38 - Fallon
~ 38 ~
FALLON
The flight was long, last-minute, and rife with turbulence. It ended with me in a taxi, pulling up to my childhood home, and rushing up the broken concrete walkway.
Your father fell.
You need to come right away.
That was the text message Linda sent me ten hours ago. Beyond that, there was nothing else. The asshole wouldn’t accept my calls, refused to respond to any of my other texts, and provided no further details. All calls to my father’s phone went straight to voicemail.
“I’m sure he’s perfectly alright,” the boys had tried to console me, as they drove me to the airport. “Your stepmother would’ve given more information if—”
“My stepmother is an evil fucking succubus,” I shot back acidly, “with no regard for anyone but herself. If we had time, I’d make you stop for holy water so I could throw it in her ugly face.”
I was seething. Livid. Ready for war.
“My father could be in a coma, for all I know. And this soulless bitch won’t answer her phone!”
All three of them had come to the airport, to see me off. Dalton even offered to go with me, but with his practice schedule, I knew that wasn’t possible.
“He’s gonna be okay,” they assured me, hugging me before the security line. “But call us when you get there.”
I’d been furious the whole flight, but my anger was tempered with worry too. Concern for my father’s well-being was the only thing holding me together. I’d talked to him only two days before, and as always, he seemed perfectly fine.
The house looked strangely foreign now, as I approached it. I had no bags. Nothing with me. I stomped up the three cement steps and practically kicked the front door open.
“Fallon!”
My father was resting comfortably in his recliner, feet up, watching television. He looked utterly stunned, but simultaneously thrilled to see me.
“What are you doing here!?”
“Dad!”
I rushed over, hugging him as he sat up. I was so happy and relieved to see he was alright, I clutched him for a good ten seconds.
“Are you alright?” I cried, unable to stop my tears of relief from falling. “I heard you fell!”
My father held up his opposite arm, which was in a cast, just past the elbow.
“I did,” he smiled weakly. “Hit it square on a rock, unfortunately. I even heard the bone snap! Didn’t hurt much, though.”
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe it. Just then, Linda walked in from the kitchen.
“Oh, Fallon,” she said with all the casualness of the mail arriving. “You’re here.”
My wicked stepmother looked as she always did: gaudy, over-processed, and wearing far too much foundation to hide her wrinkles. Not that it was working.
“He broke his arm!?” I practically shouted into her face.
Linda ignored me temporarily, as if I weren’t there. She stepped past me in a hurricane of bad perfume, and set down a TV tray containing my father’s dinner in front of him.
“Yes, well—”
“I thought he fell!” I screamed. “I thought he hurt himself! I thought maybe he was unconscious and couldn’t answer the phone!”
“Well, your father did fall,” Linda said dismissively.
I pointed to the freshly installed cast on my dad’s arm. “You brought me here for that? ”
“I brought you here to help, Fallon,” Linda huffed. “Harvest time is almost over, and your father is already way behind. And now with his broken arm—”
“Are you helping him?” I demanded.
Linda tilted her chin back, pointing her ski slope nose — which I suspected had been done over a few times by now — at the ceiling. When she crossed her arms, the built-in shoulder pads in her shirt flared comically outward.
“I’m at the salon. You know that.”
“Yeah, part time,” I screeched. “If that.”
“Actually—”
“You rent a chair over at Hair Force One, but you’re only there two days a week. At best.”
“Nonsense,” Linda countered. “I’m there whenever my clients need me.”
“Then you dig the potatoes!”
I flung myself into the couch and began to cry. The tears were half relief, half vehement anger. My father rose, his knees cracking loudly, and came over and put his good arm around me.
“Please,” he begged in his usual diplomatic voice. “Ladies, please don’t fight.”
It sounded weak and pathetic, and I despised him for not being stronger. Maybe if he had been, my mother wouldn’t have left him in the first place. It was a shitty thought, and it made me feel absolutely terrible. But it also wasn’t the first time the thought crossed my mind.
This time around however, my father hadn’t had a part in this at all. The whole thing had been orchestrated by Linda.
“You do realize I’m in school, right?” I sneered at her. “Senior year? Advanced classes? Not to mention the work I’m doing at the animal hospital. In fact, I’m missing a shift right now.”
“You can miss a shift or two,” Linda declared with the wave of a hand. “And your classes can wait.”
“My classes… can wait? ”
I clenched my fists so hard they actually hurt. Focusing on the pain was the only thing standing between me and a level ten freak-out.
“I don’t have the time or the crayons to explain this to you,” I said acidly, “but that’s not how college works.”
Ignoring her, I turned to my father. He looked forlorn and defeated, just like always.
“Are you really behind with the harvest?”
His hesitation was all the answer I needed. He shrugged, sheepishly.
“Fine,” I sighed in resignation. “I’m here now, I guess. I’ll call in for a day or two, and I’ll run the John Deere until—”
“We sold the John Deere,” Linda cut me off. “End of last season.”
I blinked in astonishment. Her look of total casual disregard made me want to scratch her eyes out.
“For fuck’s sake, WHY?”
“Fallon!” my father admonished. “Don’t talk like—”
“Because we were behind on a few bills, and we needed to catch up,” Linda shot back. “Besides, your father said we didn’t necessarily need it. We still have the two-wheel tractor with the rotary plow attached to the back. That gets down deep enough to harvest everything.”
“Yes, but it only works if you have two arms! ” I growled at her. “And even then, you’d have to start in July.”
“We did start in July,” my father said, scratching his head.
The half-smile he gave as he returned to his chair was meant to be charming, but it only sank me deeper into despair. My father was getting old. He couldn’t do this very much longer. And Linda certainly wasn’t helping, either. I suspected they were late on their bills because of the exorbitant car payment on the Lexus she’d insisted on having. And now, instead of being able to sit on the comfortable, well-worn seat of his trusty John Deere, my father had to walk behind a self-propelled tractor and steer it manually. With one good arm.
“Go ahead and eat,” I sighed, nodding toward his meal. “Before it gets cold.”
My father smiled even more sheepishly, but this time I chose to focus on the happiness and gratitude in his eyes.
“Thanks, bubblegum.”
I smiled at the pet name. When my mother had taken off, we didn’t have much. My father tried to overcompensate by pretty much getting me whatever I wanted when it came to sweets. And what I wanted most, at that age, was bubblegum.
He began to eat, and gradually returned his focus to the game show he watched every night at exactly the same time. Behind him, Linda and I stared daggers at each other. Eventually, she motioned me into the kitchen.
“There’s still more meatloaf, if you’re hungry. Or I could—”
“No.”
Linda sighed, as if the weight of the world was on her padded shoulders. “Well I’ve made up your room,” she said without malice. “Fresh sheets, blankets, and new towels in the bathroom.”
I bit my tongue. It was the closest thing I was getting to a peace offering.
“Fine, but I’m not staying long,” I told her. “Three, four days, tops.”
“Whatever,” she shrugged. “But temperatures are dropping, and the ground is getting harder every day. The sooner we finish the harvest—”
“ We?”
She stopped talking and cast her eyes downward. Standing toe to toe with her was so very strange, now that we were both adults. This woman had lorded over me for most of my childhood, while my father was out in the fields. I’d looked up at her as a force to be reckoned with. She’d given or denied me permission on every aspect of my life.
Right now though, she just looked very tired.
“The way you tricked me into coming out here was downright disgusting,” I told her coldly. “Don’t ever use my father’s health like that again.”
This time it was my stepmother’s turn to bite her tongue. Watching her squirm was supremely satisfying.
“Putting that behind us, I’m going to make some calls,” I said. “My father did a lot of favors for a lot of people around here. If there was ever a time to cash some of them in, this is it.”
I unclipped the dog-eared address book that hung above the phone on the kitchen wall. It had lived there for my entire childhood. Even before my mother had left.
“Ummm… it is kind of late,” Linda called after me. “You might want to wait until tomorr—”
“Oh, hey! Do you remember when I asked for your opinion?”
My stepmother looked back at me, nonplussed.
“Me neither.”