Chapter 16
Sixteen
Henry
I’m not supposed to be here.
The doctor said another week of rest, minimum.
My mother echoed it with that sharp tone she uses when she’s not taking no for an answer.
But sitting around the ranch house staring at the same set of ceiling beams was driving me out of my mind.
My head feels clearer now, the dizziness not quite so sharp, so when Dad offered to drive into town this morning, I grabbed the chance to tag along with him.
The Steel Foundation offices sit on the edge of Grand Junction, an unassuming brick building with wide glass doors.
Dad doesn’t say much as we park. He cuts the engine and looks at me. “I still don’t think you’re ready for this, Henry.”
“I’ll go crazy if I sit around twiddling my thumbs another day,” I tell him. “I need to work. I need to feel useful.”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t argue. He never does when he knows my mind’s made up.
Inside, the familiar hum of printers and voices steadies me. This place has always been more than a job. It’s part of my family’s legacy. Something good in a world that often feels like nothing but bad.
Brad is at the reception desk looking over Bobbie’s—the receptionist’s—shoulder. He glances up, and his eyes widen. “Henry. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Good morning to you too, cuz,” I mutter, heading past him toward my office.
“Wait a second.” He jogs to catch up. “You’re supposed to be in bed. You had brain surgery two weeks ago.”
I wave his concern away without looking at him. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He grabs my elbow, and I wince before I can stop myself. The grip isn’t hard, but my nerves are still shot, my head still tender. Brad sees it and swears under his breath. “Jesus, Henry. Go home.”
“I said I’m fine.” I shake him off and keep walking. “Don’t you have work to do?”
He follows me anyway. “Yeah, keeping my idiot cousin from dropping dead in the middle of the hallway.”
“Relax.” I fake a laugh. “I’m not that fragile. Technically I’ve been cleared to drive short distances.”
When I boot up my computer, he finally sighs. “You’re impossible.”
“Thanks.”
The truth is, I don’t feel fine. The screen’s glow burns behind my eyes, and my temples throb before I’ve even finished the first email.
But I force myself to keep going. Funding proposals, donor reports, upcoming events.
The work is endless, but it’s the kind of endless that gives shape to the day.
And right now, I need shape more than anything.
Anything to keep my mind off her.
Hours pass. I get through three proposals, two staff check-ins, and a call with one of our partner clinics. My handwriting wobbles when I sign off on paperwork, but it’s still legible. I pretend the pain behind my forehead isn’t there.
By late afternoon, Brad storms into my office again, arms crossed. “Eight hours. You’ve been at it eight hours. Congratulations, you proved your point. Now go home.”
I lean back in my chair, pinching the bridge of my nose. My head feels like it’s caught in a vise. I don’t admit it to him, but the thought of moving makes me nauseated.
Dad appears in the doorway not long after. He must have coordinated with Brad, because the two of them exchange a look before Dad says, “Let’s go, Henry.”
For once, I don’t argue.
The drive home is quiet. All I can think about is the pounding in my skull and the gnawing ache in my chest that has nothing to do with surgery.
Tabitha.
I no longer have any work to keep myself from dwelling on her. The woman I pushed away. And now she’s staying away.
I close my eyes and lean against the headrest. Her face blares into my mind—her honey hair falling into her eyes, that determined little crease between her brows when she’s thinking hard.
I see her in the kitchen of the ranch house, laughing with Angie.
I see her in the guest room, the door locked, the world shut out for just one night.
That night burns through me like a fever.
I wanted her so badly I could barely think straight. Wanted her the way we were the first time, hard and desperate, as if the world might shatter if I didn’t have her. But I made love to her. Slow. Reverent. Every inch of her mapped with my hands, my mouth, as if memorizing her would save me.
And for a moment, I believed it did.
I open my eyes, but the images don’t fade. They only sharpen. The soft sound of her sighs, the warmth of her skin, the way her body arched into mine like she’d been waiting for me as long as I’d been waiting for her.
Then morning came. And I left.
Fucking coward.
Now the house looms into view. Dad pulls up and cuts the engine. “You pushed too hard,” he says.
“I’ll be fine.”
“You keep saying that.” His tone is quiet but heavy. “You’re not invincible, Henry. Stop trying to be.”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Inside, I head straight for my room. I don’t bother with dinner. My body is heavy, my head pounding, but when I lie down, sleep won’t come. I toss, shift, flip the pillow to the cool side. Nothing helps.
Every time I close my eyes, she’s there. Tabitha, standing in the doorway of my future, and I’m too damned broken to walk through it.
The beeping monitors, the blinding lights of the hospital, the sharp sting of pain… Those I could handle. But the thought of living the rest of my life without her? That’s the wound that won’t heal.
I flip the pillow again, give up, and switch on the lamp. Zach lifts his head from the rug and thumps his tail once, as if to say still here, and then resettles with a sigh.
Tabitha.
Ralph Normandy.
It’s all a big fucking mess.
And…
Francine Stokes.
My birth mother who I recently was hellbent on researching.
Tabitha didn’t come. She’s history, as much as I don’t want to face it.
But Francine Stokes?
There’s still a chance.
I pull out my laptop and fire it up, finding the file of information.
A phone number in Palm Springs.
I stare at it until the numbers blur. It’s an hour earlier there. My head is a drum. This is a bad idea.
I pull my phone from the nightstand anyway.
Zach stands and comes to sit with his chin on the edge of the bed. I scratch between his ears and hit the call button.
Two rings. Three. Four.
Five.
“Hello?” The voice is low and husky either from time or cigarettes. Possibly both.
My mouth goes dry. I almost hang up. “Hi,” I say. “Is this Francine?”
Silence. Then, “Who’s calling?”
“My name is Henry.” The room tilts and rights itself. “I’m calling from Colorado.”
“Mmm.” Ice clinks against glass on her end. “If you’re going to try to sell me something, sweetie, you’re wasting your time.”
Seriously? The name Henry doesn’t ring a bell at all with her?
“I’m not.” I swallow. “I don’t want anything from you. I just… I’m trying to confirm something.”
Zach noses my palm. I grip the phone tighter.
“Go on,” she says.
“I think…” I clear my throat. “I think you’re my mother.”
On the other end, the ice stops clinking.
“You have a last name, Henry?” She speaks slowly, more measured now.
I clear my throat again, rub my temples to ease the throbbing. “Simpson. My father is Bryce Simpson.”
I close my eyes. The headache drills behind them.
Finally, she exhales. “I haven’t heard that last name in a very long time.”
I sit up straighter. “So you are—”
“I didn’t say yes.” A rustle, like she’s moving to another room. “Tell me your birthday.”
I rattle it off.
Another rustle. Another long silence. Zach lays his head on my knee and breathes slowly.
“Okay,” she says at last. Softer. “What do you want, Henry?”
A hundred questions fly through me and crash into each other. Nothing. Everything. Why did you leave me? Thank you for leaving me. Do I laugh like you? Do I want the wrong things the way you did? Do you have a birthmark like I do? Did you ever…kill another person?
But all that comes out is—
“I wanted to hear your voice,” I say.
She laughs, not unkindly. “You and every man who ever bought a ticket, sugar.”
“Yeah.” I exhale. “I deserved that.”
“You don’t deserve anything yet,” she says. “And I don’t owe you anything.” A beat. “But no one calls me on a Friday night unless they’re either a scammer or a ghost, and you don’t sound like either.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m just a guy with a lot of questions.”
“And a concussion, from the way you’re talking.”
How the hell does she know? “I just had brain surgery, but I’m okay.”
“Fuck. Brain surgery? Not a tumor or something?”
“No, no. I got hit on the head. I had a bleed.”
“Thank God.” A soft sigh. “You want to know if I’m your mother.”
I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I have to drag a new one in. “Yes.”
“Francine was never a name I used,” she says. “Everyone called me—calls me—Frankie. And once upon a time, I did what I thought was best for everyone. I had nothing to give you, and your father did. I was an idiot. I should have stayed with him. My life would have been a hell of a lot better.”
“He says you cheated on him with a pizza delivery guy.”
She laughs then, a laugh hardened by life. “I did. Biggest mistake I ever made. After your father left, the pizza guy busted my jaw. I couldn’t work while it healed. No one wants to look at a showgirl with her mouth wired shut. So when your grandfather…” Pause. “Uh…maybe I shouldn’t say any more.”
“It’s okay. I know. I know he paid you off.”
“Then you know it was the best thing I could do for both of us at the time.”
I grip the phone harder. A hot pressure burns behind my eyes. I blink it back before it can go anywhere. She’s right. I’ve had a better life than she could have given me for sure.
Including a mother who loves me. A mother who would be devastated if she knew I was on this phone call right now. Guilt arrows into my chest.
“I love my parents,” I tell her. “Marjorie—she’s my mom—married Bryce when I was about two or so. She’s the only mom I’ve ever known.”
“Then why call me?”
“Truthfully?” I let out a humorless chuckle. “Hell if I know.”
That’s not exactly true. But I’m not going to tell this woman who’s a virtual stranger that one, I shot a man; two, I’m in love with a woman who chose a seminar over me; and three, I’m recovering from a head wound, though I guess I already told her that one.
And that, in some weird way, I thought that dredging up the past would somehow fix all of this. Even though I knew it wouldn’t.
But it’s a distraction. So I continue talking to her.
“I was just curious, I guess.”
“Good.” The word comes out on a breath. “That means you didn’t call to give me some kind of guilt trip.”
“Of course not. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to… I don’t know. Get to know you, maybe?”
She sighs. “Do you…have a picture? Now. Of you. Or do I only get your voice tonight?”
I glance at the mirror across the room. I look a little pale, but my hair has grown in a bit on the bald spot. Doesn’t cover the stitches, though. Not only no, but hell no.
But I have photos from the wedding a couple of weeks ago. I look good in those. I send her one of me with my father. Maybe she’ll recognize him.
“Just sent it,” I say.
Silence for a beat. Until—
“You’re a dead ringer for your father. He was a looker for sure. I’m not sure I see anything of me in you.” She pauses. I imagine she’s squinting, zooming in on the details. “Except the nose. It looks like mine. Like my father’s.”
“Dad told me that once,” I say, though it’s a lie. Dad never talks about her.
She laughs, and this time there’s warmth in it.
“Your dad was trouble,” she says. “And I love trouble. I loved him, in my way. But hell, I knew he’d leave me eventually anyway.
A Vegas showgirl isn’t much higher than a prostitute.
Hell, a lot of the time the two jobs aren’t mutually exclusive.
Your father was the son of a lawyer. Who was also a mayor, I think. ”
Right. My grandfather was a high-powered attorney. And mayor of Snow Creek. Also a rapist, kidnapper, and pedophile who took his own life rather than face the consequences of his actions. Does Francine know that?
“Right,” is all I say. Does she expect me to tell her she’s worth more than she thinks she is? I could, but I don’t know her. My only connection to her is biological. Other than that, she’s a complete stranger.
“I… I don’t know what to ask next.”
“That’s fine,” she says. “You called. I answered. That’s enough for tonight.”
“Can I—” The word sticks. I try again. “Would it be okay if I called again? When my head isn’t… When I’m more myself?”
“Sure, you can call. I’m retired now. I live in a townhome with three other old ladies. We’re the West Coast Golden Girls. Easiest way to live when you’re my age.”
“Okay.”
“And Henry?” Her voice softens until it’s almost a whisper. “If your father and his wife made you into a decent man, let them have the credit.” A beat. “Don’t go trying to fix me, sugar. I am who I am, and my life is what it is.”
I smile before I can help it. “I won’t.”
“Good night, then,” she says.
“Good night.” I end the call and stare at the ceiling.
Zach huffs and presses his weight against my shin. It’s almost as if he disapproves of what I just did.
I scratch his ears. “I know, buddy. But I just had to know.”
I close my eyes and see a woman in sunglasses pouring water into small pots, a dog on a porch, a girl in Boulder with her hands on an instrument tray, choosing herself and maybe not closing the door all the way. My head hurts. My chest hurts worse. But something in me eases anyway.
For once, I don’t dream of beams or blood or gunshots.
I dream of a woman who gave me away.
And another woman who I’m not ready to let go.