The Handoff
THE NAP was surprisingly refreshing, and so was the stop out in the middle of nowhere for a pop-up barbecue pit.
They ate on battered picnic tables with vinyl-covered red-checked tablecloths under an ocean of black sky, and cleaned up with about sixty-dozen wipes, and every one of them moaned and made free use of the antacids Val Royal passed around afterward.
And secretly craved more but didn’t want to look ridiculous in front of the other travelers.
The place gave ham hocks to big dogs if they were asked, and Catherine got a long, happy gnaw on a rare treat.
Two hours after Val had parked in the hardpacked parking lot—not the only big rig there by far—they all started out again, only now Bailey felt a little less crazed.
Of course he had yet to be grilled by his father, either.
Val’s cheerful injunction to make free with the Wi-Fi and watch a movie or something on the screen secured to the back of one of the seats felt—to Bailey anyway—like an invitation to throw up in the impossibly tiny bathroom tucked into a recess near the foot of the sleeper bed, so he and Connor both declined.
But after fifteen minutes of dissecting the barbecue (a habit for some Texans, an obsession for others), an uneasy silence fell, and Bailey felt compelled to break it.
“So, uhm… any questions?”
“Tons,” Connor said dryly. “But first, skydiving. Was it everything you ever thought it would be?”
Bailey had to smile. He’d dreamed of flying as a child, and Connor was the one who told him he’d have to try skydiving—but not when the older man knew he was going to do it, because, as he proclaimed, “My ticker can’t take it!”
“It was amazing,” Bailey confessed to his father. “Just… just amazing . Not like falling at all. It really was like flying. And when the chute caught air—it was so peaceful. Dad, I’m telling you, that was worth waiting for.”
“Glad to hear it,” Connor said, chuckling and settling back on the sleeper so Catherine could join him.
Neither Rory nor Val had made any complaints about the dog, and Bailey was grateful.
Catherine had gotten both the Dodge men through a really tough time.
Now she rested her chin on Connor’s lap and gazed at him with adoring eyes while he absently fondled her ears.
“What about you?” Bailey asked slyly. “You always said you wanted to—what was it? ‘Greet the open road’?” Next to him, Mr. Bumble made a plaintive meow, so Bailey opened the top of the carrier and smoothed his fur.
The cat had enjoyed the walk around the field surrounding the barbecue pit, and Bailey had been grateful he’d chosen to relieve himself off in the tall grass as the lead went taut.
But Mr. Bumble wasn’t used to any of this, and Bailey recognized the need for comfort when it yowled at him.
Connor snorted. “I do like this little compartment back here,” he acknowledged.
“But I would definitely miss my recliner—and my walks in the morning with Catherine, here.” He sighed, and Bailey knew it was because his neighborhood had become more and more developed in the past five years.
While Connor Dodge wouldn’t have said anything, Bailey woke up from nightmares of the two of them getting run off the road because it felt like the place was all blacktop, no sidewalks, with more cars every day.
“We’ll find you a better place after this,” Bailey promised him. His father had moved to the burgeoning suburb shortly after Bailey’s mother had died, while Bailey had still been in med school. At the time it was closer to Bailey, his only family, and far enough from the city for comfort.
“I’d as soon find a place near you , son,” Connor said with some asperity, “but I get the feeling you might not come back to roost in Austin when this is done.”
And now there they were.
“Dad, Dean and I are very new—”
“Sure, sure.”
“And Dean doesn’t even live in Austin. I’ve got the ER—”
“Of course you do.”
“And Dean has family. I mean, you can see that Dean has family.”
“Yes, he does. Good family.”
“I mean, I don’t even know what we were doing in the first place,” he finished bitterly, because all of his father’s “sure, sures” were most certainly not in any sort of agreement.
There was a taut silence.
“You done now, son?”
“Yes,” Bailey said, pouting and unable to stop.
“Let’s start with the new.”
“We are new.”
Connor gave a short bark of a laugh. “Bailey, you and Emmett had been together since med school. In that entire time would you have let Emmett throw you out of an airplane?”
Bailey scowled. “Emmett would never have thrown me out of an airplane,” he said.
“No. Emmett was a thinker and a planner and a good man,” Connor Dodge said soberly. “But he was not a seat-of-the-pants thinker, and he wasn’t the sort to improvise. And yet you trusted this guy enough to go with him anyway. Why is that?”
Bailey’s scowl relaxed, and he thought carefully, Emmett’s fading image behind his eyes as he did so.
Emmett had been quiet and studious, with pale brown hair that had been thinning a bit in the end.
He’d been a planner—much like Dean—but meticulous.
The kind of man who did the calculations six to eight times, just to make sure.
Dean did the calculations twice, filed the information away, and moved on.
But then, Dean’s intelligence was fiercer, his moods more mercurial—although he appeared just as loyal and dedicated to his own causes.
“They’re a lot alike,” he said in surprise. “They’re both planners, but Dean’s… well, Dad, you’ve got to meet him. When people say ‘he’s sharp,’ they haven’t met Dean. He’s, like, triple-folded-carbonite-steel kind of sharp, but he never sits still.”
“So you trust his plans,” Connor said, nodding. “Already. So maybe the new isn’t the problem.”
Bailey tried to scowl again, but he couldn’t.
He’d thought of Emmett for the first time in years without that tight knot of tragedy binding up the memory, and he’d found the memory good.
A kind, quiet, dedicated man, Bailey had loved him so very much and would have been happy with him for the rest of their lives. But Emmett wasn’t here anymore.
And Dean was.
“No,” Bailey said faintly in reply to his father, rocked a little by the revelation. He’d never be “over” Emmett. He’d never not miss him. But he’d lived without him for four years now, and apparently his heart had healed enough to beat some more.
“So about the ER,” Connor began, and Bailey glanced at him sharply.
There was something in his father’s voice that Bailey didn’t like. It was the same tone of voice Connor had used when Bailey had been waiting for his college acceptance letters, when Bailey hadn’t gotten into his top choice.
“What about it?” Bailey asked, wary.
“Just… you know that nice woman you work with? Sarah… Sarabeth…?”
“Sarree Wilson?”
“That’s the one. Do you know she’s been calling me up and chatting every so often?”
Bailey stared at his father in the air-conditioned dark of the sleeping cabin until Mr. Bumble bit him to get his attention.
“I had no idea,” he said, his voice practically squeaky with surprise.
“Oh yeah, started after Emmett passed. Kept going. She’s a nice lady. We exchange Christmas cards. Her husband makes the most amazing fudge.”
“I know,” Bailey said, still lost. “She brings it to work over the holidays.”
“She says you like the Black Forest fudge best,” Connor said gravely, showing the same attention to raising his son that he had through Bailey’s childhood. “But anyway, she’s been looking to retire, you know.”
“I know,” Bailey replied, remembering their last conversation before Dean had hustled him out of Outskirts. “She’s been waiting for me, I think. Until she knew I’d be okay.”
“That’s right, son, she has,” Connor told him. “But I want you to think. Who else you hanging on for, there at Outskirts? I know you and Sarree have been propping each other up pretty steadily, but who are you holding on for when she’s gone?”
There was really only one person—they both knew that—and he wasn’t around to appreciate the dedication.
“They need good doctors in Texas,” Bailey said, but his voice was weak and he knew it.
“They need good doctors everywhere. Wait and see, son.”
“You haven’t even met this guy!” Bailey finished on a wail, remembering their conversation that morning. Oh God. That morning? Really?
“Whose fault is that?” Connor asked.
Bailey let out a grunt. “Well, sort of both of ours. We… we didn’t start out communicating, you know?”
A passing flash of light showed Bailey his father’s arched eyebrows. “Oh, really .”
Bailey let out a mortified burst of laughter. “I… you know, Dad, you don’t want to hear this story.”
“Oh I do. I really do.”
Bailey thought about it. And thought. And then his father’s chuckle broke into his frantic scrambling for a way to explain that first meeting.
“So, uhm, orgy, was it?”
“No!” Bailey cried in outrage. “No. You know me better than that. Val got hurt in a wreck—he pretty much pulled every muscle in his body and had a roaring concussion. Dean showed up to make sure his brother was taken care of, and McCauley showed up, and Val’s best friend showed up too, and after I got everybody calmed down and checked Val out, Dean and I… uhm… had a moment.”
“A moment,” his father echoed dryly.
“A really good moment,” Bailey admitted, because it had been. And then, because his father probably guessed this anyway, “My first moment since Emmett.”
“Yeah, son. I know. So an important moment.”
Bailey shrugged. “I thought so, but I also didn’t expect it to go any further, you know? Dean left, I fell asleep, and… and I was, like, ‘Wow. That was amazing.’ And never expected to see him again.”
“What happened?” His father adjusted his seat so he was lying prone on the bed, and Bailey wondered if somebody up front needed a break because he wasn’t ready to sleep yet.