Chapter Ten #2
Her father gave her an irritated look as he maneuvered his boot out from under the table. “I know where the damned bathroom is.”
“Go with him,” Cassie mouthed, but her dad was already clomping off on his own. She was about to urge Andrew to follow anyway, but something in his face stopped her.
“What is it, sweetie?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.” She felt a rising dread. She’d had a feeling there was more, but what else could it be? What they knew was bad enough.
Her father had made it halfway across the restaurant then gotten confused and now was hovering near the coffee pots. She should go help, but across the table something was happening to Andrew. In the space of thirty seconds, his face had crumbled.
“I’m not going back to school,” he said in a rush. “Don’t try to convince me. I can’t do it.”
She blinked. “But finals are next week. You’re almost done with the year.”
“I keep thinking about what happened. Jack might have brain damage. They don’t know.”
“Oh, that poor boy.” A life ruined. For nothing, a stupid frat party.
And Andrew was a casualty as well. Not in a physical way, of course, but so traumatized he couldn’t bear the thought of returning to school.
“Sweetie, not going back doesn’t help him.
I agree it’s not a good idea to be in the frat house, but we can get you a hotel room or an Airbnb for the last couple of weeks.
You’ve worked so hard all semester, you can’t just walk away. ”
“I can’t!” He gave her an anguished look. “I just can’t do it.”
“Andrew.” She lowered her voice. “Exactly what happened that night?”
“I told you.”
“The whole thing?”
He swiped fiercely at his eyes but couldn’t quite look at her.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything more. “Have you told Dad?” she said finally.
“Dad won’t fucking listen.”
Her eyes opened up at his language, but she had no time to respond because her father was making his way back to the table.
“He’s looking for the restroom,” Cassie said when a waitress intercepted him. He let the waitress take a gentle hold of his elbow. Maybe they needed someone like that at home instead of Mrs. Macuja, who was turning out to be something of a drill sergeant.
Andrew was breathing in shaky gulps, trying to pull himself together.
“I’ve been having nightmares. Where Jack gets up and his head is all bloody but he doesn’t know it.
And everyone’s staring at him. Or he’s walking around campus like that and I’m the only one who sees it.
No one else even knows anything’s wrong. ”
“Oh sweetie.” She scooted around to his side of the booth and wrapped him in a hug.
He resisted at first, then gave in with a small shudder.
She pressed him to her, breathing in the sweet, peppery smell of him, a little sweaty from the train.
“I can’t make you go back, but you have to at least take incompletes.
Otherwise, we’ll lose the tuition. It’s a lot of money.
” She rubbed his back, something that had always soothed him as a baby.
She felt the sharpness of his shoulders, the half-grown angles of him. Whatever had happened, he was her son.
“How about talking to somebody?” she said. “That might help.”
“I don’t know,” he moaned. “All I know is I can’t go back.”
“All right, we’ll figure it out.” But her heart was breaking. For him. For the other boy.
For the way life could change in an instant.
. . .
Her father still had a landline, so she shouldn’t have been surprised that Chuck Weber from Weber Properties contacted them.
Tuesday morning, her dad already back in front of the TV after breakfast, Andrew still sleeping.
That was pretty much all he’d been doing.
Ten, eleven hours a night. Tucked into Shelly’s old room with her ancient comforter, frayed but still serviceable.
That summed up the whole house. Barely holding together with rot around the edges and Lord knew what was happening in the basement.
So she’d been astounded when Weber came right out with a very large number.
“You haven’t even seen the house,” she said before remembering they wanted to tear it down.
“We’re looking to create a special community in Laurelton,” he said, launching into the same speech he’d made at the zoning board meeting. “As you know, your property is adjacent to the larger parcel, and we believe it would complete the development. We’d like to discuss it with you.”
She asked him to repeat the offer, not sure she’d heard correctly the first time.
“Is there a time I could stop by to speak with Mr. Linden?” Weber asked. He was a little pushy, but she’d never dealt with a developer who wasn’t.
“My father’s not looking to sell,” she said. But the number ricocheted around in her head, making it hard to think about anything else.
“There might be some wiggle room there. How about I stop by and chat with you and your dad?”
He was smart, playing to her as well.
She got him off the phone with a vague promise to talk to her dad, then slipped out to the sunporch to clear her head.
The porch was still in winter mode, the patio furniture stacked in the corner, windows and screens that needed a good washing.
They used to eat out there every night when the weather was warm.
Her father was rattling around in this big old house by himself.
Mrs. Macuja or someone else was only a temporary fix.
How long could he manage? She pulled out a chair and sank onto a damp cushion.
She’d always known that eventually the house would have to be sold, but maybe the time was now with a substantial offer on the table.
Yes, it would be sad to see the property cut up instead of sold to another family, but you couldn’t help what happened to a house after you let it go.
No point being sentimental. Her dad had turned himself inside out to keep her mother here, even after she didn’t know where she was, but how would she and Shelly manage?
They both had their own lives, and Shelly was on the other coast.
The time had come. She just needed to convince her father.
. . .
Out front, a car door slammed. Glenn! She’d lost track of time.
“Dad.” She stuck her head into the den. Her father had on the headphones she’d given him, and she had to wave to get his attention.
He removed them reluctantly.
“Glenn’s here.”
He gave her a blank look.
“The beekeeper. He’s going to help with those mites, remember?”
He nodded, pushing himself out of his chair, wobbling in the boot until he regained his balance. She’d bought him a cane at a medical supply store, but of course he refused to use it.
“I thought we could try a couple of things to start,” Glenn said after he shook hands with her father. He looked like he was about to offer to shake her hand too, then hesitated. “Good to see you,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“You too.” An embarrassing warmth crept up her neck.
She wished she’d had time for a shower. He would run the other way if he knew how much she’d been looking forward to his visit.
Even with everything going on. Maybe because of it.
How sad was that? A guy she hardly knew.
A beekeeper of all things. But he was attractive and smart.
And not full of himself. There was something reticent in the way he held back, listening to her father now.
Her dad had gotten confused about the mites and kept calling them termites.
Glenn nodded respectfully, letting him speak.
He’d be appalled if he knew she’d been talking to Weber Properties.
And he was wearing those shorts again.
She looked up guiltily, but he was busy showing her dad a bag of powdered sugar.
“So we can sprinkle it on the bees,” he was saying. “It doesn’t hurt them and it might work.”
Her dad dipped a finger in the bag. “It’s sweet,” he said.
“Yup. They’ll groom each other to remove the sugar and that gets rid of the mites.” Glenn dug out a screened frame from the back of his truck. “Then if we put in these bottom boards with a sticky mat underneath, the mites fall through and can’t get back up.”
“That’s clever,” Cassie said. Beekeeping seemed to involve a lot of ingenious fixes.
Glenn leaned the frame against the truck. “It’s not a perfect solution though. The sugar only gets rid of mites on the adults. The real problem is in the brood. That’s harder to deal with.”
Cassie was about to ask what they should do for that when Andrew petered out the front door, wearing pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, his hair wild from sleep.
He blinked in the sun. He’d hardly been outside since he’d been home, and she was relieved to see him set foot out the door, even if he was still in his pajamas.
“Hey,” he mumbled. “What’s going on?”
“This is Glenn Marsden, he’s helping Grandpa with the bees. This is my son, Andrew.”
They shook hands, and Cassie was struck by how fragile Andrew looked.
Five days of rest hadn’t done much for him.
If anything, he looked more wrung out than ever.
She would make chicken soup tonight the way he liked with bits of potato.
She was still hoping she could convince him to go back to school, but time was running out. His flight was on Wednesday.
Phil, of course, had hit the roof when she told him Andrew didn’t want to go back. “He has to go back,” he’d said. “No discussion. He’s four finals away from the end of the semester.”
“He’s in a bad place, Phil.” She was whispering in her old room upstairs so Andrew, across the hall, couldn’t hear.
“He didn’t say anything to me. How did this suddenly come up?”
“It didn’t just suddenly come up. If you’d spent more than ten minutes with him he might have told you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He was here for three days.”