Chapter Nineteen
Afew days later, Steven entered his office with renewed hope that he would soon be able to ditch his wheelchair. He had an appointment that afternoon for physical therapy, and he planned to ask when he might expect to graduate to a walker. Though his spine had healed considerably, he still wasn’t able to do more than stand for short periods of time with most of his weight resting on his forearms and hands.
Focusing on his physical limitations was easier than letting his mind replay the conversation with Rose the night before. He wasn’t being fair, but he also felt she wasn’t either. Of course he understood she was going through this with him. Yet he wasn’t sure she fully grasped the toll the accident and subsequent recovery had taken on him. Sometimes he procrastinated on scheduling his medical appointments so he could pretend, even for a moment, that everything was normal.
Pushing the thoughts from his mind, he opened his email, and a calendar notification popped up. Michael was out that morning to study for the bar exam. Steven’s stomach flip-flopped. While he and Michael hadn’t discussed what would happen if Michael passed the bar, Steven had seriously considered offering Michael a more permanent position. But once he passed the bar, he might not be interested in sticking around.
The results wouldn’t be released until autumn. Hopefully, Steven had a couple of months to figure that out. He took comfort in knowing Michael had been instrumental in assisting with keeping the lights on.
A few hours later, the front door to the office opened, and pealing laughter filled the silence. Steven glanced at the time, rubbed his eyes, and stretched. Finally, he was through making the last edits to the will, and it was ready to sign. After maneuvering to his office door, he stood and leaned against the doorframe for balance.
“Sandra? That you?”
She came out of her office, and her eyes widened. “What are you doing, standing there like that? You’re liable to fall!”
He shifted his back against the wall, though his legs were already shaking. “I’ve finished the will for Mr. Rochester. Can you set up an appointment?”
“After you sit your butt back in a chair.” She rushed over and grabbed his arm before she helped ease him into the wheelchair.
“I can’t wait for the day I’ll walk again,” he said with a sigh.
“You’re making good progress, but you’ve got to be patient. Spine injuries don’t heal overnight.”
“I know.” He leaned his head back against his chair and glared at the ceiling. “But it’s frustrating. And I don’t want to roll my way down the aisle on my wedding day. I want to stand on my own two feet, head held high.” He shook his head. “It’s supposed to be the best day of my life.”
“I get it. Sometimes life happens in a way we don’t expect or want it to. But you have to roll with the punches.” Her lips twitched. “No pun intended.”
He frowned, not finding her joke as amusing as she did. “Anyway, we’re down a staff member today. Michael is at a study group to prepare for the bar.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Sandra exclaimed. “I’ll keep my fingers and toes crossed for him, but I doubt he’ll need it.” She played with a piece of string on her shirt. “What are we going to do if he passes?”
Swallowing his concerns, he gave what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug. “It’s still early summer. We have some time to figure it out.”
“Assuming he doesn’t find something sooner.” Crossing her arms, Sandra released a long sigh. “He’s been doing good work. I bet if you offered him something, he’d consider it.”
“I can’t compete with the DC law firms. He’d make three times what I could offer him.”
“Maybe if you take the initiative and make an offer now, he won’t consider going back. Or what if you made him a partner?” She sat in one of the chairs across from him. “He might be willing to give up the salary in exchange for an equal part of the firm.”
His stomach hardened, but he fought to keep his expression neutral. “The firm isn’t ready for that. I need more time to build up the clientele.” What he didn’t say was he needed to recoup what he had spent to start the business.
But Sandra read his mind anyway. “Look, you’re in over your head, but—”
“The answer is no,” Steven barked, and he immediately regretted it when Sandra’s eyes widened.
“Suit yourself.” Her tone had lost its friendliness, and she marched out of his office.
Great.First, he’d hurt Rose, and then he’d upset his best employee. If he wasn’t careful, Sandra would be on Michael’s heels as he ran out the door. And that would really put Steven in a bind.
Around lunchtime, Lanie popped her head in. “I’m here to take you to your physical therapy appointment.”
Steven finished what he was typing and hit save before he glanced up and forced a smile. “Yay.”
“I know you hate it, but it’s good for you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He pushed back from the desk and gestured to his chair. “I suppose if it’ll get me out of this stupid thing, it’s worth it.” Without waiting for her response, he maneuvered his chair from behind his desk and out of his office.
“I talked to Rose,” Lanie said as she pushed him through the front and headed for the van. “Sounds like you two had another argument because you aren’t taking your health seriously.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not.” After locking his wheelchair into place in the van, she buckled him in. “I’m worried about you two. Maybe you should consider couples counseling or therapy.”
“I’m already in enough therapy,” he muttered.
Lanie snorted and shut the door. When she climbed into the driver’s seat, she shot him a look in the rearview. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. She looked like their mother when she did that, and his heart ached. The first anniversary of her death was coming up fast, and he wasn’t ready to face the reality that she had been gone a year.
He closed his eyes, willing his thoughts in another direction. Unfortunately, they turned to Rose. She hadn’t said it, but the look in her eyes had told him she hadn’t believed him when he’d promised to try harder to take care of himself. Their goodbye had been lukewarm at best, and though he had no real reason to doubt her, his gut told him something had changed between them.
With a sigh, Steven turned away from the window. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if Rose pushed to postpone the wedding not for my health but because she had an ulterior motive.”
When his sister met his gaze in the rearview with a quizzical frown, he tried to think of a better way to word it. For once, the tightening in his chest had nothing to do with his heart attack and everything to do with his jumbled-up emotions.
“I knew after our first date Rose was the one for me. The only reason I waited to propose was because we both wanted to finish our degrees. And then we wanted to establish ourselves in our respective careers.” He turned to the window as they passed Bea’s Diner. “But I sort of blew that up when I got it in my head to move back here and open my own practice. Rose was doing well in Baltimore, and she’d received a job offer for a position in Boston.”
“And now you’re afraid she regrets that decision?”
A weight fell off his shoulders. “Yes, exactly. And my biggest fear, the one I can barely bear to think, let alone say out loud”—his voice lowered—“is that if we had put it off any longer, she’d wise up and leave me.”
“Oh, Steven.” Lanie shook her head as she turned off Main Street and headed toward the parking lot of a large building. “Rose loves you. She may not have promised ‘for better or worse’ yet, but she meant it all the same when she accepted your proposal.”
“I wish I could believe that.” When Lanie opened her mouth as if to protest, he hurried on. “Wait, let me finish.” He took a deep breath. “Just… look at me. I’m not even thirty years old, and I can’t walk, I—”
“But you’ve made progress in such a short amount of time!” After pulling up to the entrance of the building, she put the van in park then turned and looked at him. “You will walk again. You will have a beautiful, wonderful, long life with Rose.”
Tears pricked behind his eyelids, and he blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. “Thanks, sis. That means a lot.” He nodded at the clock on the dash. “We’d better go, or I’ll be late for my torture appointment.”
She laughed. “There’s that sense of humor I know and love.”
Lanie might have taken his statement as a joke, but Steven had meant it as anything but. No matter how much he tried to convince himself that physical therapy was necessary to reclaim his life and walk again, nothing would ease the sense of dread that grew within him the closer they got to the building. From everything he had heard, Ronnie, his physical therapist, sounded like a sadist. And he expected she would work him until tears literally poured down his cheeks before pushing him some more.
“Ah, my next victim,” said a woman with spiky blue hair and a row of earrings climbing each ear. She rubbed her hands together. “I’m Ronnie, and you must be Steven.”
Great first impression. Steven shot a pleading glance at Lanie, who shrugged helplessly. When he turned to look at Ronnie, she had a hand on her hip and a smirk on her face.
“Nothing like the smell of fresh fear to start a new session,” Ronnie said with a laugh. She smiled at Lanie. “I’ll take him from here.”
“Good luck,” Lanie whispered. After giving him a quick hug, she rushed out to the van. Steven watched her leave, wishing he could follow.
“Come on. It’s just an hour.” Ronnie steered him into the makeshift gym and over to a bed. “We’re going to start you off with some transitions and go from there.”
“Transitions?” Steven asked.
She moved in front of him. “You’re going to move yourself from the chair to the bed and back again.”
“But I’m barely able to stand!”
Instead of responding, she continued, “Watch me first. I’ll show you how to support your weight on your arms until your legs are strong enough to hold you.” She grabbed a chair and demonstrated using the bars by the bed to pull herself up, then she shuffled to the bed before extending one hand to the bedrail and hoisting herself onto it.
Steven raised an eyebrow. She made it look deceptively easy, but she had full control of her extremities.
With a grimace, Steven gripped the arms of his wheelchair and pushed himself to standing. He grasped the bar and held onto it for dear life as he tried to shuffle his feet. They moved incrementally toward the bed, but it took way more effort than he was expecting.
“That’s it. Slow and steady.”
He shot her a glare and took another precarious step forward. His leg shook with the effort as he dragged his opposite foot behind him. The weight of the boot on his leg served only to further slow his progress. After what felt like an eternity, he finally made his way to the edge of the bed. He grabbed the bedrail, turned his body, and lifted himself onto the bed with his arms.
“Good, though you need to pick up that back foot more, or else you’re going to trip yourself.”
“Tell that to my foot,” Steven retorted. “It doesn’t obey my commands.”
She pursed her lips. “It doesn’t hear them.”
He scowled as he bent down and lifted his legs one by one onto the bed. Once he was securely in the middle, he lay down and stared at the ceiling, struggling to catch his breath.
“Now that you’re here, I’m going to have you do some leg exercises.”
Steven relaxed, but his sense of accomplishment was short-lived because Ronnie began a series of exercises that worked every muscle in his body. By the time they were done, he was panting.
It had been only fifteen minutes. He still had forty-five to go. This is ridiculous. I’ve never been this out of shape in my life.
“All right. Time to move back to the chair.” Once again, Ronnie demonstrated how to transition from the bed to the chair.
His muscles screamed as he lifted himself off the bed and shuffled to the chair. But it took less time than it had to get on the bed, and when he eased into his chair, Ronnie smiled at him.
“Since you’re doing so well, I thought you might like to have a bit of fun. What do you say?” Ronnie leaned against the bed.
What could possibly be fun about physical therapy?But he decided to humor her. “What do you have in mind?”
She wriggled her eyebrows. “What do you say we play a round of wheelchair basketball? It’ll give you a chance to work your upper body without worrying about your legs.”
He snorted. “You know, my grandfather used to be obsessed with me playing basketball because of my height.”
She grinned. “But it wasn’t for you?”
“I mean, I wasn’t against it, but I wasn’t really into it either. But I’ll try anything at this point.”
Her face fell, but she shook it off. “Not quite the spirit I was looking for, but I’ll take it.”
Without another word, she pushed him out of the room and down a hallway. They entered a gym that reminded him of middle school PE.
To Steven’s surprise, the court was filled with other people in wheelchairs. “I thought this was going to be just you and me, one on one.”
“What kind of challenge would that be?”
He swallowed, suddenly self-conscious, though he couldn’t explain why. Every single person on that court except for the physical therapist was in the same situation as him. They might have arrived there because of different circumstances—Steven noted a few guys with missing limbs—but they would understand what he was going through. Then he realized the real reason Ronnie had brought him out there: to show him that he wasn’t alone.
A few days later, Lanie picked Steven up from yet another physical therapy appointment. His muscles ached but nowhere near as much as his heart. The day he’d been dreading had finally arrived, and his sister was taking him to the cemetery.
The weather matched his mood. Dark storm clouds gathered overhead, and he worried Lanie would abandon the plan. He prayed the rain would hold off. It wouldn’t feel right not to visit Mom on the anniversary of the day they’d lost her.
As if his sister could read his mind, she increased her speed. If she was trying to outpace the storm, she was fighting a losing battle.
When they arrived, she quickly unfastened his chair from the van. Navigating what had once been a confusing mess of straps and buckles had become second nature since he’d started going to the office on an almost daily basis. After he was safely on the ground, he headed to the grave. It was important to him to show Mom his progress. He believed that even if she couldn’t be physically present to witness it, she was watching him from heaven.
“Hey, Mom,” he whispered as he stopped in front of the headstone.
Lanie’s footsteps sounded quietly behind him, and she placed a hand on his shoulder.
The air had that familiar musky odor that foretold the coming rain. But it was tears that wet his eyes and slid down Steven’s cheeks, not raindrops. He sniffled, trying to hold the wave of grief at bay, but when Lanie squeezed his shoulder, he lost all sense of control and let go.
“I miss her so much,” he said, both to himself and to Lanie.
“I do too.” His sister’s voice was hoarse, and she cleared her throat. “But she’d be proud of you. Not just for the law firm but your perseverance, even with all that’s happened.”
“And to think”—he wiped his eyes—“I almost joined her.”
“Don’t say that,” Lanie admonished, stepping around his chair and kneeling by the headstone. “I like to think she was there that night, protecting you. Keeping you safe so we wouldn’t face another loss.”
Despite the tears flowing down his face, Steven smiled. “That makes sense. She kept me alive but allowed me to get hurt enough to teach me a lesson.”
Lanie raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure you’ve learned it.”
“I probably haven’t,” he admitted with a sad laugh.
A car door slammed in the distance, and Lanie stood to see who had arrived. Her mouth opened before she glanced at Steven.
“It’s Dad,” she said.
Steven shrugged. “I guess it’s not surprising. He knew her longest.”
When Dad caught sight of them, his steps faltered, then his mouth set in a grim line as he continued toward them. Steven noticed the bouquet of yellow daisies he held.
“Sorry to disturb,” Dad mumbled as he moved by Lanie and laid the flowers against the cold stone. “I didn’t realize you two were coming.”
“Lanie promised we could make a stop after my PT appointment. I wanted to show Mom how much progress I’ve made.”
Dad’s dark eyes went a little misty, and he sniffled. “I’m sure she’s glad to see it.”
Lanie turned to the grave. “It’s hard to believe it’s been a year.”
“Sometimes it feels like a lifetime,” Dad whispered.
Whether his father meant since he’d lost Mom as his wife or since she’d died, Steven wasn’t sure. But he was compelled to take Dad and Lanie’s hands. After a moment, Lanie took Dad’s other hand, and the three of them stood in silence.
“One of my last happy memories of Mom,” Steven said a few minutes later, “was when she told me I needed to hurry up and propose to Rose because she wanted some grandbabies.”
Dad chuckled. “She would have made an amazing grandma.”
The words were like a dagger to Steven’s heart. He’d had a wonderful relationship with his grandparents while he’d had them, and he’d hoped for the same for his children. Between Rose’s parents living in South Korea and the loss of his mother, his kids wouldn’t have the same experience. There was something about a grandmother’s love that was irreplaceable.
Plop.A drop fell on Steven’s head. He raised his face to the sky. The dark clouds were right on top of them, making it seem much later in the day. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“We’d better get out of here, or we’ll get soaked,” Dad said, grabbing Steven’s wheelchair handles.
“Wait,” Steven protested. With effort, he shifted forward in his seat and placed a hand on Mom’s headstone. “I love you and miss you.”
Lanie laid her hand on top of his. “We all do.”
Lightning flashed across the sky, and Steven jumped. “All right, Mom. We get the point.”
Dad and Lanie laughed as they pushed him across the graveyard and toward the van. The raindrops increased the closer they got, then a full-out downpour started the moment Dad pushed Steven into the van.
“We’ll stay here a moment until it lets up,” Dad said. “No sense driving when you can’t see five feet in front of your face.”
It wasn’t how Steven had planned to spend the anniversary of Mom’s death, but somehow, it seemed fitting to be huddled in a van in the middle of a thunderstorm with the only family he had left.