Then the fifth caregiver showed up-a man that time-and I ran him off too. I got an email and a phone call after that one.
And so it went. It's nothing but a ridiculous game we play, all so he can pretend that he gives a shit.
This time, however, I sense a change in the rules, and I brace for it. It's taken twenty-four years, but I've finally started to figure my dad out. Instinct tells me he's about to switch tactics.
I take another sip of my drink-a big one-and slump further into the chair, letting him know that no matter what he throws at me, nothing will change. Nothing can change.
"You get one more shot," he says.
I don't bother to disguise my snort. I was expecting better from him. "Isn't that what you told me last time? And the time before?"
He moves faster than I thought a seventy-one-year-old could, and snatches the whisky out of my hand. I glance up in surprise. The amber liquid's all over his hand and on the rug, but he doesn't seem to register it, because he's too busy looking at me like he hates me.
Bring it on. I hate me too.
"I mean it, Paul. This is your last chance to show me that you have any desire to continue with your life. Any desire at all to get your agility back, to learn to cope with your physical changes. I understand why you wanted to hide at first, but it's been over two years. You're done. You get six more months to get your shit together."
"Or what?" I ask, pushing myself to my feet and loving that the injury hasn't taken away the fact that I'm still a few inches taller than him.
"Or you're out."
I blink. "What do you mean, I'm out?"
"Out of this house."
"But I live here," I say, not quite understanding where he's going with this.
"Yeah? You paying the mortgage? Or the utilities? Did you build the gym exactly as the physical therapist specified, or was that me?"
I grind my teeth through my dad's sarcasm. It was my dad's idea to move me into a luxury home, not mine, and it shows how little he knows me. If he thinks kicking me out of the cushy mansion would mean anything to me, he's dead wrong.
He's got an expectant look on his face, as though he thinks I'll go along with his little plan so I can sit here in opulence and drink overpriced booze.
I feel a little surge of satisfaction that he's about to be disappointed.
"Fine," I say, deliberately letting my tone go careless. "I'll move out."
He blinks a little in surprise. "To where?"
"I'll figure it out."
And I will. I don't have much money to my name. I know that. But between the disability compensation I get as a veteran and my smallish savings account, I can get a little cabin somewhere.
My dad's eyes narrow. "What about groceries? Clothes? Essentials?"
I shrug. "I don't need gourmet shit and designer clothes."
My eyes catch on the label of expensive whisky on the sideboard, but I don't feel even the smallest pang of regret that it'll soon be out of my budget. I'm in it for the numbness, not the taste. Cheap booze will do the trick just as well.
"And your precious books?" he sneers. "All those first editions you're so proud of?"
I fix my eyes on the bookshelf across the room. He's got his wing-tip shoe on my Achilles' heel and he knows it.
My father is ridiculously wealthy, and the allowance he sends me each month is ridiculously generous. I don't spend a penny of it on myself. Except for the books. After what happened over there, it's easy to tell myself that I've earned the right to sit and brood with overpriced books.
But the thought of losing my book collection isn't what has my heart pounding in my chest. I don't need the books. But I do need my dad's money, at least until I come into the trust fund from my mom's side when I turn twenty-five.
The thought of continuing to take his monthly allowance, knowing that he thinks it all goes toward books and video games, makes me nauseous. I'd like nothing more than to tell him where he can shove those checks.
But the money's not for me.
So I'll continue to take it. Even if that makes me nothing more than a mooching cripple in his eyes.
"What do you want?" I ask gruffly, refusing to meet his eyes. It feels cowardly, but hey, I've gotten pretty good at cowardly.
He blows out a long breath. "I want you to try, Paul. I want you to at least try to come back to the living."
"I mean with the next nurse you're sending up here," I say, cutting him off. "What do I have to do so you don't throw your pathetic son out on the street to become yet another begging veteran?"
The word veteran hangs between us, and for a second I think he might relent, because if my Achilles' heel is my dependency on him, his Achilles' heel is my sacrifice for this country.
But the man's stubbornness has only increased with age, and instead of backing off, he turns toward the desk, dropping the whisky glass with enough force so that the liquid sloshes over the sides and onto the wood. It's an uncharacteristically careless gesture.
"Six months," he says. "You cooperate with this woman for six months. You do as she asks, when she asks it. She tells you to get to the gym, you get to the gym. She tells you to eat fucking broccoli, you eat fucking broccoli. She wants you to wear a tux for dinner, you'll do that too. I'll speak with this woman every Sunday, and if you've so much as looked at her funny, this all goes away."
"Break it down for me," I say through my clenched jaw. "If I misbehave, I'm homeless?"
His eyes close for a half second. "I'm saying that after this, you're on your own. You want to give up on life, you do it on your own dime."
My chest tightens, and for a second I think it's anger and feel like I might punch the man for not understanding. Did he ever have to watch a little boy's stunned expression as his mother gets blown to kingdom come? Or see a skinny dog lose a leg to an IUD? Did he ever have a knife to his face, or seen bodies so mutilated mothers wouldn't recognize their own son or daughter?
I snarl and push the thoughts away. All of them.
This isn't about me. This isn't about my dad. And it's sure as fuck not about some stupid, useless caretaker who thinks my entire world will be fixed by eating chicken noodle soup.
This is about a woman who lost her high school sweetheart. It's about a little girl who has cancer instead of a daddy. Talk about getting the short end of the fucking stick.
I don't need my dad's money.
But Alex's family does.
"So if I make it through the six months acting like a good boy, the checks keep coming?"
He meets my eyes, and for the first time today he doesn't look angry or disgusted. He looks sad. "Yes. The checks will keep coming."
I inhale a long breath through my nose. The situation is beyond shitty, and for the thousandth time I rack my brain for ways to provide for the Skinners without my dad's money. If it was just a matter of putting food on their table and Christmas presents under their tree, maybe whatever low-paying job an injured war vet could get would be enough.
But Lily's cancer treatments require big money. Money Harry Langdon has.
"Three months," I say. "I play this woman's stupid games for three months, not six."
He holds my gaze for several seconds as we silently test each other's resolve, and to my surprise I win this round, because he nods. "Three months."
And then, as though everything is settled and he didn't take what pathetic life I have left and piss all over it, he moves toward the door. "Mick will drive me back to the airport. I'll see you. . . ."
His words trail off, and I brace both hands on the desk, staring out at the water now barely visible in the almost-darkness. "Yeah. I'll see you."
My father hesitates in the doorway, and I turn around.
"Hey," I say, stopping him before he disappears for the next month, or three months, or however long he can make it until the guilt compels him to look at me again. "This woman coming tomorrow. What if I do my best to cooperate, but she's like the rest and can't handle . . . Maine?"
We both know I don't mean Maine. The problem is that it takes more than a hefty paycheck to expect a woman to spend every single day looking at my ravaged face and bad temper for three months. The problem isn't Maine. The problem is me.
"What if she leaves before the three months are up?" I press, thinking of Lily's sad eyes and Amanda's haunted ones.
My father is silent for several seconds. "Well . . . see that she doesn't."
CHAPTER THREE
Olivia
The flight from New York to Portland, Maine, is shorter than I would have liked.
I was hoping that by the time I stepped off the plane, I'd have my thoughts together. That I'd have pep-talked myself into a You can do this! mind-set.
The reality is something more akin to acute nausea, but it's too late to turn back.
Harry Langdon's last email told me to look for a sign with my name on it. Simple enough. I grew up in the land of personal drivers. In other words, I know how to find my name among a sea of waiting chauffeurs at baggage claim.