Chapter 8
CAL
Ihear them before I open the front door and I shake my head. It’s normal for me to come home and find these two bickering about something.
"Will, you can't just write 'table for Dave' on an invoice. That's not how invoicing works."
"It's a table. Dave knows what a table is."
"Your accountant and the state need better information. An article number. This is a business document, not a Post-it note."
"It's worked fine for thirty years, angel."
I stop with my keys in hand. Angel? Since when did my father call her angel?
And since when did he say it in the same voice he uses when he's giving me shit?
The voice he only reserves for me. The same one he used when I was nine and still uses now at twenty-nine.
Except now, apparently, it isn't just for me anymore.
"It has not worked fine for thirty years." Lily's voice cuts through the door, exasperated but warm. "It has worked in spite of you for thirty years, old man."
Dad laughs the kind of laugh I hadn't heard from him in longer than I wanted to count. He'd been doing that more since Lily decided my house was an extension of her daily route.
I stand on the porch a moment longer, hair still smelling like smoke from a brush fire we'd put out near the highway.
First shift back. I'd spent most of it thinking about what I'd come home to.
Whether she'd be here. Whether I wanted her to be.
I know the answer to the second one. I just don't like it.
I open the door and find them on the living room floor. Both of them. My fifty-year-old father, on the floor, back against the recliner, cast stretched out in front of him like he's settled in for the long haul.
Lily is cross-legged beside him, surrounded by papers and folders and what looks like years of Dad's paperwork spread in messy piles across the carpet.
She's wearing an oversized sweater with a wide neck, the kind that shows her collarbones and shoulders and way too much bare skin. She loves those and I hate them. I don't need to be seeing more of her naked skin than necessary if I am to survive her.
Her hair up, or trying to be. Twisted into something on top of her head and clipped there, but that hair doesn't cooperate with containment.
It's thick, dark, ridiculous amounts of it spilling out of the clip and down her neck and over her shoulders in loose waves that catch the lamplight like she's doing it on purpose.
She has reading glasses on. Oversized, a little too big for her face, and I've never seen her wear them before. They shouldn't work, but they do. They make her look like someone you'd find curled up in a library, someone you'd want to interrupt just to watch her look up at you.
She's got a calculator in one hand, highlighter in the other, sitting in my living room like she's been doing this her whole life. Like she belongs here. In my house. On my floor. Next to my dad.
"Hey, son." Dad spots me first. There's more color in his face than he's had in weeks. "How was the shift?"
"Fine. Brush fire off 101, nothing major." I drop my bag by the door and toe off my boots. "Why are you two on the floor?"
"Lily needed space to organize."
"So you got on the floor. With a broken leg."
"The recliner was limiting my range of motion."
"Your range of motion for what?"
"Pointing at things." He points at a stack of papers to demonstrate. "See? Can't do that from a chair."
No matter how much I try not to, my eyes find her like they've been trained. But here, in my own house, I don't have Rome or anyone else monitoring my every movement. Here I can look my fill.
She glances up at me over those glasses. As if she needed the help. Every day I tell myself today will be the day I stop staring. That someone else will walk into a room and hit me the same way. It never works.
"Hi." Her smile pushes the rims of her glasses up a notch.
"Hi." I move inside and lower myself onto the far end of the couch. Maximum distance. Smart. Necessary.
She tilts her head and slides the glasses up onto her hair, studying me.
"You smell like smoke."
"Sorry. Sometimes a shower doesn't cut it."
"No worries." She turns back to the papers. "Smells nice."
She's back to the papers, brow furrowed, bottom lip caught between her teeth, like the invoices require her full attention. Maybe they do. Or maybe she knows exactly what she said and is choosing not to meet my eye.
Dad's eyes flick to me, eyebrows shooting up. I keep my face still and give him an annoyed glare that he pointedly ignores.
Two weeks of her coming around. That's all it's taken for my father to see and hear enough to know exactly what's happening. He also delights in watching me suffer. It's become his primary source of entertainment since the accident.
"What is all this?" I gesture at the floor, desperate for a subject change.
"Your father's bookkeeping system." Lily holds up a folder with two fingers like it might be contagious. "And I use the word 'system' very loosely."
"She's being dramatic."
"Will, you better hope you are never audited, because this is a disaster." She's scolding him now, full force. "We are going to implement a better system than 'table for Dave,' mark my words."
"But I know which Dave..."
"There are many Daves in Harbor Hill, Will!"
"But only one who wanted a table."
Lily catches my eye like she needs a witness. Her face is so genuinely horrified that I have to press my lips together to keep from smiling.
I hold up both hands. "I'm not getting involved."
"Smart man," Dad says.
"Coward," Lily counters.
She turns back to the invoices, muttering something under her breath about receipt retention and tax liability. I sit there on my couch watching her argue with my father about inventory tracking, and I think I can't let this get comfortable.
I'd spent two weeks out of work, stuck in this house and barely sleeping, burning off the rest every afternoon with runs that left me gasping just to keep myself level. I thought I'd feel normal once I was back on shift. I don't.
Most days, I walk into my own living room and find her there, and each day it feels less and less wrong.
She's stopped coming every day. Dad's better now, moving around on his own more, and her visits have thinned to three or four times a week.
Still enough that I've started noticing the days she doesn't come.
Which is worse than noticing the days she does.
Rome told me to stay away from his sister. He'd meant it, and I'd respected it. God knows how much I keep respecting it. But how the hell am I supposed to stay away from her when she's in my house more often than not?
He hasn't said a word about it, which means he doesn't know. Or she just hasn't mentioned it because it doesn't mean anything to her. Because she's friendly. Because she's visiting an injured man she feels guilty about and there's nothing more to it. That's the simpler explanation. The smarter one.
The invoices are in organized piles now and color-coded.
Lily has highlighters in four colors and is explaining her system to Dad like she's defending a doctoral thesis.
Dad is listening with complete focus, nodding along like he's absorbing every word.
He has absolutely no intention of following through. She hasn't figured that out yet.
"Green is completed and paid," she says, tapping the first stack. "Yellow is completed, but outstanding. Pink is in progress. Orange is quotes."
"What about the ones that are gifts?" Dad asks, and I can already see where this is going.
"Gifts?" Lily's highlighter stops mid-stroke.
"Sometimes I build things for people and don't charge them when they can't afford it."
She stares at him, sets the highlighter down slowly, like she needs both hands free to process what she's just heard.
"Will…"
"What?" He blinks at her, completely unbothered.
"You can't just build furniture for free."
"I can if I want to."
She presses her fingers to her temples.
"You're running a business."
"I'm running a workshop." He shrugs like this is obvious. "There's a difference."
She drops her head into her hand, and Dad catches my eye across the room and grins. He's having the time of his life.
That's the thing about Lily. She doesn't half-ass anything. If the problem is a stubborn man who's been writing "some wood" on invoices for three decades, she's going to fix it whether he cooperates or not.
"Anna would've liked you," Dad says, studying Lily with pride. "She liked people who showed up," he adds.
Lily's hands still on the papers."Thank you, Will." She reaches over and puts her hand on top of his. "I like her too. Very much."
I like her. Present tense, like my mother is still here, still someone worth knowing. Lily never met her, but she says it like she did. Like the stories were enough. Dad doesn't say anything for a moment, then nods slowly.
She goes back to the invoices, Dad goes back to pointing at things. And I sit on my couch in my own house feeling like a guest in a life that's rearranging itself around me without my permission.
Later, she's in the kitchen. I'm supposed to clean up after dinner, but mostly I'm standing here holding a dish towel like I've forgotten what it's for. She bumps me with her hip as she passes, casual and easy, and I go completely still.
"I've got it." She's already at the sink before I can respond.
"You're a guest. And it's my kitchen."
"And I said, I've got it."
She turns on the tap and starts rinsing plates, loading the dishwasher like she grew up in this kitchen. I stand behind her, watching the back of her neck. A piece of hair has fallen from the clip situation, one dark wave resting against her skin.
I think about moving it aside. Tucking that single curl behind her ear, letting my fingers trail down the curve of her neck, finding out if her skin is as warm as it looks. My hand starts to lift before I catch myself. I shove it in my pocket.
Get it fucking together, Holt.
I escape to the living room and sit with Dad. He's watching me like he can see every thought I'm having and is just waiting for me to catch up.
"What now?"
"Nothing." He says it so innocently he should've gone into acting.
"You're so full of shit, old man."
He scratches his jaw and looks at the ceiling, picture of innocence.
"I just think it's nice," he says. "Having someone here. Someone like Lily girl."
"She's here for you."
"Mm-hmm."
"She is." I'm muttering now, getting more annoyed by the second.
"I said mm-hmm, Cal. That's agreement."
It's the most loaded syllable in the English language, and we both know it. From the kitchen, I can hear Lily humming along to something on her phone. Dad is sitting there watching me with a pleased grin, and I want to throw something at his head.
"Knock it off. You're creeping me out."
He chuckles, eyes crinkling at the corners. "I'm not doing anything."
"You're sitting there thinking things." I'm whisper-yelling now, which is not my finest moment.
"A man can't think?"
"Not when he thinks the way you think."
"And how do I think?"
"Loudly. Delusionally."
He laughs at that, completely unbothered, already on the victory lap.
"She's good for this house, Cal. That's all I'm saying."
"You're saying more than that."
"I'm saying exactly that." He leans back, still grinning. "Anything else you're hearing is coming from you."
I open my mouth to retort, but snap it shut. The bastard has me and he knows it.
Lily comes back from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. "All done. What did I miss?"
"Nothing," I say quickly.
"Cal was just telling me how much he enjoys your visits," Dad offers, casual as ever.
"I was not..."
"He said they're the highlight of his week."
"Dad. Stop it. Right now."
Lily glances between us, clearly amused.
"Is that right, Callahan?"
I really wish she would stop saying my full name like that. Every time she does, I forget how to act like a normal person. I'm already shifting in my seat, grabbing a pillow and clutching it like a goddamn teddy bear before I realize what I'm doing and toss it aside.
"He's making things up. It's the pain medication."
"I'm not on pain medication anymore," Dad says, and I could kill him.
"Clearly you should be," I mutter.
She giggles, low and bright and so genuinely delighted that I have to turn away to hide the smile it pulls out of me.
She leaves around nine. I drive her home because it's dark and because that's apparently what we do now. That's the routine. She comes over, she argues with my father, she makes my house feel less empty, and then I drive her home and pretend I'm not counting the minutes until she comes back.
On the way, she tells me about a client at the flower shop who ordered forty sunflowers for his wife and came back an hour later to add forty more because, quote, "she looked at me like I should have done eighty from the start."
When I laugh, the corner of her mouth turns up. I'm trying very hard not to keep track of that.
I pull up in front of her building, but don't put the car in park. I leave the engine running, hands on the wheel, eyes fixed straight ahead. Willing her to get out so I can finally take a deep breath. Knowing I'll miss her the second she does.
I hear the click of her seatbelt unhooking.
"Thanks for the ride, Callahan."
The sigh comes out before I can stop it, long and suffering.
She bites her lip, eyes bright. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's been doing it for weeks, using my full name like a weapon, watching me react every single time.
"Goodnight, Lily."
She climbs out and walks toward her building. I sit there like an idiot watching her go, not pulling away until her light comes on in the third-floor window.
The house is quiet when I get back. Dad's already in bed, the living room still smells faintly like her perfume. I stand in the doorway for a long moment, taking in the spot on the floor where she sat. This is fine, I tell myself. This is under control.