Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jack
The pediatrician, Dr. Okafor, was a small woman in her fifties.
She had the unhurried air of someone who had seen ten thousand worried adults bring in ten thousand unwell children and had long since stopped being alarmed by any of it.
She moved through the vitals with a practiced, rhythmic efficiency: checking Lily's temperature, her throat, her ears. She asked a few questions that Lily answered in a voice that was already more like her own than the thin, papery thing it had been yesterday. When she was done, Okafor looked at me over the top of Lily’s head with an expression that said, quite clearly: You could have stayed home.
"Viral," she said, straightening up. "Running its course. Fever's down, which is what we want to see." She looked at Lily. "You feeling better, kiddo?"
Lily nodded. She was perched on the edge of the examination table, the butcher paper crinkling under her as she swung her legs. The rabbit was back in her lap. She’d managed half a piece of toast this morning, which felt like a win.
"Another few days at home," Dr. Okafor said to me, already scribbling on a chart. "Then she should be fine for school. I'd say Monday." She capped her pen and looked at me. "Any questions?"
I had about forty. I asked two of them, the ones that had been sitting at the front of my head since last night. She answered them in the same unhurried way, like questions were expected and not a sign of incompetence, and I was more grateful for that than I knew how to say.
She made a note and shook Lily's hand with great seriousness, which Lily accepted with equal seriousness, and we left.
Outside the sun was doing something tentative through the clouds. Lily walked beside me with her hands in her pockets, her breath visible in the cold air.
"You hungry?" I asked.
She gave it a moment of real thought. "A bit."
I looked up the street. There was a place on the corner I’d driven past twice in the last few days without really seeing. It had a red awning and a faded sign with a soft-serve cone on it that made no seasonal sense for a Colorado March.
"Ice cream?" I said.
Lily looked up at me, then at the frost still clinging to the shadows on the sidewalk. "It's cold."
"Yeah," I admitted. "It is."
She considered it for another second, then gave a small shrug. "Okay."
It was warm inside and smelled like sugar and floor wax.
The place was nearly empty, just a woman behind the counter and a teenage boy in a corner booth hunched over his phone.
Lily studied the tubs behind the glass with the same intense focus she brought to everything else, eventually pointing at a neon pink swirl without naming it.
I ordered a vanilla, something close to plain, and we took a table by the window.
She worked through the cup methodically, using both hands.
I worked through mine without tasting it, watching the street and not feeling the immediate urge to fill the silence.
That felt like progress. Three days ago, I’d had no idea how to be in a room with her.
I still didn’t, not really, but the not-knowing had finally stopped being so loud.
My phone buzzed on the laminate table.
I recognized the number from the messages I’d left two nights ago. I looked at Lily, but she was entirely occupied with a pink spoonful.
"I need to take this," I said. "Two minutes, okay?"
Lily didn't look up from her cup. I took that as a yes and stepped toward the glass door, the bell over the entrance jangling as I leaned against the frame.
"Hank Bellows," the voice said. "Bellows Auto. I’m returning a message from a Jack Henley."
"That's me," I said, keeping my voice low. "Thanks for calling back, Hank."
"Says here you've got experience. What kind?"
"Twelve years. Rigs mostly, for the last few. Before that, general mechanical and shop work. I was at Hector's here in Cedar Falls for three years before I headed out." I kept my tone steady. "I can get a resume over to you if it helps."
There was a pause. In the background, I heard the quick burst of an impact wrench and the wash of a classic rock station. "Rigs," Bellows said, the word sounding heavy in his mouth. "That’s a long way from a local garage."
"Did plenty of vehicle and heavy equipment work out there," I said. "And I’m a fast study."
Another pause, longer this time. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass of the door and waited.
"You local?" Bellows asked.
"I am now."
"What’s that mean?"
"It means I’m not going anywhere," I said, and the words felt heavier than I’d expected. I took a breath, looking at the grey slush at the curb. "My sister passed away last week. I’ve got her daughter now. She starts school Monday—I can start Monday."
There was a long silence on the other end, just the ambient hum of the garage. Through the window, I watched Lily reach the bottom of her cup. She was done with the ice cream and was now carefully lining up her spoon and napkins on the table, her head tilted in that same intense concentration.
"Monday," Bellows said finally.
"Monday."
"Seven-thirty," he said. "Don’t be late. I’ll see how you do."
The line went dead.
I stood there for a moment with the phone in my hand, the cold from the glass door seeping through my jacket. Through the window, Lily had given up on the cup. She was holding the rabbit up, examining one of its ears with a small, focused frown, checking for a loose stitch or a new tear.
Monday. Two days away.
I went back inside, the warmth of the shop hitting me like a physical weight.
"Everything okay?" Lily asked. She didn't look up from the rabbit, her small fingers busy with the fabric.
"Yeah," I said, sliding back into the booth. "Got a job."
She looked up then. She processed the news for a moment with those serious, dark eyes, searching my face for what it meant.
"Is it a good job?" she asked.
"I think so," I said. "Fixing cars."
She considered this, her thumb tracing the curve of the rabbit's ear. "Mommy said you worked on an oil rig."
"That's right." I settled back into the booth. "Out in the middle of nowhere. Flat land, no trees. Just wind and steel."
She frowned. "Like the North Pole?"
"Not quite that far, but it felt like it."
"Did you see polar bears?"
"No polar bears," I said. "Just a lot of mud and a lot of other guys who needed haircuts."
She watched me for a moment, weighing that image and deciding it wasn't quite as interesting as she’d hoped. "Mommy said you used to cut down trees, too."
"For a bit, yeah. Up in Canada."
"Why?"
"Someone had to," I said.
She seemed to accept that. Necessity was a language she understood. She looked down at the rabbit, then back up at me. "Did you like it?"
I thought about it. The Rockies at five in the morning, the cold so clean it hurt to breathe, the bone-deep crack of a tree finally coming down. "Yeah," I said. "I did."
"Why did you stop?"
"Moved on to the next thing."
She turned this over, her small face serious. "What's the next thing now?"
I looked at her across the table. She had Cassie's eyes—that same direct way of asking a question, like the answer was a coordinate to be found rather than a conversation to be had.
"This," I said.
She looked at me for a second longer. Then she went back to the rabbit.
I sat there and finished my ice cream. Outside, the light was turning into something that might actually become sun. For the first time since that phone rang in North Dakota, the shape of the future wasn't just a problem to solve.
It was right here, sitting across from me, holding a one-eyed rabbit.