“Nothing you can do?” There’s so much heat in my voice it stops people around us. “You’re just going to watch him die?”
Nash takes my hand again, this time refusing to let go even when I try to pull away.
“You need to go be with him,” the doctor says frankly. Like it’s just that easy. Like watching the dad who has only been in my life for five seconds disappear is no big deal. “Make him feel at home.”
Out of nowhere, Sunny’s voice is in my head.“We all just walkin’ each other home.”My heart shatters in the din of the hospital and there’s no stopping the tears I’ve held in.
The doctor walks us to Cap’s room, stopping outside the door and giving us a tight-lipped smile before leaving us to go in alone.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I tell Nash. “I don’t knowhowto do this.”
His smile is slight, but for a split second, the curve of that line sets the world straight. I don’t want to walk into this room, but if I have to, there’s not another person on this planet I’d want next to me when I do. If Jonathan were here, he’d be walking me through the steps and making sure end-of-life arrangements areup to date, but Nash won’t do any of that. He’ll just be here. He already is.
“Nobody does,” he says gently, pushing my bangs out of my face. His shirt covered in cacti is the weightless paradox to the anvil crushing my chest.
“I barely got two weeks with him.” My voice breaks. “That’s not enough time. That’s not—” I sniff. “Fair.”
Nash kisses my hand he’s holding. “I was halfway to marrying you in two weeks, Rue Conway.” He says it like some things in life are just that simple. Like beginnings and endings and the time in between are irrelevant. Maybe he’s right. Maybe love is just love regardless of how long we get it for. “And you could have fifty more years with him, but it still wouldn’t be enough.”
I nod, grip his hand as tight as I can, and with a shaky breath, push the door open, trying my best to smile when my eyes meet my dad’s.
He has the nerve to grunt, annoyed. “Took you long enough,” he gruffs out. “Where’s Penny?”
My father is dying right before my eyes, and I manage the situation by forcing documents of lost gold into each of our hands. I might not be able to control anything else in my life, but I can at least control this. I can focus on old papers that lead nowhere instead of the pending tragedy at hand and pretend to have some semblance of say in how any of this ends.
While I scour every line, Cap lies slightly inclined in his bed, barely enough strength to hold the papers. Every breath is a struggle and sounds like an old wind-up toy that’s reached the end of its wind. I pass Nash a document, but he doesn’t look at it,focused solely on keeping a steady conversation going with Cap. It’s the opposite of what I asked him to do, and it makes me love him more.
“I’m going to read the letter out loud,” I announce, neither of them objecting as I begin.
As I read, I pause for us to reflect on where we’ve been. Magnolia Plantation, Angel Oak, Folly Beach, Heyward-Washington House, White Point Garden, and the one that makes my dad find enough strength to laugh until he wheezes: St. Michael’s Church.
“Never thought I’d be so proud to see my kid in cuffs,” he says through labored breaths.
If he wasn’t dying, I’d slap him.
“Can you focus?” I snip, before resuming my read.“‘We will visit your Legare cousins as your father once told me they moved here before the war.
“I beg of you not to ask how I hav acquired the means to give you all this as I will name it good fortune after every thing the war took. I hope we hav four sons to fill our new house. but first, know I missed you every day of those six years I was away?—’”
“That’s not right,” Nash interjects, leaning back in his seat and crossing one foot over the opposite knee.
My eyes narrow. “What isn’t?”
“Civil War was four years, he wouldn’t have been gone six. Troops didn’t even start training until ’61 and the war was over in ’65.”
Cap’s eyes are closed but he grunts softly in agreement.
“What?” I reread it, confused. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
Nash shrugs, giving me a suggestive smirk. “I never cared about the gold.”
Even in the sterile atmosphere of the hospital, the admission makes me smile. Just a little.
“The war lasted four years—maybe six is something?”
“Two numbers,” Cap pipes in.
“Four kids and six years,” Nash says.
