Chapter 31
Eli
Nina was so silly. I loved it.
She arranged my free weights in a rainbow obstacle course on the carpet. The rules were a little sketchy, but on a good day, I could bench over four times her weight, so I figured I could handle it.
Dad answered his phone somewhere upstairs, and there was something weird about his tone. I tried to catch what he said, but Nina sang at full volume as she hopped over each weight.
“I know da colors painting fun! Grween like grwass, yellow like sun–” Her foot snagged on a heavier dumbbell, but I caught her.
“Careful!”
She carried on, without missing a beat, “Orange puh-kin, white snow!”
The stairs creaked.
“Red rose and a black crow!” Nina froze. “Oh. Dare’s no black.”
“Do we need black?” I asked, shifting my attention between her face and the staircase.
In seconds, her big brown eyes put me in my place. Bottomless, like her mom’s. “Okay.” I scanned the room, then pulled a ten-pound plate off my barbell and added it to her hopscotch course. “How’s that?”
She raised her eyebrows at me like I’d just told her Chuck was a dinosaur. “Dats not black.”
“Light black?” I tried.
Dad stopped at the bottom step with a strange expression.
“Can we just pretend?” I asked her.
She sighed very dramatically. “Okay.” Then she circled to the beginning to start it all again.
I left her to it, stepping over the green weights, straight to my old man. “What’s wrong?”
“I, uh, need to run an errand. You good here?”
“Yeah. Ava should be back soon.” I checked my phone. She was usually home already. “You need me to start something for dinner?”
“Nah. Unless you get hungry. Or I can pick something up.”
My shoulders stiffened. Something’s off. Dad offering to bring home takeout? “When will you be back?”
“Not sure. An hour. Maybe two?”
“What’s with all the mystery? You’re not gonna say where you’re going?”
“I’ll fill you in later.”
When he left, I pulled up my text thread with Ava, stared at the last response from her–a heart on the photo I’d sent. I tapped out a message.
Eli: Hey, you almost here?
Ten minutes later, still no Ava, and still no response.
Nina grabbed my leg. “I’m hungwry.”
Maybe Ava stopped at her other ranch? She’d talked about it. I tucked my phone away. “Okay, Monkey. Let’s find you something to eat.”
But Nina shook her head at everything in the pantry. I ran a hand over my hat. How did Ava feed this kid? “Okay, what do you want?”
“Chock-kit chip pancakes!”
I couldn’t come up with anything else. My brain was spinning. “Fine. Pancakes it is.”
Where’s Ava? And what secret errand did Dad not wanna tell me about? I pulled out the mix and grabbed a bowl, Nina under my elbow the whole time. She grinned up at me with all those tiny little teeth and big cheeks.
“You gonna help me make it?”
“Yes, peas!”
I dragged a chair from the kitchen table to the island for her to stand on. “Oh. Hold on. We gotta wash our hands first.” I wanted to enjoy the moment, but a knot tightened around my chest. I pressed a hand to my ribs, but they seemed fine.
Pancake powder ended up everywhere. On the counter, on the floor. In our hair. But somehow, six pancakes came out, fluffy and golden.
Nina ate three bites, then said, “All done.”
“Really? You can’t finish that one?”
“No. Can we see da horsies?”
I was beginning to understand why Ava looked so tired all the time. “Let’s wait until your mom gets home.”
Nina threw on her pouty face. I checked the time, then called Ava. When she didn’t answer her phone, I tried Dad. “What’s going on? Where is everyone?”
He met my question with a long pause. That’s when I knew. Something bad had happened.
“Ava was in an accident.”
“W-what?” My heart jumped out of my throat. Flat out left the building.
“She’s okay,” he rushed to add. “A little banged up. I’m here at the hospital. She might need surgery. That’s what we’re waiting to hear.”
Accident? Surgery? His words swam around in my head. The hell she was okay! I needed to see her. “What hospital?”
I could hear Dad smother the speaker with his hand. I glanced down at Nina. She looked like a ghost under all the pancake powder.
“Tell ya what?” Dad said, loud and clear in my ear. “How about you come first shift tomorrow? She’s feeling a little worn out right now.”
Seriously? “Can I talk to her?”
After a long silence, her scratchy voice hit my ear. “Hi, Eli.” For the first time, it stung to hear her say my name. Something about her tone. Like she’d rather do anything over talking to me.
“Hey.” If she was okay, why didn’t she answer my texts? Suddenly, I had no idea what to say. “Nina and I made pancakes.” A painful pause filled the line. So long, I worried she’d hung up on me. “Ava?”
“Sorry. I’m just really tired,” she said. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Please don’t tell Nina? Can you just say I’m, um …” her voice wobbled, then I had to listen to her take a bunch of shaky breaths.
I gripped the back of my neck, ran a palm over my hat. The need to see her made me sick to my stomach. But I couldn’t go with Nina in tow. Seeing your parent all wound up in hospital tubes, that left a mark. I knew firsthand.
Ava tried again. “Can you tell her I’m staying the night over somewhere because I–” her voice cracked. “Because I was too tired to drive?”
“Yeah. I can do that. But I’m coming tomorrow, first thing.”
“Fine,” she sighed, and it hit like a bullet, point-blank.
After some rustling, Dad spoke into the phone. “You want me to pick up dinner?”
“No, we made pancakes.” I didn’t bother hiding my defeat.
“Okay. See you in a bit.”
I shoved my phone in my pocket and stared down at Nina. “Close your eyes.” With a dishtowel, I wiped her face, but she probably needed a bath. An uncontrollable itch made standing there in that kitchen near on impossible. But Ava needed me to take care of Nina. So that’s what I’d do.
“Looks like it’s you and me tonight, Monkey.”
“Yay!” At least she was excited.
“If you’re not gonna eat anymore, let’s do bathtime.”
After Nina fell asleep, I dragged myself to the kitchen to clean up.
I couldn’t tell if the pain in my stomach was hunger or misery.
On the counter sat a pack of Reese’s cups and an open case of beer.
A pathetic trade-off for rejection. Still, consolation prize in hand, I found Dad on the back deck, staring at his mountain.
I slumped into the chair next to him. “Thanks.”
“You bet.” He tipped his own can to his mouth.
The orange bag crinkled when I ripped it open. We sat like that for a while, watching the sunset, until Dad spoke up.
“She’s scheduled for leg surgery tomorrow morning.”
I lifted my can, forced the warm beer down my throat.
“They’re hoping to discharge her tomorrow afternoon,” he added.
It all sounded wrong. Surgery. Discharge. Ava was young and healthy. I couldn’t talk about this. Couldn’t think about her lying there in a hospital bed. What the heck was I gonna do when I rolled in to see her the next morning? “Where’s her truck?”
“I imagine at a tow yard.”
I frowned. They should’ve brought it back here. I could’ve started working on it.
Dad took a long pull from his beer and stared at the fading purple sky. “I’m sorry, son.”
“You didn’t make her crash.”
“Not that. I’m sorry I failed you.”
I scoffed. “What are you talking about?”
“When your mom died.”
Damnit. We were doing this … I tipped my can back, knowing no amount of alcohol would make this better. “Can’t blame you for getting tired of calls from the cops.”
Dad shook his head. “No. You were a kid. As the adult, I should’ve handled it better.”
It. How were you supposed to handle death? I took another swig of beer. “It’s all good. I’m over it.”
“I didn’t know how to live without her,” he said, apparently not hearing me. “It felt like I was doing it all wrong. The lunches, the school stuff. But the worst of it? The sadness blinded me to what you were going through right next to me.”
“It’s fine. We got the school lunch.”
Dad turned and watched me unwrap a candy. “You were never a burden, you know.”
“Not even when I stole the car and crashed it into the neighbors’ RV?” That stunt landed me in the hospital for a week. Homebound for a month. Hannah had ripped me a new one over that. Once the stitches came out.
“You were never a burden,” he repeated. “You were my reason to keep going.”
I stared at him, tempted to laugh off the sappy line. But a mosh pit of feelings shoved around in my gut, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I held out the Reese’s bag. After a glance, he reached in and took one. There wasn’t much left to say after that.
Hours later, when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of Mom. She was smiling. I think we were at a horse ranch. Ava and Nina were there, too.
I left early for the hospital, hoping to catch Ava before her surgery. But as I neared her room, I heard, “I told you, I don’t want you here!”
The nurse’s station dinged. I paused at her door while blue scrubs rushed past. After a peek inside, I snuck in, hanging towards the back.
Ava sat upright in her bed with her hair falling over her shoulders.
A full breakfast tray waited on the table next to her.
The standard tubes and wires webbed out of her arms to machines that beeped and flashed, trying to prove she was stable.
But I couldn’t reconcile the green numbers with the cuts on her face, or the bruises coming out from under her hospital gown.
They sliced into me as if they were my own.
“Good morning, Mrs. Garcia.” The nurse turned off the call button and checked her leads. “How’s your pain?”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. But can you please make him leave?” The IV swung when Ava lifted an arm to point at the other occupant in the room. Steven.
“I’m her emergency contact,” he argued.
“Only because I forgot to change it.”
The nurse’s eyes toggled between the two of them.
But Steven’s focus fell on me. “Oh, great. The bodyguard.”
His little nickname used to bother me, but now I crossed my arms menacingly in a stare-down. He looked like he’d just rolled out of a dumpster.