Chapter 26
Renleigh
I flop back into the double bed I’m sharing with my sister, and she purses her lips as she stares at me. I’m not sure if it’s because she heard that last bit from Hunter through the phone or because she’s mad I won’t let her have more than one glass of wine tonight.
“You told him you were taking this seriously,” she says, holding up the blue crayon and the pad of construction paper she and I are using to make my very serious pros and cons list. I lift my head from the mattress to meet her gaze.
“The list is serious. It’s not my fault we don’t have the best tools to work with.” I lift my palms, then let them flop down on the bed on either side of me.
“Renleigh Jamison Blackwood, your serious list includes the following phrases: He has abs. I like his eyes. The sex is mind-blowing. Texas is far from home. Dad needs me. Lindsey needs me. This is not a serious list, Ren.”
“How is it not serious,” I challenge as I push myself to sit up.
“Well, first of all, I do not need you,” she says.
I let my head fall to one side as my mouth makes a straight line, and my eyes haze.
“Don’t you look at me like that. I’m not fragile. I’m going to figure this out.” She draws a line through that item on my list. “Dad also does not need you. He never has.”
Her chin drops as she hits me with a hard stare this time, the same kind she uses on the boys when she wants them to knock it off and listen. It’s effective, even though she’s wrong again.
She draws a line through my Dad item, and I hiss.
“We’ll come back to that. You’ll lose. Next.”
She taps the crayon on Texas being far from home and pops her gaze right back to mine, drawing a line through it without looking.
“It is far, Linds,” I whine.
“Hey, Salt-N-Pepa?” That’s what Lindsey calls the voice system on her phone. It’s a hack her husband—correction, ex-husband—did for her. “How long does it take to drive from Sweetwater Springs, Oklahoma to Dallas?”
“By automobile, the trip to Dallas from Sweetwater Springs, Oklahoma takes approximately three hours and fourteen minutes.”
Lindsey’s lips twist as she looks up at me from her phone.
“Girl, that’s not even half a season of binge TV. You’re being crazy.” She draws a line through my last con, then circles all my pros before adding a string of bullets I can’t read upside down.
“What are you doing? Lindsey, we’re going to have to start over. This is my list, not yours.” I reach for the tablet, but she pulls it to her body, out of my reach, as she finishes scribbling her edits.
“There.” She tosses the crayon toward the box on the bed then flops the paper pad in front of me.
If you go to Texas, you can finish your degree, and then maybe you can figure out what is wrong with your own damn brain. Kidding. But seriously? You should go because Hunter makes you happy, and you deserve to be happy. And also, because you love him.
My gaze flashes to my sister, and she hits me with a smug grin.
“You know you do,” she says.
I leave the bed and huff, my hands scratching at my scalp.
“I don’t love him, Lindsey. I . . . enjoy his company.”
It’s such bullshit. I can’t even keep a straight face after uttering it.
“Fine, I like him a lot. And I could see maybe, if we were in different places, or if I was not locked down here—”
“You aren’t,” she fires back.
My shoulders drop and I pull my Earl’s shirt from a hanger and glare at her on my way to the shower.
I haven’t showered in two days. Maybe three. I like to say it’s because I’m busy, but it’s because I’m a little depressed and anxious. I don’t need to finish my psych degree to tell me that.
My fingers massage a healthy dose of shampoo into my hair, and I push the sudsy pile into pyramid on top of my head, pressing my palms together to recreate the little girl with the mohawk.
The wall of hair flops over my right eye in seconds, but for a moment, I think I had it.
I was her. A sweet, innocent toddler who didn’t know any better, and who was happy to have two parents who loved her, and a roof over her head, and a sister who shared her room.
I still have all those things, just not the way I imagined I would.
My mom’s words have haunted me ever since she shared them with me.
My dad has never been hostile to my mom, and I’ve always wondered why.
He wanted my mom to feel whole, and sometimes that’s hard for a woman. I get that. Maybe more than most.
“Hey, ass face, I’m taking the boys out for burgers. We’ll revisit this thing tomorrow,” my sister says after rapping on the bathroom door.
“Okay, I love you even though you make me nuts,” I holler.
“And I love you, too. Just like Hunter Reddick!”
“Lindsey!” I shout after her, popping my head around the shower curtain. I can hear her laughter in the hallway as she rushes down the stairs.
I’m going to miss having her as a bunk mate, though it would be more comfortable in that room if we had actual bunk beds.
Two grown women in a double is tight. And my sister likes to kick.
But I cherish those bruises for now. She’s already hunting for a place to stay longer term.
Work is going to be a little harder to come by, but she should walk away from Brandon with a good chunk in her checking account.
The steam fogs the blue tiles on the shower wall enough that I’m able to draw lines in the condensation.
I make a box first, then write the word abs next to it and check the box for my own amusement.
I wipe the evidence away, though, then force myself to think about what my real list is—the reasons why I want to take a leap of faith, and what’s holding me back.
When I’m honest with myself, it’s a pretty simple scale.
I think I might be in love with him. Also, I’m really scared he’s going to leave.
I finish my shower and dry my hair, but I still have a solid hour before my shift tonight. I love Sweetwater, but it’s also not the kind of place with a lot to do on Tuesday night unless you’re into bars. I already work at one, and I’d rather not clock in early, extra tips or not.
I’m tempted to text my sister and horn in on her burger date with the boys.
If she took them for burgers, it’s probably at that place off the highway with the arcade and prize booth.
It’s about ten miles out of town, though, and I don’t have that much time to spare.
I tiptoe my way down the stairs, the flickering light from the television bouncing off the walls.
I hear my mom laughter and stop. It’s more of a giggle.
Something about it makes me curious, so I sit down about five steps from the main floor and peer at them through the railing.
My dad is in his second-favorite chair, his leg propped up on the ottoman, which my mom is sitting on next to his cast. She has a marker in her hand, and she’s drawing something, or maybe writing. She has her reading glasses on the tip of her nose.
“O in the upper . . . right corner,” my dad says, and my mom draws something on the cast. I think they’re playing tic-tac-toe.
“You keep using the same strategy, and you keep losing, Dale.” She laughs her raspy sound, and I find myself smiling at the two of them.
“I like to think I’m . . . wearing you down,” my dad says. My mom pops her head up and peers at him over the rim of her glasses and within seconds, the two are laughing so hard I think there are tears involved.
“Fine, put it . . . in the middle,” my dad finally says.
My mom shakes her head.
“No, I already drew it in the corner. It’s not your turn.”
My dad lets out a well-acted humph as my mom draws a small X on his cast.
“Well hell, you . . . stole my strategy,” my dad says, drawing even more giggles from the woman he’s loved, in his own strange way, for my entire life.
“All part of my insidious plan,” she says.
I get to my feet and take the final few steps with a little extra thump to my steps to give my parents a warning. I’m not sure I can handle seeing them kiss right now, though I’ve caught them a few times. It’s strange. I don’t remember seeing it before.
“Hey, Ren. You off to work?” My mom puts the cap on the Sharpie and drops it in a cup on the fireplace mantle.
“I start in an hour. I was just killing some time. Is that—?” I gesture to my father’s leg, about a dozen tiny games of tic-tac-toe drawn around the knee area on the cast
“Oh, yeah. It was your dad’s idea,” my mom says.
“I kinda thought I’d have . . . more wins to show off.” My dad cranes his neck to look me in the eyes.
“How many of them are yours?” I ask.
He holds up a tight fist to signal zero, and I snort-laugh in reaction.
My father’s breathing has gotten stronger, and even though his cast limits what he can do with his legs, he’s aggressive with everything else.
My mom doesn’t take it light on him, I’ve noticed.
Not that I did when I was running the show, but I was probably a little quicker to let him call it a day when he could maybe do more.
His arms have gotten stronger in the last ten days.
And I caught him messing around with a baseball the other night, practicing his grips. He misses it.
“Do you want something to eat before you go?”
My mom moves around the chair with a hopeful posture, her hands clasped in front of her and her lips sucked in tight. She’s trying.
“Uh, maybe a sandwich?” I know there’s some of that in the fridge.
“Coming right up. Have a seat.” She gestures to the ottoman, so I snag the marker, sit down, and eye my father in challenge.
“Don’t take it . . . easy on me,” he says.
I smirk. He knows me better than that.
I draw the grid, then lift my gaze and my brow, offering him the chance to go first.
“Upper right corner,” he says, and I shake my head with soft laughter. He is stubborn and relentless. They are not the same thing.
I give my father the X in the corner, then draw an O in the middle for my turn. He studies my work, as if there are a lot of options when it comes to this game, then tilts his head to the side.
“Opposite corner?” I ask.
“Uh huh.” His eyes dim, like he’s up to something. I draw my X between his marks, and his smirk immediately falters.
We carry on for another minute or two, until every square is filled and the game ends in a tie.
He has a few of those on the cast, but a lot more losses.
He falls for the traps. So appropriate. At least, that’s what I always thought.
Lately, though, I’m not as sure. Maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing all the time.
“Hey, dad?” I cap the marker and scan the kitchen area for my mom, keeping my voice low.
“What do you need . . . to know?” He’s so intuitive.
People have always underestimated him because he was a PE teacher and a baseball coach, but I know how much calculation must live in the mind of a baseball manager.
It’s a constant state of odds, and a fucked-up game of geometry and physics.
Throw in the wild card of coaching teenagers, and my dad’s ten-year winning record for a high school team looks mighty impressive.
That same instinct has always been a part of his parental toolkit, too. He’s using it now.
“Mom made a lot of money over the years. But when you had to quit coaching, things got tight here. I’m just wondering . . .” I twist my head to check on my mom, but I still see her floating around the kitchen, zipping from the counter to the fridge and back again.
“You want to know . . . why I didn’t force her to pay . . . for me?” He quirks a brow, a bit of a superior tilt to his smirk.
“It sounds bad when you put it that way, but also . . . she told me the real reason she left the first time. And why you guys lived the way you did.”
I shrug, still a bit baffled, but less so than before. Especially after Hunter hit me with his words earlier.
When you love someone, nothing makes you happier than seeing them live their best life. Even if that means you can’t be in it all the time.
My dad nods and reaches an upturned palm to me. I lay my hand in his and smile as his fingers wrap around mine. His hands have always been twice the size of mine. Like Hunter’s. Pitching hands.
“She told me you talked. I’m . . . glad. And as for your mom’s . . . salary? How do you think . . . we paid for your college? Or . . . Lindsey’s wedding. And now . . . Lindsey’s lawyer.”
I stare into my father’s eyes and unravel my entire life. My sister’s life.
“I thought I qualified for financial aid? That I had scholarships?”
My father’s lip inches up on one side and he shakes with a silent laugh.
“I know you did. And it was . . . a scholarship of sorts. We call it . . . the Sarah Rasmussen-Blackwood . . . fund for girls.”
My eyes sting from the air because I can’t seem to close them. I can’t blink. I can’t speak. I had no idea.
“And the wedding? It wasn’t money that Aunt Beth left for us?”
“Renleigh . . . did you ever meet an Aunt . . . Beth?” He chuckles, almost proud of this massive fraud he and my mother pulled over on us. It was for our own benefit, but still!
“You made her up?” I lower my head and cover my mouth, realizing my volume.
My dad nods, and I’m about to grill him more when my mom appears behind him with a paper plate in her hand, and a triple-decker sandwich complete with toothpicks holding the pieces together.
“One turkey, bacon and tomato, coming right up,” she says.
It’s my favorite sandwich. I know my mom used to make it for us when we were kids. It’s the reason I love club-style sandwiches.
“You toasted the bread,” I say, my eyes stinging with a massive desire to water. I push the sensation down. I’m not ready for any of this.
“Hope you like it,” she says, eyeing my tic-tac-toe game on my father’s cast.
“She totally took it easy on you,” she snickers, winking at me.
She’s right.
I did.