it or patterns etched on the surface—just a smooth, thick band on a finger I never thought I’d see occupied.
“To a woman named Jenny Fairbanks.” Saying her name, Chase finally smiled. It was a good smile too, the kind that was made to stop and admire.
“And is this Jenny Fairbanks someone I might know? Perhaps one of the girls I ran into sneaking out of your bedroom or one who used to befriend me for the sole purpose of running into you during a girls’ sleepover?” I nudged him, putting on my own smile. When you were the adopted sister of the most eligible bachelors in town, you had no shortage of fake friends who wanted to come hang out on any given night.
“No, she’s no one you would have known. She didn’t grow up here. She moved here after college when she got a teaching job at one of the elementary schools. I met her at a library in town.” Chase’s voice and expression were changing back into the ones I remembered. Yeah, he might not have shaved in weeks and the hollows under his eyes were especially impressive, but every minute of talking about Jenny brought him back to the guy I remembered.
“Wait, did you just say library? As in one of those things that carries books and lets people check them out with things known as library cards? I didn’t think you knew what one of those was.” I curled my leg beneath me and scooted closer. “Let me guess. There was a strip club right next door, and you got confused?”
He shook his head, his smile still in place, although it was fading. “No, I was there to help dedicate the new library since a good chunk of it had been paid for by the Armstrong Fund.”
“Ah, so hospitals, universities, and community centers weren’t enough? You Armstrongs had to go and get your charitable paws in another pot?”
“I guess. I don’t know. Dad or Chance take care of all that. They just let me know where to go and when to be there.”
“You weren’t born with a pretty face to keep it hidden in some dark library, right?” I said, not completely joking. When Chase didn’t say anything else, I asked, “So that’s when you met Ms. Jenny. Let me guess. Love at first sight?”
Chase shook his head. “No, but it was definitely lust at first sight. The moment I saw her standing in the crowd, I knew I had to . . .” Chase paused to search for a substitute for the word he’d been about to fire off.
John had threatened his boys with the penalty of having to muck out stalls if they were lewd or crass in front of me about the topic of sex. With Chance, it wasn’t an issue since all he knew about it was what he’d learned in Sex Ed. As with any rule John implemented, Conn found a million ways around or through it, but Chase actually listened. Other than the hoots and hollers I’d heard cursed from his room, I hadn’t heard him utter anything sexually “lewd or crass” since John laid that rule down a few weeks after I moved to Red Mountain.
“Have her,” he substituted. “But from the moment I approached her, it was like she saw through my whole act. She turned me down at every corner. She even said no when I asked her to meet me for coffee on a Sunday morning. Coffee. Sunday morning. How much more innocent does it get than that?”
“I like this girl already.” I’d been under the impression that girls and the word no when Chase Armstrong propositioned them lived on different planets. “So how did you finally get that first date wi
th her?”
Chase finally looked up and stared into the fire. I tried not to gasp. I knew the sharp light and shadows the fire cast weren’t helping, but Chase had gone from looking his age to aging twenty years in the span of seven. He didn’t just look old—there was something else. Exhaustion, maybe? The gleam in his eyes that I’d been certain was a permanent fixture had been snuffed out. That thick golden hair that countless women had stroked, gripped, and pulled looked as dull and lifeless as the rest of him. I remembered him being so full of life that I’d wished it had been contagious, and no warm-blooded woman had been able to pass him without letting her gaze linger on the divinity that had been Chase Armstrong. So much of that brother was absent from the one hunched beside me.
For the second time that night, an Armstrong man almost had me crying for reasons other than saying something hurtful.
“It ended up being in that coffee shop after all. Although it was a Wednesday night and neither of us had known the other would be there.” Chase squinted into the fire as if he was trying to sharpen his focus to see something far off. “Only after we’d run into each other a third time at the drug store, after nearly smashing our carts together at the grocery store on the second, did she cave and go on a real date with me.”
“There’s a happy coincidence,” I said, wondering what part of this happily ever after was making Chase look so lost. “So what happened after that? How many dates did it take before you—”
“Eight.” Chase lifted the black ball he was still wringing. “Eight dates before she agreed to marry me.”
That had to be some kind of a record. “Actually, I was going to ask how many dates it took before she let you lure her into bed, because I’m already liking the sound of this Jenny. If she was one of those one-date bed-hoppers, I’m going to be seriously disappointed.”
Chase’s mouth moved as though he was trying to stifle a smile. “Eight.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “No way, Chase Armstrong. You’re telling me this woman you married didn’t let you get her into bed until you were engaged? I didn’t even think that was possible.”