Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Rhett
My miter saw screamed through the oak at precisely forty-five degrees—clean, perfect cut. I set the piece aside and measured the next one, pencil tucked behind my ear, mind quiet while my hands were busy.
The Underwood kitchen was coming together.
I constructed new cabinets to replace the water-damaged originals, installed countertops I'd templated last week, and the trim work would take another three days if I didn't rush it.
Measure twice, cut once. That was Dad's voice, back when his mind worked properly.
My phone buzzed against my thigh.
I ignored it. Probably a supplier confirming delivery, or Mrs. Underwood asking again if I was sure about the cabinet height. I'd shown her the mock-up twice. She'd approved it twice. Some clients needed to worry out loud until I finished the job.
The phone buzzed again.
Then again.
I set down the trim piece and pulled the phone from my pocket.
It was Sloane.
She never called during work hours. She texted or left voicemails I'd return at lunch, respecting that I had a job. I hit answer.
"Rhett." Her voice was steady—guidance counselor steady. "Dad's taken a turn. Hospice says days, maybe less. You should come."
The saw was still running. I'd forgotten to turn it off. The blade spun down slowly, the whine dropping in pitch until the workshop was quiet except for my breathing.
"Rhett?"
"Yeah. I'm here." My hand tightened around the phone. "How bad?"
"He stopped eating yesterday. They've increased the morphine. Mom's—she's holding up, but—" Sloane's voice cracked slightly. "Can you come?"
"I'm on my way."
I ended the call and stood there in the Underwoods' half-finished kitchen, surrounded by the neatly stacked trim and my tools.
My apprentice, Justin, looked up from where he'd been fitting the lower cabinets. "Everything okay?"
"Family thing. I have to go." I grabbed my jacket from the sawhorse and shoved my arms through the sleeves. "You good to keep working?"
"Yeah, of course. Do what you need to do."
I walked out to the truck on autopilot—boots crunching in the snow. The driver's side door groaned when I pulled it open. I climbed in and sat with my hands on the steering wheel, the engine off, and the heater silent.
My hands were shaking.
Days, maybe less.
We all knew this was coming. It had been imminent for almost two years, since the day Dad forgot my name and called me by his brother's instead. The dementia diagnosis came next.
Knowing it was coming and facing it weren't the same thing.
My phone buzzed again. This time it was Hog.
Hog: Will you be at your workshop later, after the game?
I stared at the message and thought about the night before—Hog sprawled across my bed, talking about Margaret's offer and what might have happened if the team moved. I remembered the weight of his arm around me when we'd finally slept.
My hands were still shaking.
I typed back:
Rhett: Dad's dying. Going to my parents' house. Don't know when I'll be back.
Three dots appeared immediately.
Hog: I'm so sorry. Do you want me to come with you?
I did and I didn't. I had no idea what I wanted for sure, except not to be sitting in my truck with my hands shaking and my father dying and the kitchen behind me half-finished.
Rhett: Not yet. I'll call you later.
I put the truck in reverse, pulled out of the Underwoods' driveway, and drove toward the house where I'd grown up—the one with the business in the garage and the father who'd never asked what I wanted, only told me what I was supposed to do.
The steering wheel was solid under my palms. That helped. The clear road helped too.
They'd converted the living room into a makeshift hospital. The bed sat where the couch used to be. The oxygen concentrator hissed in a steady rhythm—two seconds in, three seconds out—and underneath it all was the smell. It was antiseptic trying to cover what it couldn't fix.
My mother sat in the recliner Dad had bought her for Christmas three years ago, hands folded in her lap. She looked up when I arrived.
"Rhett." She stood and smoothed her cardigan even though it didn't need smoothing. "You made good time."
"Hit all the lights green." I set my keys on the side table—the same table that had been there since I was ten, scarred from when Sloane and I tried to build a Lego castle on it. "How is he?"
"Sleeping. Mostly sleeping now." She twisted her wedding ring. "The nurse was here an hour ago. Said his vitals are—" She hesitated. "They're stable. For now."
Stable. Hospice-speak for "hasn't died yet."
I moved closer to the bed. The man lying there was smaller than I remembered, like dying had compressed his body. His hands were mottled purple and white where they rested on top of the blanket, fingers slightly curled.
Dad had built houses. He framed walls, hung drywall, and installed windows that didn't leak. His hands had been huge—scarred, callused, always moving, and always busy. Now they looked like wax replicas of themselves.
I pulled up the folding chair someone had positioned beside the bed and sat down. The metal frame creaked under my weight.
"You can talk to him," Mom said from behind me. "They say hearing's the last thing to go."
I didn't know what to say to a dying man who'd spent thirty years telling me what I was supposed to want.
"Hey, Dad. It's Rhett."
The oxygen hissed. His chest rose and fell, shallow but regular.
"The Underwood job's coming along. New cabinets are in, trim work's about half done." I watched his eyelids for any sign of response. Nothing. "Justin is doing good work. Learning fast. He's got the attention to detail you always talked about."
Nothing.
"Business is steady. Got three more jobs lined up for spring." I was talking to fill the void, saying things that didn't matter because the things that mattered were too big. "People still remember your name. Still ask about you."
His eyelids twitched. Maybe a response. Perhaps just the morphine.
Mom moved around behind me—straightening things that were already straight, adjusting the curtains by half an inch, making small, precise movements that gave her hands something to do besides shake.
"Sloane says hi," I continued. "The kids are good. Mae's reading above grade level now. Liam made the travel team."
The oxygen concentrator cycled. Somewhere down the hall, the furnace kicked on with a metallic groan.
I was running out of safe topics.
"I met someone," I said quietly.
Mom's movements stopped.
"His name's Connor. Everyone calls him Hog—he plays for the Storm. Right wing, enforcer." I watched Dad's face for any flicker of recognition. Nothing. "You'd probably say he's too loud. Takes up too much space. Has opinions about things that don't matter."
The words flowed now that I'd started.
"But he's—" I stopped. Tried again. "He teaches kids to knit. Makes these tiny animals out of yarn and gives them away. And he fights guys twice his size to protect his teammates, then bakes them banana bread the next morning. He's all of it at once and doesn't apologize for any of it."
I reached out and touched Dad's hand. The skin was cool, papery thin.
"I told him I wanted to marry him. Well—his niece asked, and I said yes without thinking, and then I realized I meant it." My throat tightened. "I'm making my own choices now. About the business, about where I live, about who I—" I swallowed hard. "About who I love."
Dad's eyelids twitched again. Or didn't. It was impossible to tell.
"You never asked what I wanted," I said, and my voice was steadier than I expected.
"You just told me what I was supposed to do.
Stay in Thunder Bay. Take over the business.
Build the kind of life you built." I looked at his face—slack now, emptied of the opinions and expectations that had filled it.
"And I'm doing some of that. But I'm doing it my way. For myself."
The oxygen hissed.
"I wish you'd asked," I said quietly. "Even once."
Nothing. Of course, nothing. He was dying, or already mostly gone, and I was sitting here having a conversation with someone who couldn't respond. Who may not have even heard.
The talk wasn't for him. It was for me.
I gently squeezed his hand once—because it felt like it might break—and let go.
"I'm gonna step outside for a minute," I told Mom.
She nodded without looking at me, her attention fixed on the rise and fall of Dad's chest like she could keep him breathing through sheer force of will.
I walked out to the porch, pulled the door shut behind me, and stood in the cold January air while my breath fogged and my hands finally stopped shaking.
Behind me, through the window, I saw the shape of the hospital bed and my mother's silhouette in the recliner.
I pulled out my phone and texted Hog.
Rhett: Still here. Don't know when I'm leaving. Just needed you to know I'm thinking about you.
The response came fast.
Hog: I'm here whenever you need me—however you need me
I read it twice, put the phone away, and went back inside to sit with a man who'd never learned how to ask what anyone wanted.
By evening, Sloane had come and gone, taking the kids with her after Mae asked too many questions about why Grandpa wouldn't wake up. Mom had sat with Dad through dinner—soup she didn't eat, crackers she picked into crumbs on a paper napkin.
I'd offered to stay the night. She'd said no, then asked if I wanted tea.
We both knew what that meant.
The kitchen was the same as it had been twenty years ago—same laminate counters with the burn mark from when I'd set down a hot pan wrong, and same mismatched chairs around the table.
Mom carefully filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and turned the burner to high. Her movements were automatic—the ritual of tea-making, a domestic routine that could hold off collapse for another ten minutes.
"Orange pekoe or chamomile?" she asked, opening the cupboard.
"Orange is fine."