No, if that coin was under the chair, he’d gone today. Maybe last night.
She’d only recently come to terms with the reality of her parents’ extreme financial situation. It was the very reason she’d packed up her successful, vibrant Seattle life three months ago and headed back to Whitetop, Virginia, population 412—now 413. At the moment she was going to have to remember the stubborn man was missing some very critical functions in his limbs.
Medical attention first, Skye. Kill him second.
“I’ll take that.” He held out his hand, grinning at her as though she were a kindergartener who’d accidentally picked up a cigarette.
“Don’t you worry about it,” Skye replied with a tight smile, clamping the coin deep inside her fist and then shoving it into her back pocket. She gave his knee a heavy-handed pat as she spoke. “You. Just. Leave. It. To. Me—”
A rapping on the front door cut her words short. Skye’s eyes moved from the door to the clock on the wall to the blank expression on her father’s face. Her parents always had their little church group over on Thursdays, but who would be knocking on their door at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday night?
“Are you expecting someone?” Skye said, crossing the old, familiar carpet. She opened the door. “Theo?”
The television in the background dimmed as Skye spoke the name she’d refrained from speaking for just about as long as the carpet beneath her feet had been in existence.
The yellow porch light shone on the man who wore a two-piece suit as if he were entering a fine establishment instead of her parents’ double-wide. Mist settled on the broad shoulders of his beige overcoat. He belonged in a boardroom, not on a porch with green outdoor carpet and aluminum chairs.
And yet his clean-shaven chin still carried the lightning scar where he’d fallen off that log and into the creek years ago. Whereas the world beyond was matte black, his skin beneath the porch light was shades of elm-wood brown. His eyes, onyx and wide as they looked down at her, were the same ones she’d looked into the whole of her childhood.
And in those eyes, one very clear expression.
He was just as shocked to see her as she was him.
“Skye.” Her name was a whisper before he cleared his throat and tried again. “Skye . . . I . . . didn’t expect to see you. How is he?”
Despite asking about her father, his eyes stayed on hers, probing, as though he expected her to vanish at any moment.
They’d done their best to avoid each other for fourteen years. And yet here they were. It had finally happened.
“He’s . . . good.” She shook away the bombarding thoughts and questions as she pulled the door open wider and waved a hand to showcase the man in the recliner. She could do this. She could act normal.
“Theo,” her father said, looking just as startled as Skye as he scrambled for the remote.
“Considering he got knocked over in a tractor without a seatbelt while isolated out in the middle of nowhere, then dragged himself the length of the farm to get home, he’s okay. A bit delusional, believes he’s some type of arm-growing starfish who doesn’t need medical care. I expect it’ll take about two, maybe three days tops for him to bleed out.”
“What?” her father said.
“Hm?” she replied.
It was bizarre. She was actually managing to keep a cool tone, as though years hadn’t lapsed since she’d seen Theo face-to-face. As though she hadn’t wondered a hundred times in the past three months—as she looked out the airplane window at the blanket of clouds, as she dusted off the mantel of her new fireplace, as she unpacked each cardboard box and set each book in its place—how this precise moment would go.
The moment she bought the plane ticket, she knew she was going to run into him eventually.
Theo swiped a raindrop off his brow as he stood on the mat. “Bleeding out. How unfortunate.”
“And unnecessary. Come on in.” Skye pressed her hand to her rib cage to still her nerves as she stood back.
“Theo. I didn’t expect you.” The recliner creaked as her father pulled the lever, lowered his feet, and attempted to stand, his elbow supported by his other hand. Her mother appeared and pressed him back into the chair.
“Ralph, sit down,” Skye’s mother said, pushing gently on his good shoulder until he dropped back down. “I called him.” She shot a sugary smile across the room to Theo.
Both Skye and her father held the same expression as they watched her cross the room to land a peck on Theo’s cheek. Why?
As if hearing their question she continued: “Under Section 3A of the Workers’ Compensation policy, employees should notify employers of personal injury—both to self and property—within a reasonable timeframe. And of course”—she slipped off Theo’s overcoat—“Theo would want to know how Ralph was doing, wouldn’t you? Now, dear, how was the circuit? I know you must be so relieved to get tax season behind you.”
Theo touched his freshly exposed cufflinks with a bit of a startled smile. Her mom, quick as a flash, had settled his coat on the hook and was standing before him, waiting patiently for his reply.
“It was . . . tedious, I have to admit.” He smiled around the room, his eyes landing on Skye’s only for the span of a blink.
“Mr. Calhoun didn’t try to pull the wool over your eyes again, did he?” Mom said as though she spent her nights and weekends handling the finances of Southwest Virginia’s elite.
Theo laughed.
Skye’s mother laughed back, then went into the nearby kitchen.
“I’ll be glad to get my weekends back, I’ll say that much. It looks like I’ve missed quite a bit. How are you holding up, Mr. Fuller?”
“As I told Maggie a hundred times, I’m fine. Just a bit of bruising.” He grunted as Skye’s mother returned and dropped an ice pack onto his shoulder. “You needn’t have come all this way on account of me.”
Skye felt the old unease rising in her stomach as she watched her injured father try to wave away the ice pack and struggle to stand. Her chest tightened as she watched his eyes rove every crook and cranny of their small living room, checking for anything amiss, things Theo might notice. He pushed several magazines into a neat stack, moved the can of beer onto the coaster beside it. It was behavior her father rarely displayed, behavior she loathed almost as much as the casino coin in her back pocket.
He was ashamed. In his own home. The one Theo himself—charming as he may be—was responsible for.
How everyone in this house acted oblivious to this fact was the most infuriating thing of all. Or possibly worse: nobody in this house knew she knew the truth.
She was alone in her mother’s kitchen last December, sore from neck to fingertips as she stirred the fifth batch of snickerdoodle cookies for her parents’ church’s annual Christmas banquet. The scent of hairspray wafted down the hall as her mother sprayed her curls in place. Her father was finishing up another long day at Evergreen Farm, loading some of the last trees onto cars for the season. The dough was giving Skye such fits that the old wooden spoon cracked clean in half. As she looked for a replacement, she almost didn’t open that last drawer—what would traditionally be called the junk drawer in other homes but was too immaculate for such a slur. And yet on impulse, she did. But instead of a stirrer, the item that caught her eye, folded neatly beside scissors and tape and sewing needle, was an open piece of mail with the letterhead of Evergreen Farm—glinting just like that coin in her pocket—and a statement of her father’s yearly salary typed neatly in the body of the letter. The low number was jaw dropping.