need anything call on Chester.”
He shoved his hand through his hair. “Surely you see that I have greater need of you now than I did before this cast covered my whole leg. Besides, you have no idea how boring it is being stuck here with nothing to do and no one to talk to.”
“Well, you have the TV,” she said, plucking the remote from the mantel, “and there are books on the bedside table. Plus, you have your phone.”
He rolled his eyes and snapped, “Fine. You weren’t hired to keep me company. I get it.”
“It’s just that I have other responsibilities,” she said a tad defensively, “and I’ve already been here more today than I expected because I had to be sure how the new meds would affect you.”
“Whether they’d give me nightmares, you mean.”
“Yes, among other things.”
He had not, fortunately, dreamed at all—not that he remembered, anyway. In fact, now that he thought of it, the nightmare hadn’t come since the doctors had changed his prescription. The lack of nightmares didn’t change the reality, however.
He averted his gaze, shrugging. “Guess I’ll see you later then.”
“Yes. See you later.”
She handed him the television remote and went out.
Loneliness swamped him the instant she left his sight.
Appalled, he shook his head. It wasn’t that he was actually lonesome. Of course it wasn’t! He’d been living alone for the better part of a decade now. Good grief, could he not be alone in a suite of rooms in a house full of people without becoming maudlin about it?
He toyed with the idea of calling Aaron and getting him down here to watch the game with him, but Aaron had already made that onerous drive once today, and Stephen really couldn’t, in good conscience, ask him to make it again. He wondered whom else he might call and thought of his mother. Suddenly the need to hear the sound of her voice welled up in him, but the next instant Nick’s face wavered before his mind’s eye. Gulping, Stephen pushed away that vision, along with any desire to contact his mother. What other choice did he possibly have?
Ten minutes later, he was pecking out a text message to Kaylie, informing her that the game would be over by ten.
“It’s ready, Dad,” Kaylie said, setting the casserole dish on the cast-iron trivet in the center of the kitchen table next to a tossed green salad. “Will you bring the bread?”
“It’s not right,” Hub rasped, continuing with a theme that he’d been harping on since she’d gotten home. “You should be able to eat undisturbed at a decent hour.”
It was forty minutes past their usual dinnertime, a mere forty minutes, and they tended to eat early, but Kaylie said nothing. It would help if Stephen would refrain from texting her every half hour or so. Still, she couldn’t help thinking of the way Stephen had enjoyed Hilda’s drover’s pie tonight.
She smiled to herself, remembering the appreciative sounds he’d made and the expressions of bliss on his handsome face. It had been thoughtful of Hilda to cook a dish that he could eat with one hand and to have it ready early. Otherwise, they would have had to find something to tide him over until the aunties’ normal dinner hour, which was about twenty minutes from now. Hilda had said she’d done it because Stephen had missed lunch, but Kaylie suspected that it was a combination of Hilda’s compassion and Stephen’s complimentary remarks regarding her gingerbread muffins. Kaylie’s own cooking did not receive such high marks from her father.
“And we ought to be able to count on a decent dinner,” Hub went on, carrying the loaf of whole wheat bread to the table from the kitchen counter by its plastic sleeve, “not these hastily thrown together, one-dish concoctions that are all you have time for now. Your mother would have laid a proper table and provided a balanced meal.”
Kaylie let her exasperation show, placing one oven-mitted hand on her hip and gesturing toward the table with the other. “What is wrong,” she asked, “with place mats, dinner plates, napkins, forks, knives, spoons and drinking glasses? Isn’t that an adequate table setting? And where do you think I got the recipe for this casserole? From Mom, that’s who! I’m sorry she’s not around to serve it, but that’s not my fault.”
Hub reared back as if she’d struck out at him. “So, you think it’s my fault?”
“Of course not!”
“Will you blame God then?”
“Never! It’s no one’s fault. Sometimes life