Then:
Ryan: Thank you for staying in the lobby.
The room goes very quiet around me.
I could agree. I could make it professional. I could protect us both with a neat little wall.
Instead I type:
I know the difference between a story and a place I have not been invited into.
His answer takes longer.
Ryan: I am trying to believe that.
I set the phone beside me on the quilt and stare at it until the screen goes dark.
Outside, the farm settles around me with unfamiliar creaks. Somewhere down the hall, one of the girls laughs in her sleep.
I came for context.
By midnight, I am afraid I have walked into a part of Ryan McAllister I have no right to use.
I open the notebook anyway.
Not to write the room. Not yet.
I write three words at the top of a blank page: Do not steal.
Then I close the cover, set it facedown on the nightstand, and lie awake under the blue quilt while the house creaks around me, alive with people I have no right to hurt.
Ryan
Icome through the farmhouse door at seven in the morning, smelling like hospital antiseptic and helicopter fuel, the panic finally leaving my body.
My mother is alive.
Valve replaced. Rhythm stable. Out of the ICU sooner than expected because Susan McAllister has apparently decided major surgery is an inconvenience she intends to outwork.
Relief should soften me. Instead, it leaves me scraped hollow.
I drop my keys on the kitchen counter and stare at the coffee maker like it might explain how a man is supposed to come home from almost losing his mother and then return to being useful to everyone still standing.
The house is quiet in the wrong way.
Emma and Lily are usually loud by now. Ten years old, identical when they want something, completely different when they assign blame. They fight over cereal, bathroom lights,algebra homework, and whether some boy in Lily’s class is cute or just tall.
This morning, nothing.
I go to my old room, shower until the water runs cold, and change into jeans and a T-shirt from a drawer my mother still keeps folded like I am coming home from college for the weekend. The shirt has a faded Stampede logo. It fits too tight across my shoulders.
My mother would say I look healthy.
My father would ask if I am eating enough.
I do not have an answer for either one.
When I walk back toward the kitchen, I hear voices.
