He nodded. He let out a relieved sigh, and with it, a breeze, slightly warmer than the room, touched my face.
“But I am worried about her,” I continued. “She’s mixing booze with those pills. That can’t be good. She stays in her pajamas all day and ignores the calls on her cell phone.”
Dad’s relief was short lived. He reached his hand up to rub the back of his neck. The coolness to the breeze was back.
“Do you feel that? That breeze? Where is it coming from?”
Dad held his hand up to check the air. “I don’t feel any breeze.” He shook his head and continued, “Well, I don’t think I can help your mother right now. She won’t even talk to me. Nora can’t do much to help in Scottsdale. Think I should go have a talk with her therapist?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What about Aunt Tina? I know she’s your sister, but she and Mom have always been close.”#p#分页标题#e#
Dad nodded, contemplating that option. “We could try it. I’ll give Tina a call tomorrow. Just to be safe, I’ll call her doctor, too. He needs to know that she’s mixing her meds with alcohol.”
Part of me felt badly for telling on my mother. When I was a kid, I once got in trouble for telling a neighbor girl that Mom made Dad sleep on the couch after they had a particularly bad argument. Mom sat me down and lectured me on what happens in our house is no one else’s business, and I was not to tell tales about my parents to the neighbors. I had to wonder if this rule now applied to my father now that he no longer lived with us. I picked up my egg roll, now sufficiently cooled off, and began nibbling away.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
Chapter 14
By Sunday morning, I’d gotten almost all of my homework caught up. Late in the afternoon, Bryan called to see if I wanted to do something. He picked me up in his car and we drove down to the river. Following alongside the Mississippi is a flood wall with a path on top where people can ride their bikes or walk. The tree leaves on the Wisconsin side of the river were just beginning to turn color. Bryan bought us ice cream cones at a stand, butter pecan for him and cookie dough for me. We ate them while we strolled along the path.
“You’re not scared to go back to school tomorrow, are you?”
I shook my head. “No, not really. It can’t be any more of a disaster than Tuesday.”
“School was hard on me after Jesse died, but I got through it, and so will you.”
Ever since he told me about his brother and that he had the same disease, I’d been waiting for an opportunity to ask him some questions. “Bryan, can I ask you something? It’s kind of personal, so if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool.”
“Go ahead. Ask.” He picked a stone up off of the cement and tossed it out into the river where it sunk with a splash.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about what you told me…that you have that blood disease, too. Are you like…worried or anything? Like what if it was you?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he answered, then paused to lick the dripping ice cream off the side of his cone. “I mean, I’ve thought about it my whole life. My mother was insanely over-protective of both of us, especially when we were little. She actually homeschooled us until seventh grade because she was afraid we’d get hurt at recess or play too roughly with the other kids. Sometimes, it was hard to forget we were different.”
“Wow. So she finally let you go to regular school?”
“Jesse used to beg our parents to let him go to school with the other kids. When he was fourteen and I was twelve, they finally caved, but we weren’t allowed to take gym class or do sports.”
“Wish I could get out of gym class,” I muttered.
He grinned. “I may not have had to go to gym, but gym teachers have always found other ways to torture me, like writing essays on basketball theory or the history of physical education. Did you know the Victorians used to think allowing women to play sports was inhumane due to their delicate constitutions?”
“I think it’s inhumane to make us all change clothes in the same room.”
Bryan chuckled. “So, to answer your question about whether I worry about death, the answer is yes…and no. I’ve lived with the possibility of death for as long as I can remember. I guess I’m sort of used to it. I try to remember that with treatment and a lot of caution, I could live a fairly normal life. But I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times —especially after Jesse died —where I didn’t feel the weight of it, you know?”