Page 51 of The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly

I fill two cups of coffee and move into the checkout line.

“Four fifty-six,” says the teenage girl behind the register. She looks almost my age, and I wonder for a moment why she’s not in school. What sort of shit does life have to throw your way to end up cashiering in the hospital before six o’clock in the morning? Then I remember this is my spring break week and it’s Saturday, and her presence there makes more sense.

Smiling at her in an attempt to pass on a little bit of the elevator woman’s kindness, I pull a crumpled five-dollar bill out of my pocket and hand it to the girl. Since I missed out on last night’s tips, it’s the last of my cash.

My stomach grumbles as the smell of bacon rises from the person’s plate behind me. I’ll only have change left after the coffees, but at least there are still the pancakes I left in the nurses’ fridge.

Thank you, Jett, for always showing up. With pancakes. And for generally just being a miracle of a human.

I’m about to take the receipt from the girl when I freeze.

“What’s he doing here?” I mutter, peering toward the ketchup station in the dining area.

My dad’s hair is still long, but it’s now almost fully gray. He wears a faded flannel and dark blue jeans.

God help me, he’s brought Len’s electric guitar and has it out. In the middle of the hospital cafeteria. Face-palm.

Oblivious to the looks he’s getting, he strums a few riffs lightly, looking completely out of place. Fury chases embarrassment as I watch him. I want to go over and dump my coffee on his head. I also want to skulk out of the place, ignoring him completely.

How did he know Chris was here? We haven’t seen him since he left. Does he think he can just come back into our lives and pretend like everything is okay?

“Miss?” The cashier knocks on the counter like she’s banging on a door. “You have to move on. It’s breakfast rush. You can’t just stand there.”

I come back to myself and shake my head. I’ll ignore him for now and get coffee to Mom. Maybe he’ll be gone when I come back for lunch.

Trying to hide behind a group of med students in scrubs, I make it to the door. But, like Orpheus, I’m betrayed by my treacherous heart. I turn, and my dad’s eyes meet mine.

“Kit-Kat!” he calls out, waving to me.

I sigh. Sometimes the only way out is through. Taking a long sip from my coffee, I wave back and walk toward his table. At first I think he’s going to hug me, but then he stands up and gives me another weird little wave. Then he changes his mind and opens his arms.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says. His voice is strained, like he’s trying too hard.

I pull out a chair and sit down, neatly sidestepping his hug. “What are you doing here, Lars?”

His eyebrows go up at my use of his first name, but he doesn’t say anything. Up close I can see all the gray in his stubble and the deep circles under his eyes. He looks rough. Like the last few years have been hard, despite the glossy church advertisements that have somehow airbrushed his face into a smooth, youthful picture.

“Len called me last night, asking about the guitar. I didn’t tell him I was going to bring it by the Castle. I was there for the whole show, sitting in the Green Knight’s section.”

“And you didn’t even say hello?”

“I talked to Chris before the show,” he says, picking up a coffee stirrer and twisting it in his hands. “He didn’t want to talk, but I wanted to apologize. Which he took badly.”

Maybe that’s why Chris was distracted enough to fall off his horse and get so injured.

“He’s furious at you. As he should be since you stole all his money for college.”

Lars shakes his head. “I wish I could make up for the college fund I … um … borrowed from. But I don’t have the money anymore.”

I gape at that. “Borrowed?”

He has the good grace to look embarrassed at least. When his heroin habit ran through all his and Mom’s savings, he drained the college funds Mom started for us when we were kids. Somehow, she’d kept them hidden from him. She had thousands of dollars of cash stuffed into jars and hidden in an old box of diapers in the attic. But he found them. And wiped them out entirely. The party he must’ve had from that money took him halfway across the country and into who knows what sorts of sleaziness.

“I’m clean now,” he says, taking off his jacket and pulling up his sleeves. Where before there had been long track marks, like overgrown roads running down his arm, there are now just knotted skin and thick scars. “I left the church because of a fight with the other guys, but I’m still clean.”

I mostly believe him.

“Good for you,” I snarl. The words come out fiercer than I’d expected, but I don’t regret them. “But we don’t want anything from you.”