“Why?” Aaron wonders, along with the rest of us.
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.” I spring up from my chair and march around to the other side of the desk.
“Leigh, wait. You can’t charge over to the hospital in this state. Let me come with you.” He takes hold of my hands, and I look down at our joined hands and think how natural they look together.
“Okay,” I whisper, ignoring the way Aaron is too busy staring at us until I nudge him in the ribs.
“Can you take care of things here?” He nods but hasn’t taken his eyes off our still joined hands. “Kyle is coming in with his Camaro. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” I warn.
“Okay.” He looks a little shell-shocked.
“Promise?” I know how Aaron likes to gossip, but I don’t actually think he would about this; I just need to be sure.
“I promise, just go.”
• • •
The drive to the hospital is silent, but my brain is racing as it tries to process what the letter that is now scrunched up in my back pocket means. What has my dad gotten himself into now? Has my mom been in touch and wants half the house or something? None of it makes sense. Why would he need that kind of money?
“Stop worrying, Leigh. We’ll work it out.” Max reaches over and takes hold of the hand that lies limp in my lap. He has certainly been the calm one so far.
Once we arrive at the hospital, I am all for racing through the corridors until we reach Dad’s room, but Max holds me back with a firm grip on my hand, forcing me to walk at a slower pace. The elevator seems to take ages as it climbs steadily through the numbers, stopping at every floor. People take their time entering and exiting the elevator, and Max pushes me into a corner, shielding my body with his. It is totally inappropriate, but I just want him to ravish me here in the elevator cart.
“Stop giving them all dirty looks,” he mumbles and kisses my temple.
“I can’t help it; they are all so slow. Don’t they know we’re in a hurry?” I bounce on the spot until Max plants his hands on my shoulders to keep me still.
At long last, we reach Dad’s floor and sedately walk down the hallway to his room. Surprise, surprise, he’s watching Discovery, an episode of Fast and Loud that I’ve seen at least twice so he must have seen it more than that. His face lights up when he sees us in the doorway, and I feel a twinge of sympathy that is quickly replaced with anger when I feel the letter burning a hole in my back pocket.
“What are you two doing here together?” Confusion replaces his initial surprise, or maybe it’s the thunderous look on my face that tips him off.
“What’s this about?” I pull out the crumpled letter and smooth it out on his table. He doesn’t seem surprised to see it and looks up at us.
“How did you get that?”
“It came to the garage. What is going on? Why would you try to take out a loan against the garage?”
“I didn’t want you to find out.”
“Clearly not, but I have, so I want to know what in the hell is going on.” I am almost shouting now, and Max casts a worried glance at the door, sure that at any moment Nurse McCartney is going to walk in and throw us out for upsetting her patients. Taking a step forward, he rests a hand on my shoulder that helps in some way to calm me down.
“We’re just concerned, Hank.”
Dad sighs heavily and tips his head back against the mound of pillows at his back. He looks weary, and for the first time, I realize that he isn’t as young as I always remembered him. To me, he will always look like he did when I was a child. Always strong and protective with an infinite amount of patience. Except, of course, when I was dancing in front of the TV when the Indy 500 was on. Nothing was ever too much trouble; he would stop whatever he was doing to help me. With my homework and projects and he taught me everything I know about cars. I never felt I missed out on not having a mom around because my dad was everything to me. He made up for it in every way that counted.
But looking at him now, bandaged up and uncomfortable, I see that he may still be Superman in my eyes, but he is just as fallible as the rest of us. For now, it’s like role reversal, and I need to be the one to help him, not make him feel any worse about whatever mess he’s in.
Sitting down on the edge of his bed, I take his rough, weather-beaten hand in mine. “Dad, please just tell us what’s happened.”
He scrubs a hand down the growth of stubble on his chin, which is in need of a shave, and blows out a harsh breath, steeling himself.
“That race, the one that I got injured in. Well, the stakes were high, higher than normal, and higher than they should have been for such a stupid race. But Tom Anderson was there-”