12. Dylan
TWELVE
DYLAN
“The movie theater express is here,” I call the moment I step into the hallway.
Charlie’s the first one who comes running down the stairs. He skids to a stop in front of me, turns back around, and bellows “Dylan’s here!” toward the upstairs rooms.
“Just a second,” Mia yells from somewhere.
“Daisy!” Charlie shouts.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Calm down.”
“We’re gonna be late!” If there’s one thing Charlie hates, it’s being late. If there’s one thing his twin is good at, it’s being late.
“We have time,” I say placatingly.
He sends me a thankful smile, only to shout “Mia! Daisy!” even louder a moment later.
“Hey, Char? Do you think you could get me a glass of water real quick?” I ask when I see him breathe in deeply, presumably so he can start shouting again.
“Sure thing, Dylan,” he says cheerfully, then jogs off toward the kitchen.
Lynn comes out, wiping her hands on a towel. “Thanks for taking them. I swear, this house feels three times smaller whenever it rains. It’s like it shrinks when it gets wet.”
“It’s no problem. I was getting cabin fever anyway.”
She squeezes my shoulder and pushes a pair of sneakers out of the way before she harrumphs and picks them up. “You’d think he wasn’t going away at all with how he keeps postponing packing his stuff.”
The smile is frozen on my face. It’s been like this for the past week and a half whenever anybody brings up Adrian leaving.
“I’m sure he’ll get to it.” My voice sounds almost normal. Not really. But almost.
Lynn laughs. “My father always did say that if you’re going away for longer than a week, you should just take your toothbrush. You can work everything else out as you go.”
“Why a toothbrush, then?”
“A nice smile goes a long way.”
I force myself to smile again. “That sounds like excellent advice.”
“He was full of that. I’m guessing Adrian got his wanderlust from him. The man loved being on the road.”
I lean my back against the wall and settle in, ready to jump into my favorite topic. Adrian. “Yeah?”
“Oh, for sure. He was?—”
I don’t get to find out what she was about to say.
“Mom, your phone keeps ringing.” Charlie rushes back into the room and thrusts a vibrating phone at Lynn before he hands me a glass of water. He follows that with an eye roll when there’s still no Mia and Daisy.
“Mia!” he yells again. “Daisy!”
“Charlie, be quiet, please.”
My eyes snap to Lynn.
There’s panic in her voice. Just pure panic.
I’m immediately alert, and just as immediately, my heart starts banging in my chest.
“Oh God.” Her body sort of folds in on itself, and suddenly she’s on the floor.
“Mom?” Charlie’s eyes are wide and scared.
My own insides are cold with fear.
Lynn looks up.
“It’s Eric,” she chokes out.
Time moves slower in hospitals. Unless it stands still.
Mostly it feels like it stands still.
Minutes feel like hours while we all sit in the waiting room.
The younger kids doze off as the night wears on.
And still, we wait.
Adrian is sitting on the floor next to me, staring into the distance with an empty look in his eyes.
Every now and then he clutches the back of his neck, leaving nail marks behind.
Every now and then I slide my palm over his back.
He leans into me every time I do.
Sometime in the early morning hours he falls asleep with his temple pressed against my thigh. I keep raking my fingers through his hair, heart in my throat from fear, trying to ground myself.
I’ve got you , I promise silently.
Eric comes out of surgery, but the next few days are tense in a way I’ve never experienced before. All the nurses and doctors who bustle in and out of his hospital room have grim expressions on their faces. The only person who gets to go inside for fifteen minutes at a time is Lynn.
Adrian, Will, Harriet, and Hunter stay in the hospital with Lynn and refuse to leave, but I take the others home to sleep every night after Lynn sent me a bewildered look that first evening.
I do my best to relieve at least some of the burden.
I take care of their house and feed the chickens and help Mia take care of the corn snake she adopted a year ago, even though the thing gives me the creeps.
I cook and bring food to the hospital for the others.
I drive them back and forth between their house and the hospital and stay with Adrian in the garage.
They can’t afford to keep it closed, because now more than ever, they need the money.
And we all wait.
Eric wakes up on the fourth day.
The relief is palpable, even if the doctors still look mostly serious and grim whenever they enter Eric’s hospital room. Another two days later, one of the nurses tells us we’re allowed to feel cautious optimism.
The list of injuries is long and daunting, and the recovery process promises to be even longer and more daunting, and we still know nothing. There are a lot of what-ifs hanging over all of us.
What if Eric’s got brain damage? What if he doesn’t know who we are? What if there are permanent injuries?
There are a lot of questions and fears, but no answers and no reassurance.
It was a teenage driver on a mobile phone.
Eric was on his evening jog. He sometimes does that when his workday is over. Pulls on his workout gear and runs home instead of driving.
The kid didn’t notice him until he’d already run him over.
Adrian had his plane ticket booked for the evening of September fifth. I was supposed to start school. Boston U. Accounting. I’m good with numbers. It’s a good career. I never show up.
It sort of vaguely hits me a few days later in some surreal passing thought.
Huh. In another lifetime, he was supposed to be in Auckland right now. How weird.
Adrian remembers a few days later.
“You should be in school,” he says tiredly.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I say.
He looks at me for a long time, all exhausted eyes and sadness.
“I should make you go,” he says. “I know I should. But honestly, I have no idea how any of us would make it without you here.”
I pull him into a hug. “You know it works the other way, too, right? I also have a plan.”
He lets out a long, shaky breath.
“Am I in it?”
“Every sentence,” I say. “Every page.”
Adrian takes over the garage. He has to.
None of us know anything about cars, so he’s the only one who can.
Just until Eric gets better. Will and Lynn are both pretty insistent on that, and so damn apologetic about the canceled plane tickets and plans.
It doesn’t matter much, since nobody seems to be sure what getting better even means in Eric’s case.
They drilled a hole in his skull. I’m no doctor, but that doesn’t feel like a small thing to recover from.
I get a job at a hardware store. Lynn protests when I give her the money from my first paycheck, and we get into an argument. Adrian walks in in the middle of it.
“Let him,” he tells his mom once he hears what it’s about.
“It’s unfair,” Lynn replies stubbornly. “You’re going to college or traveling or wherever sooner rather than later, and you’ll need the money yourself.”
“Mom,” Adrian says.
“You guys are my family,” I grit through my teeth.
Adrian crosses his arms over his chest and sends Lynn a stern look. “Don’t turn him into a fair-weather friend.”
Lynn’s jaw tightens for a moment, but then her expression softens. She closes her eyes and breaths out slowly before she looks at me.
“Thirty percent of your paycheck. That’s what you can contribute. You’ll save the rest for your future.”
“Seventy,” I counter.
“Thirty-one,” she says.
I roll my eyes. “Sixty-nine.”
She lets out a sigh. “Forty.”
“Fifty. That’s my final offer.”
She looks like she wants to argue, but then Adrian clears his throat pointedly. Lynn sends her son an exasperated look before she nods.
“Fine, fine. Fifty.” She mutters something unintelligible as she walks out of the room. I’m pretty sure I hear something about stubborn mules.
When I look at Adrian, he’s smiling.
It’s been ages.