about what she said, or maybe he was thinking something else.
She was done trying to figure him out, done wasting time on him. She was not going to spend her life pining after someone who cared so little about himself and the people around him that he would waste his life drinking himself to death.
He moved, and she pushed by without saying anything more.
Walking into the living room, Athena set the plate of eggs and the juice on the coffee table and adjusted Joyce’s hospital bed to a sitting position.
When she’d gotten there this morning, she’d helped Joyce with her morning toiletries and helped her brush her hair and put on something nice.
Preston was no boyfriend, but Joyce was a woman and Athena knew she’d want to look as good as she could. Joyce might be dying, but she still seemed to admire Preston.
Maybe women were just attracted, in a kind of idiotic way, toward unapproachable men who were obviously going to neglect and treat them badly.
There was small comfort in the fact that she was not the only woman in the world who was attracted to such a man.
“I heard you fighting with Liam about his homework.”
Athena wouldn’t have termed that a fight, exactly.
“I just want you to know I raised him better than that.” Joyce lifted her arm and fingered the piercings that went from the lobe of her ear clear up around and through the top cartilage. There must have been ten or twelve of them. Athena hadn’t taken the time to count. “Just because I lived a little wilder life than you did doesn’t mean I didn’t try to make my son learn some manners.”
“I know. We all just do the best we can. Sometimes, it turns out that our best is good enough, and sometimes, it turns out it’s not.” Athena fluffed a pillow and put it behind Joyce’s back. She stood back. “Is that comfortable?”
“No one can do it like you can.”
Athena laughed. “I’ve just been doing it longer. Lara is new and hasn’t learned the secret technique of fluffing pillows.”
Joyce smiled. “You’re the only one that can make me smile, too.”
“Maybe I’m the only one that tries.”
“That too. Same.”
“If you tell me that I cook the best eggs, I’ll feel like I need to win the nurse of the year award.”
“I can’t say for sure. Nobody else makes me eggs.”
“Are you up to feeding yourself this morning?” Athena asked.
“I think so.” Her lips turned down though, and Athena figured she was wondering just how much longer she’d actually be able to do it.
Part of her inability to walk wasn’t necessarily that she couldn’t move her feet, it was just that she couldn’t get her balance. Couldn’t keep it.
Same problem with her hands. She could pick the egg up, she just couldn’t always guide her hand to her mouth.
“Unless you don’t want to clean up the mess. Then you’d better feed me.”
“I don’t mind cleaning up messes. It’s my job.”
“It’s not your job to make sure that my kid did his homework. But I’m glad you did.”
“Did you hear Preston say that he was going to help him tonight?” Athena couldn’t keep a little of the excitement out of her voice. Liam needed his dad now more than ever. It was the only family he had. She couldn’t help but be excited that Preston seemed to be stepping up.
“We’ve been here a week. It’s the first time he’s come down before Liam left for school. I’m not holding my breath that he’s actually going to be here after school or that he’s going to actually help Liam with his homework.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not holding your breath at least. I don’t want to have to do the whole mouth-to-mouth thing. Not this morning anyway. I had onions on my eggs.”
“If I stop breathing, just let me go,” Joyce said with a bit of a sly smile. “I don’t want mouth-to-mouth with onion breath.”
Athena pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down, picking up the plate and the fork and feeding Joyce.
She hadn’t even considered that Preston wouldn’t do what he said he was going to. Could Joyce be right?
She dismissed that thought immediately.
In all the years that she’d known Preston, he might have been an alcoholic, he might have been a daredevil, and he might have been inclined to take the easy way out, but he’d never been dishonest. And he’d never not done what he said he was going to do.
Joyce