Keith: A Hathaway House Heartwarming Romance

by Dale Mayer

“I think it did help a lot,” she said. “When I saw him afterward, he seemed more settled. Happier somehow. As if he’d found something that he’d been missing. Of course that just made me feel like he didn’t want me either. Because, if he’d found something, and it wasn’t me, then it was something else.” Robin chuckled. “But I was more adjusted than he was, and that made life none too easy either.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Still, I hurt for your whole family. What about your father now? Do you have anything to do with him?”

  “Oddly enough, he reached out not too long ago because he’s going through a divorce,” she said in a wry tone. “And his wife wants child support for the two children he gave her.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And probably wants sole custody. So he doesn’t want the divorce or the limited visitation when he has to pay child support, right?”

  “I think he’s realizing that he not only lost his first family but he’s now in danger of losing his second family.”

  “Yep,” Ilse said, “I’ve seen that happen time and time again.”

  “I know, and it’s sad, but it is what it is,” she said. “I don’t think he’s reached out to Keith at all. And I’m not sure Keith would have anything to do with him if he did.”

  “Depends on if he can forgive and move on,” she said. “Not everything in life is quite so dark.”

  “I don’t know. I think, in Keith’s case, it certainly is,” she said. “After the accident that put him in the hospital, he also lost one friend at the time and another friend about three months ago. After months and months of rehab and everybody thought his buddy was good, then a blood clot or something like that came loose and took him. I know since then that Keith, who doesn’t talk about it at all, has been pretty quiet. As if all that effort that his friend made was completely useless, so what’s the point?”

  “Yeah, that’s how he was when he fell too,” she said.

  “I didn’t hear about the fall,” Robin said with a frown.

  “No, not many people did. He tried to get into the wheelchair or grab his crutches or something. I’m not sure. He was going to get a coffee for himself, but somehow he ended up falling and hitting his head on the floor, knocking himself out. We don’t think he was out for very long though,” Ilse said. “He was put on bed rest for a couple days, but he should be back up and moving around again now.”

  Robin nodded. “And of course he probably asked that nobody tell me about it,” she said in a wry tone. “That would be so him.”

  “Well, I hate to say that it’s possible, but it sounds quite probable,” Ilse said.

  “Yeah, he doesn’t like anybody fussing over him,” Robin said. “So that’s a warning. If you ever show any pity or try to coddle him, he’ll back off right away.”

  “I don’t think I did that,” she said, “but he’s definitely backed off, and I have to admit that I’m kind of angry about it.”

  “Good,” Robin said robustly. “Get angry, and let him know that you’re angry. He cuts people out of his life because either they hurt him or he’s afraid they’ll be hurt by him.”

  And those words resonated long after Ilse left Robin with the horses. Even for another few days.

  When she went in Monday morning, she saw a light on in his room. She stopped, not sure she should say hi or not. But she decided to try it. She knocked on the door lightly.

  He looked up and smiled and said, “I haven’t seen you in a week,” he said.

  “I wondered if you were pretending to be asleep when I came by,” she said, opting for the truth.

  His lids fell closed slightly, confirming her suspicions.

  “I’m not sure what I did,” she said lightly, as she moved into the room. “Or why you’ve decided to forgive me and say hi now.”

  “I missed you,” he said simply.

  At that, her heart melted yet again. “You know how to break apart somebody’s defenses, don’t you?”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t realize you had any,” he said. “You’ve always been the sweetest, nicest person, and, well, it’s hard for me to realize just how nice you are versus how not so nice I am.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her arms crossing over her chest, and she tapped her foot. “That better not be more self-pity,” she said.

  “And why is that?” he asked, his gaze flying to her face.

  “Because that’s one of the hardest things for anybody else to deal with. You need to toss that one off and walk away from it.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” he said.

  “No, it’s not,” she said, “but it’s not impossible. I never think in terms of what somebody can do for me or what somebody has got going that somebody else doesn’t. I don’t make comparisons,” she said. “Obviously something is between us, and we like each other’s company. We love spending time together, and I think it’s important to see where that will go,” she said. “But I would just as soon do it coming from a position of truth and trust.”

  His gaze widened slightly, and he nodded. “I like the sound of that,” he said. Then he smiled. “But just because I take a step forward doesn’t mean I’m not taking a step back.”

  “And,” she said, “just because you fall or fail once doesn’t mean you don’t try again.”

  “Deal,” he said, and then he chuckled. “What’s the chance of getting a coffee this morning?”

  “So, is it me you wanted to see,” she teased, “or just my coffee?”

  His booming laughter rang out through the room, and she was afraid they would wake up the other patients. She walked to the door and said, “Be back in ten. Or not,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You never know what I’ll find when I hit the kitchen.”

  He chuckled and nodded.

  She headed to the kitchen with a smile on her face. It was nice to have him back.

  Keith listened to her footsteps as she walked down the hallway, his heart much lighter, and his soul wearing a smile for the first time ever. He thought about all the other areas in his life that were so messed up. Yet this one particular area may have just straightened itself out. He wasn’t sure how he’d gone from trying to tell her that she needed to find somebody else to warming to everything she had to say, desperately wanting to be the person who could follow through on it.

  Had he really been cutting himself short? She hadn’t implied that, but she certainly had no patience with self-pity. Was he that kind of a person? Maybe he hadn’t been giving his all. And that hurt too. But he was willing to give it a try and to see what he could do. And that just brought up the email he got from his father. He had absolutely no freaking idea how the old man even knew what his email address was. But he half suspected that Robin was behind it. His father was getting a divorce and somehow realized, as he faced the loss of his second family, that maybe he’d already lost the first one, and it might be too late. But, if it wasn’t too late, could his son possibly respond and let him know that he was alive?

  Keith hadn’t answered, and now it just sat in the back of his mind, festering. He wasn’t ready to talk to his father. He wasn’t ready to open up any more wounds. And his father, of course, wouldn’t have a clue. He probably had no idea that Keith had even been injured. Then again, with Robin around, his dad definitely might know. But their dad probably didn’t know the details because Robin was as loyal as she was caring.

  She might have said that Keith had been hurt in the military and was recovering. But who knew? He should give his dad a chance to find out, but Keith had to look after himself, and enough was shaking loose in his world these days that Keith wasn’t sure he was ready to open up that Pandora’s box too.

  It didn’t sound very nice on his part, to see his father as a problem, but Keith knew that his emotional state, although getting stronger by the day, was also still very fragile. And Keith hated that. But what he didn’t want was to have any more setbacks that would slide him backward emotionally either.

  Midmorning, when Shan
e came by, he carried some big files. Keith looked at them and asked, “What’s all that?”

  “Progress,” Shane said. “Progress that you need to see but probably wouldn’t, unless you could see the black-and-white of it.”

  Keith stared at him and said, “You going to talk or will you show me what’s in there?”

  Shane burst out laughing. “Well, I’ll show you.” He laid it out on the bed carefully across Keith’s knees and said, “These are the photos that I took that first day you and I had an appointment. That set of testing, where you were grumbling about how tired you were from doing nothing.”

  Keith looked down at the pictures and winced. “Wow,” he said, “those are really ugly.”

  “Well, nobody said I was a great photographer either,” Shane said, deliberately misunderstanding him. Then he continued, “This one is at three weeks.”

  He held out a photo that was marginally better. The leg looked a little bit fuller, less angry.

  “Now this is the one I took yesterday.” He picked up another photo, and he laid it down farther from Keith. “In this picture, what do you see that’s different?”

  Keith stared at the pictures, as he studied the simple image of him sitting on a bench. There were two bench photos, both taken when Keith had been unaware. In the first one he listed to the side, his body inflamed and in obvious pain, but, in the last one, he sat up straighter, more muscle having developed on his left side, whereas it had been crunched in on that first photo. The color of his leg was more even-toned now, and the muscle obviously less inflamed, to the point of being almost happy.

  “Wow,” he said, “that’s a really nice picture. I wasn’t expecting to see that kind of change.”

  “It’s one of the reasons I document the progress with photos,” Shane said, “because, if you don’t see it, you don’t believe it. This is a godsend for you because seriously you’re already there, showing improvement,” he said. “This should show you that the work we’re doing has value.”

  “I always knew it had value,” Keith said. “I just didn’t realize how much and how soon.”

  “Of course not,” Shane replied. “But this? This is gold. So, are you going to give me any more guff about progress?”

  Keith looked up in shock, smiled, and shook his head. “Absolutely not. Thank you. I really needed this.” He looked at the photos, then at Shane, and asked, “Can I keep them?”

  “They’re yours,” he said, “for whatever you need to do with them.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, when Ilse walked into Hathaway House, she headed straight for Keith’s room. As she walked toward it, she could see his light shining, and she grinned. Her heart lightened as she stuck her head in the doorway and said, “So, is this like a standing date now?”

  He chuckled. “Well, I tried to ignore you, and it didn’t work.”

  He was sitting up this morning, looking at a bunch of photos. She hesitated to step forward because she hadn’t been invited, but he lifted his head, looked at her, and crimped his finger.

  “Come here and see what Shane brought.”

  She could see that he had laid out progress pictures. She picked up the first one, wincing. “Dear God,” she said, “what your poor body has been through.”

  He nodded and said, “Now hold that photo next to this one from yesterday.”

  She looked at the two in surprise. “Wow,” she said. “All that inflammation and the angry-looking welts and redness are gone. The muscles are fuller, healthier looking, thicker.”

  “And look at these two,” he said, holding up the ones where he’s sitting on the bench.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “The first one looks like you’re in terrible pain,” she whispered.

  “And the second one?”

  She looked at it and smiled. “You’re sitting up straighter, much more of a military posture, and, while I’m not saying you’re happy in that picture,” she said cautiously because really he didn’t look happy, “but you look better.”

  “Exactly. I don’t look happy because I still have a ton of work to be done, but, in the first one, I was in a ton of pain and a lot of that was due to my poor posture because I was collapsing in on myself. The muscles weren’t capable of holding me up, but now I’m feeling like I can do so much more,” he said enthusiastically.

  She chuckled, laid the photos back down, and said, “So, at five o’clock in the morning, this is what you’re doing?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, “and chances are I should be doing it every morning for the rest of my life.”

  “Not a bad idea. Success begets more success, whether small or large,” she said, as she walked back to the doorway. “Back in ten with coffee.” And she quickly strode down the hallway, feeling so happy for him. It was obvious that he was full of pride and bursting with accomplishment. She knew he still had a long way to go, but she was still stuck on how injured and vulnerable he had looked in the first set of pictures. She’d met him already at that time, but he had been in bed, covered up, and so she hadn’t seen the kind of damage that had been done to his body, both to harm and to heal. The images wouldn’t leave her alone, even as she made coffee and greeted her staff as they came in one by one, got the kitchen started, and then as she headed back to deliver a coffee to Keith.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said, as she walked into his room.

  “Why?” she said lightly. “It appears to be working for us.”

  A smile slipped out of the corner of his mouth. “Good point,” he said. “Okay, I was just feeling guilty that you keep doing this.”

  “Hey, I like seeing you first thing in the morning, before the world is awakened, before your full schedule starts, and before my kitchen goes crazy,” she said, laughing. “It’s nice to think it’s just the two of us in the world, at least for a little while.”

  “Oh, I agree,” he said. “I was just hoping you would be on the same page for that.”

  “We appear to be on the same page for a lot of stuff,” she said, “but it’s not always quite so simple.”

  “It never is. It seems like the more you get to know somebody, the more layers you peel back. And then, as you peel them back, you have to figure out who that person is underneath.”

  “Or you don’t have to figure it out,” she said, “and you just relax and let things happen as they’re meant to happen.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was always a doer in life.”

  “Interesting,” she said, “because I’m the same. But you have to consider that, right now, while you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re not a doer, but you’re somebody who’s letting the world happen.”

  “Well, when I first arrived, I was letting the world happen,” he corrected. “But since I’ve been here, and definitely now that I’ve seen the progress, I’ve gone back to being a doer again.”

  “Good,” she said, as she headed back out again. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Can we have a meal together?” he asked.

  She stopped and looked at him in surprise. “Sure. Which one?”

  He laughed at that. “I guess you’re busy at mealtimes though, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I am, and I’m not,” she said. “I’m always crazy busy up until lunchtime, but, once we start serving, usually it calms down fairly well in the kitchen.”

  “Lunch,” he said instantly. Then he stopped.

  “Not a good time?”

  “Potentially,” he said. “I just don’t know if it’ll be a bad morning for me, therapy-wise.”

  “Well, how about this? If you show up, you show up, and, if you don’t show up, I’ll take that to mean you’re in bed. And we’ll see how it goes on another day. No pressure. We have time.”

  “I can deal with that,” he said.

  “I’ll look forward to it.” As she walked back into her kitchen, she realized that it was almost a date. She shook
her head at that. “A date?”

  “What’s this? You’ve got a date?” Gerard asked beside her.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “No, I didn’t say that.” She laughed.

  “It’d be good if you had,” he said. “It’s been a long time for you.”

  “How would you know?” she teased. “The last time I went out on a date, I wasn’t working with you, so you wouldn’t even know when it was.”

  “Oh, we would know now,” he said, “because everybody here would be watching you primp and get ready for it.”

  She smiled a secret smile because, of course, there wasn’t a whole lot of that to be had today or here. And that made something about this experience very different. She’d always gone out with healthy able-bodied males. Not that Keith wasn’t, but he definitely wasn’t as healthy as he could be yet. She could still see the pain in his eyes, the creases around the corners of his eyes and sometimes around his lips when she saw him. It’s obvious that he was doing better, but he was a long way from being fully on his feet. Yet should be there in a matter of months. Amazing.

  Still, his mental outlook seemed to be improving with his physical progress. That was a plus on both fronts. And those guys from before, the healthy able-bodied males? She always ended up disappointed with their mind-sets or just their lack of plain ethics. And the peeling-back-the-onion reference from earlier? Those walls? Both just seemed to hide ugly aspects that she couldn’t handle.

  So it didn’t bother her in the least to have things start out differently with Keith. It seemed to be a sign of better things to come. So there would be no primping today. Just showing up as who she was. Which was never a bad thing, and she certainly didn’t need to dress up to have lunch with him in the middle of her workday.

  As she wandered back into her office to take care of a stack of paperwork, her mind kept cataloging the differences between lunch with Keith today versus going out for lunch. But a relationship that started here at Hathaway House started without all that physical attraction. It started with getting to know the person on the inside because the outside appeared to be so broken. She couldn’t help but realize just how important that difference was.