Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WYATT
The noise from my sister’s house filtered through the vents.
I could hear my sister and her oldest arguing if cold pizza was a nutritious breakfast. I rolled over and pulled the blankets over my head but remembered how fucking hot it was in here.
It had been that way since we were kids.
I threw off the blanket and stared up at the yellowing popcorn ceiling.
This had been my bedroom when I was a kid, and now it belonged to Cassidy, my youngest nephew and namesake. Gone were the posters of horses and light yellow curtains. They had been replaced with hockey. The sticks in the corner seemed to remind me of the problem I left back in Las Vegas.
I hadn’t seen Julian since that night I almost broke up with him. He had texted a couple times, but he had a five-game road trip. Plus, I thought maybe he was realizing the truth of what we were. Nothing.
“Wyatt, get up.” My sister’s voice rang throughout the house. “I’ve got to get the boys to practice, and your car is in the way.”
“Keys are on the counter,” I yelled back. We were a family of yellers. Mom yelled at us. Morgan and I yelled at each other, and Dad yelled at everyone. I wasn’t sure my family knew how to communicate without yelling.
“No, they’re not. Damn it, Wyatt!” Morgan yelled again.
“I’m coming,” I groaned, throwing on the first piece of clothing I could find, and stumbled down the stairs. My two youngest nephews were standing in the cramped entry with large bags and sticks. I couldn’t see Julian like this. Young, blurry-eyed, and shoved into a jacket and stocking hat.
“Silver? You even know who that is?” Remington, the oldest, asked, closing the fridge. He shoved a piece of cold pizza into his mouth.
“What?” These small people were strangers to me. I saw them once, maybe twice a year. And their life felt so removed from mine. Everything in Deadwood did.
“Your shirt?” Remington nodded.
“Is on backwards.” My sister came back into the kitchen. “Boys, get to the car. And don’t forget anything.” She waited until she heard the door slamming, shaking the entire house. “And could you please wear a bra around the boys?”
I looked down. Julian’s number was plastered across my chest. So much for putting space between Julian and me. I dug the keys out of my purse. “Here.”
“Oh no, you need to move it. I don’t have time to play car Tetris.”
“You were just bitching about me not wearing a bra. What do you think will happen when I step out there? The headlights will be on.”
“Then put on a coat.” She pulled one off the hook of many and tossed it at me. “I left a grocery list. Can you go to the Family Mart and pick a few things up?”
“You want me to go to the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving?” I said, putting the coat on.
“It’s either that or you take your headlights down to Halliday’s and work the lunch shift. Car, now.” She put on her own coat.
“Going.” I slipped on whatever shoes were by the door and shuffled out. “Fuck, why is it so cold?” I pulled the coat tighter around my body.
“No swearing around the boys.” My sister rushed to her SUV, the windows already steamed up.
My rental car was stiff from the cold, and the leather seat burned the back of my legs. I moved the car and rushed back into the house. My dad was standing by the coffeemaker. “Why is it so fucking cold?”
After my mother had gotten sick and my brother-in-law lost his job, my sister and her family moved in with my dad. I didn’t think anyone was happy about it. But Dad needed help, and my sister needed a place to live.
My dad checked the thermometer stuck to the oak tree outside the kitchen window. “It’s not even that cold. It’s twenty-two.”
“Silly me.” I slipped off Hunter’s boots and coat. “Why are you up? It’s, like, seven a.m.”
“The dead would wake with as much noise as you and your sister make. Coffee?” He opened the cupboard above the coffeepot and pulled out a cup.
I wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep for another five hours. My days didn’t normally begin until, like, three in the afternoon. But that wasn’t how things worked here. “I guess.” I took the coffee he handed me.
“What time did you get in last night?”
“Two, I think? My flight was delayed two hours,” I said between yawns. I’d booked last minute, hoping that my sister would call off this holiday, or at least my participation in it.
“Yeah, I saw they had an ice problem on the runway. Was it a direct flight?” my dad asked, taking a sip of coffee out of his stained Best Grandpa coffee mug.
This was all we had to talk about now. The weather and how my trip was. A general how are things? “No, I had a layover in Denver, which was where I had the delay.” The only noise in the house was the clock ticking away the hours.
“How were the roads from Rapid City?”
“Fine.” I took a sip of the coffee, cringing at the bitterness of it. “Is this Folgers?”
“Yep.” My father, Ferris Halliday, had aged in the last six months. His hair was thinner, and his brown eyes seemed a bit faded. His shoulders were rounded with all his years of working at Halliday’s. That bar had been my father’s dream. It was now my sister’s nightmare.
“How have things been with Morgan living here?” I set the cup down, looking around the kitchen.
There were still bits of my childhood tucked in amongst my nephews’ childhood.
Faded yellow newspaper articles about Halliday’s were still hanging on the wall near the dining room.
The fish my father caught on Lake of the Woods still chasing the same lure it had been most of my childhood.
“Good, good. The boys are a lot.” He took another sip of coffee. “Your sister said you are only staying for a few days.”
“Yep, I have to get back for work.” I grabbed a sweatshirt from my bag.
A couple of granola bar wrappers and a water bottle fell out.
I realized the sweatshirt was Julian’s. It was the one he had given me on Halloween.
I was questioning if I had packed any clothing of my own.
I tucked my hands into the pocket and pulled out a plastic mouth guard, holding it up.
“Is that a mouth guard?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t decide whether to be grossed out or laugh.
“Why do you have that?”
“Long story.” I put it back in the pocket.
“Do you know where this list is that Morgan was talking about?” I knew what the next topic of conversation would be with my father.
“I should get going before they sell out of Cool Whip.” The kitchen was a mess of dishes, water bottles, unopened mail, and whatever else it took to run a family of five.
The trash was full, and pizza boxes were stacked alongside it.
So much had changed, and yet so little hadn’t.
“Check the fridge. You going to stop and see your mother?”
That was the conversation I didn’t want to have. “I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Why not? She’d like to see you.”
I picked up a couple paper plates and pushed them into the trash. “She didn’t even recognize me last time, Dad. I don’t think it matters.” Morgan said Mom was getting worse. My father was in denial. He thought she’d get better.
“She’s still your mother.”
“Is she?” The last time I saw her, she’d gotten up and walked out of the room. When the nurse tried to get her to come back, she said she didn’t have any children. That she was a famous model that lived in LA. That was what my mother had always wanted to be. What she had wanted for me.
“Yes, Wyatt, she is. Just because she gets a little confused doesn’t mean she is not your mother. It’s good for her to be surrounded by people who love her.”
That was a bold statement for my father to make.
My mother and I had a strained relationship.
Not because I left, but because I had wanted to come back.
I cried on the phone, begging her to send me some money.
She said I would hate myself if I came back.
If I didn’t try harder. “Then it’s probably best if I stay away from her.
I found it.” I plucked the list from the pile of unopened mail and math worksheets.
“Wyatt,” my father called. “We raised you better than this. She raised you better than this.”
I looked down at the list. Cool Whip, butter, half and half, coffee, frozen rolls, and cornstarch.
Such simple things, and yet it read like a page from my childhood.
Morgan had gathered all these things up to make a Thanksgiving dinner while my parents worked at Halliday’s.
I looked up at my dad, so old and worn down.
“No, you didn’t.” I turned and walked back up to my room.