and interested for as long as she has. I would have thought she’d tune out five touchdowns ago.
Without hesitation, I take the envelope from Dad and shred it open, yanking out the piece of paper inside. A check. A $2,376 check. The numbers stare up at me like they’re big, red flashing lights, but I just gaze down at them blankly.
“Hoping for more?” Dad infers from my perceptible pause.
“No.” I shake my head and run my fingers over the total written on the parchment. “No. It’s just weird to see everything that happened with the accident summed up in one figure on a piece of paper.”
At first Dad looks at me with empathy, then something crosses over his face that resembles anger. “Maggie Girl, I’m just so grateful this is all that’s left of it.” He takes the check from my hands and waves it like a paper flag in front of my face and I feel the breeze it creates, chilling my skin. “I’m grateful your injuries were minimal. I’m grateful we don’t have to spend hours at the courthouse pleading your case. I’m grateful for all the witnesses that were there and that it was open and shut—”
“That’s because he died, Dad.” It’s the first time I’ve said it, the first time I’ve acknowledged it, really, but physically pushing the words out of me feels like vomiting. “The case was easy because the drunk who hit me died.”
Dad’s mouth straightens. “He ran a red light, Maggie. He slammed into your car, you flipped, and then he careened into four other vehicles before wrapping himself around a pole. He didn’t stand a chance.”
But he did have a chance. For a month he occupied a hospital bed and machines did his breathing for him. He very nearly survived. Then something happened—some kind of issue with his heart—and the man that brought Ran and I together ceased to exist. Just like that. He was gone. And now all that is left is this payment from my insurance company. Some sort of morbid consolation prize.
“I don’t know.” I pull the check from his hands. “Something about this feels wrong. Like I’m benefiting from it somehow.”
“That’s not what this is. This is getting what you’re due. Don’t look at it as blood money, Mags. You can’t look at it that way.” Dad tosses the rest of the mail into the trashcan under the sink and walks back around the breakfast bar toward me, placing his rough-skinned hands on my shoulders. “You don’t have to spend it if you don’t want to, but I really think your life would be easier if you had a reliable mode of transportation.”
I nod because he’s right. It would be nice to have a car again. It might not necessarily make my life easier, but maybe more manageable. I just don’t know if I’ll physically be able to spend this check that dangles between my fingers.
“I don’t want to go car shopping,” I offer weakly as an out. Mikey leaps from the couch, practically tosses Sadie to the ground, and rips the money out of my hands. “Let me do it! I’m a great haggler. I can get you a sweet deal on a new ride.”
“Fair enough.” I take the check back, grab a pen from a cup of pens and pencils near the telephone, and flip the paper over to scribble my autograph on the back. “Just don’t get me some old convertible or anything totally impractical.”
“Got it.” Mikey bounces on the balls of his feet like a giddy child, tugging at each corner of the check so it slacks and then tightens over and over in between his hands. “No motorcycles, either?”
Dad’s eyes go wide. “Maggie would never ride a motorcycle, Mikey.”
“Yeah, but her boyfriend does.”
As if Dad’s eyes weren’t big enough already, they nearly pop from their sockets with that one. “Maggie? A boyfriend?”
I fire the harshest glare I can engineer toward Mikey, hoping he literally feels the switchblades I intended to shoot from my eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“No, you just want to lick him or something gross.” He turns toward Dad. “It’s that paramedic, Ran. The one that brought her to the hospital and the guy that took me last time. They’re hot and heavy or something.”
Dad raises both hands up and backs away from us. “I don’t think I want to hear any more.”
“Just go get me a car, will you Mikey?” I shove him in the chest, but he doesn’t flinch,