Jackson #3
“Was the hospital food yucky?” Odessa finally speaks up. Her feet drag back and forth along the floor under her chair. “Auntie Blair said she’s been in a lot of hospitals—she’s a nurse pra…uh, nurse pratch…I don’t know, but she said the food is like cat vomit.”
“She’s a nurse practitioner.” Kate moves through the kitchen to grab a glass and fill it with water. “And I feel like that might’ve been Uncle Denny who compared it to cat vomit.”
“Yeah.” Odessa nods thoughtfully. “Uncle Denny would know what cat vomit tastes like better than Auntie Blair, I think.”
I pull a face that’s caught somewhere between amusement and disgust. “I sure as hell hope he doesn’t know what it tastes like.”
Odessa’s mood shifts on a dime from giggly and silly to stone-cold, and she points toward the china cabinet at the far end of the table. “Swear jar.”
“Swear jar?” I rack my brain, trying to remember what I’d said that would require money being added to a swear jar.
“I’ll give you a free pass, since you don’t know about it.
Every time an adult swears, they have to give me money.
I’ve been saving it for two whole years, and I’m gonna buy hot pink tack for the horse you owe me.
” She crosses her arms and juts her chin up toward the ceiling.
“My birthday is coming up, just so you know.”
I bite back a smile. “Noted.”
Beryl opens the oven door, wafting the aroma of roasted vegetables and chicken toward us. My stomach rumbles in response. I’m so hungry, I could probably eat every morsel of the feast she’s laying out.
“Yeah, the hospital food wasn’t great,” I admit. “Your mom made me eat it every single time, though. Said it was good for me or something.”
Kate gives me a look. “Because it was healthy. We’re trying to help your brain recover, and eating nothing but the sugary junk food your younger brother kept bringing you wasn’t going to help.”
I lean in closer to Odessa and quietly say, “It tasted way better, though.”
She giggles, and her eyes sparkle. She’s freckled, like me, but with Kate’s beautiful eyes and hair. I don’t know much about kids, in general, but she seems tall for her age. And the twist of sass she adds to every word that leaves her mouth makes something inside my chest float.
Once Beryl has the early dinner prepared, she and Kate bicker about whether Beryl should stay for dinner with us or not.
Eventually, Kate meets her match—which I don’t imagine happens often, based on experiences watching her interact with hospital staff—and she irritatedly watches as Beryl loads a plate for herself and heads back to her own home for the rest of the evening.
So it’s only Kate, myself, and our kids, for a homey, though weird, dinner.
Odessa yaps until my head starts to feel dizzy, and Rhett quietly builds a mashed potato mountain to pour a river of gravy down.
When he notices me watching him, he gives me a small thumbs-up, and I awkwardly return the gesture.
By the time it’s over, Kate’s shoving a handful of pills into my palm and, true to her word, she stands over me until I’ve swallowed them.
I even prove it by opening my mouth wide and wiggling my tongue around, just to make her stop staring at me that way.
The kids abandon the table the moment they’re done scarfing down their food, and Kate gives me a look that keeps me seated as she clears the table.
I feel bad about it, but I also know I’ll be no help in my current state.
Once she’s finished tidying the kitchen, Kate leads me down a short hallway I’ve never stepped foot in…rather, New Jackson hasn’t stepped foot in.
“How are you feeling about all of that?”
I shrug. “The kids are cute…but fucking exhausting.”
I’m sure Kate was hoping I’d step into this house, see their little freckled faces, and instantly slip back into whatever my role is supposed to be.
But they feel an awful lot like kids who belong to a friend or distant relative—I can admit they’re cute and funny and generally sweet.
I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to them. They just don’t feel like they’re mine.
She pushes open the door to a spacious primary bedroom, where a pristine white bedspread awaits. Multiple pillows, a thick duvet, and blackout curtains? Compared to the hospital room, this is my personal version of heaven.
“So…this is our room.” Kate’s hand sweeps through the still air, stirring up the faint scent of her coconut perfume.
Yeah, I think I’ll sleep pretty good here.
“You can make yourself at home. I’ll have to come down here to get dressed in the morning, but otherwise, this is all your space. There’s a bathroom, and the tall dresser on the far wall is yours, so…yeah. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Maybe I won’t sleep so well, after all.
“Where are you sleeping?” I hesitantly ask.
“Upstairs in the guest room…your childhood room.”
“You…you don’t sleep in here?”
“Normally, yes. But I was worried it might be too much for you to jump right into full-on married life immediately after coming home.”
“Yeah.” My eyes linger on the bed before slicing to her. “This is your bedroom…so I’m happy to go upstairs to the guest room. I don’t want to be a burden.”
She leans against the doorframe, a gentle smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
“You’re anything but a burden, Jackson. I figured this makes the most sense so you don’t have to worry about any stairs…
. Anyway, it’s been a long day, and you need your rest. We can bicker over sleeping arrangements later. ”
My eyes close for about five times that of a typical blink, reminding me of everything I hate about my pain meds. The nod that follows is in slow motion, and before I’ve finished telling her to have a good night, she’s slipped back into the hallway, and the door shuts with a soft click.
In the bathroom, the shower has men’s shampoo next to a bottle of women’s.
A blue toothbrush sits slanted in a cup next to a purple one.
A men’s razor is set in a drawer below the sink—a few tiny beard trimmings strewn beside it.
It’s as if I’m a stranger about to sleep in a married woman’s bed, snooping through her drawers and looking at her husband’s belongings.
When I tug open the top drawer of the dresser she said was mine and grab a pair of gray boxers to sleep in, my stomach flip-flops.
And the bed. Fuck. The bed smells like her when she first walks into my hospital room.
When she’s smiling, hair bouncing around her shoulders, and hopeful that something changed overnight.
When my face nuzzles into the soft down of her pillow, I catch an earthy note amid the tropical.
I breathe it in, filling my lungs so I can keep her scent there forever, just in case I wake up tomorrow and forget everything all over again.
I’ve been struggling to sleep—except when the drugs take over and knock me out against my will—because I don’t trust my brain.
I’m terrified that if I sleep too long, I won’t wake up.
Or I’ll wake up and find the slate’s been wiped clean again, and I’ll be scared, alone, and confused for the rest of my life.
But tonight, smelling her perfume and feeling the echo of her palm’s warmth against mine, the slow hearts her thumb drew on my skin, I’m calm.
I don’t get angry about the heaviness in my bones or fight to keep my eyelids open even as my eyes burn.
I clutch her pillow to my face, balling up in the center of the bed, and drift off with ease.