back at the room, if you want it,” she offered casually, but there was a hitch in her voice that gave her away.
I ignored the flutter of pity in my gut and snatched the table edge to keep her from vibrating it. “Fine,” I said reluctantly. “But for your information, this little piece of paper doesn’t somehow turn Centennial into the Biltmore.”
She leaned across the table and pinched the top of the paper. Gave it a deft yank. Refolded it and slipped it back into her pocket. “Whatever. I’m not asking for too much.”
“You don’t even know what you’re asking for. It is too much.”
“Yeah, well, lucky for me I’m not asking you.”
Maddening. I wanted to knock her upside the head. Instead, I thought it better to knock some sense into Carl. Somehow he’d created this mess, and somehow he had to fix it. I pressed my knuckles to the table and stood. “I think it’s time I go talk with your peepaw.”
She twirled her hair and studied the split ends. “Tell him I’m waiting for him.”
I marched to our room, grumbling all the way. When I opened our bedroom door, my to-do came to a stop. Inside, Carl was perched at the end of his bed, looking about as sorry as I’d ever seen him. And the air in there—God, it was awful. It was laced with grief so thick it felt muggy. Reminded me of a funeral home. Odd, seeing how I hadn’t patronized one in eighty years, not since we buried my ten-year-old brother, Cormac.
I forced myself into the gloom out of necessity, because I didn’t want to leave Josie out there too long, saying God knows what to God knows who. We needed to giddyup this pity party, and fast. But once I sat next to Carl, shoulder to shoulder, I realized my ambitions exceeded my talents. I’d always been the kind of man who went out of his way to avoid needing this sort of comfort, and consequently I’d become the kind of man incapable of giving it. I felt a visceral need to shake him and tell him to dry it up, just like my father did to me back in the day. Trouble was: I wasn’t my father, and Carl sure as hell wasn’t me.
I resorted to my collection of hackneyed sympathy sayings—all bullshit, really—and settled on “Carl, I’m sure your daughter is looking down at you from heaven.”
Like it made things different.
Like I believed it.
A sigh shuddered through him—a soundless scale playing down his thin body. I gave him a minute, then peeked in his direction to gauge our progress. He had his red-rimmed eyes fixed on his old wedding photo, taped to the mirror. He revered that picture like my mother did her crucifix. It was the only thing in his possession that he acted tight as a tick with.
I waited for him to say something, but after a minute of sitting there doing nothing but getting crushed by the blue in the room, I spoke up. “How about I open a window?”
He stopped me by grabbing my arm, his clutch weak except for his fingertips, which dug into me like little meat hooks.
“Come on now. A little air will do us some good.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like to lose a child.” His grip tightened. “To lose your children.”
I instinctually bristled at this. It sounded too much like an accusation, and there was a plurality about it that didn’t make a damn bit of sense. I shrugged off his grip and leveled myself on the bed. Tried to keep my voice as even as possible. “Exactly how many children have you had?”
His slack-jawed sorrow gathered up in anger.
“I’m just asking,” I said, indignant. “Excuse me for losing track today.”
He stared hard at me and pointed with a shaking hand out the bedroom door—counting Kaiya Mori, I suppose. Then he raised his other hand and pointed to the picture, and that’s when I remembered entirely too late: He’d had a child with Jenny too. A stillbirth. I’d forgotten because he mentioned it only once, and afterward I didn’t pry and never