by Alyssa Kress
CHAPTER TWO
He couldn't tell they were there. This was obvious to Erica as soon as she walked into the hospital room, accompanied by Liam and Brennan. The shriveled face amid the hospital sheets barely seemed a part of this world.
"Dad?" Liam went straight up to this frightening apparition and found a hand somewhere under the sheets. He held onto it. "Dad, we're here. We're all here."
This was not quite true. Richard's oldest son, Alex, had no idea any of this was going on since no one knew how to contact him. Clint was still on his way. Liam had dialed him from Brennan's car while the Carmichael's rock-steady neighbor had driven them over here.
Brennan went to the other side of the bed and put a big hand on her father's shoulder—or where Erica assumed his shoulder might be under the swarm of sheets and arrangement of tubes. Brennan's expression was calm and steady.
Erica cleared her throat and forced herself to walk closer.
"Um... Hi, Dad. It's Erica." Her voice was a whisper. But even if she'd shouted, she doubted she would have received a reaction from the face of hollowed-out cheeks and thin, wrinkled skin.
Holy— This was not the father she remembered, larger than life and twice as blustery. He was tiny and seemed far older than his actual fifty years.
During the entire three hours of her drive from Los Angeles, she'd battled angry resentment toward the man who'd ruined her childhood. Now she couldn't help feeling sorry for him.
The utter quiet and calm of the scene could not have been in deeper contrast to her mother's agonized struggle with death twelve years earlier. The tortured gasps of her pneumonia, courtesy of overwork and personal neglect, had scored the air of the room.
In the weeks before her death, Erica's mother had complained, between coughing spasms, that she was too busy to go to any doctors. Richard had only just got out of prison, serving a sentence for assault with a deadly weapon. Moira'd been the one trying to make ends meet. No time to address a lingering cough, one that had morphed into bronchitis. Richard had come out of prison sober, but Moira hadn't had long to enjoy the phenomenon before laboring for breath in a hospital room much like this.
Now Erica considered coming closer to her father, touching him so he could know for sure that she was there—take out that emotional insurance for which she'd made this journey. But she couldn't move. A choked sensation attacked her throat. She could feel all the old anger, resentment, and fear, but it clashed now with a weird sense of guilt. It was crazy. What had she to feel guilty about?
Across the bed from Erica, Brennan the neighbor looked over at her. His expression was calm—not judgmental any more. But he still made her feel out of place.
He wasn't even Richard's son, but he'd been around. She hadn't.
The air behind Erica moved. She turned to see Clint walk in.
Her next-younger brother was built compact but strong, with short, very dark hair. Wearing a leather jacket and jeans, he walked in quickly, letting out a short, expressive breath when he saw Erica.
"Hey," he said, and with exactly the right sort of smile—a welcoming smile—he drew her into an embrace. "You made it."
Erica closed her eyes. Instantly, she felt a little better. Clint could do that. In fact, he always did that, made people feel better. He exuded an easy, genuine warmth.
"You're doing the right thing," he murmured softly in her ear before releasing her.
She felt pressure threaten her nose and smiled in an effort to beat back any coming tears.
"Hey, Liam. Brennan, my man." Clint went over to give Liam a lengthy hug and then walked around the bed to exchange a brief man-hug with Brennan.
Once again, Erica had to admit that the officious neighbor was more or less part of the family.
"Dad," Clint said, his tone warmly chiding. He put his hand over his father's other hand, the one Liam didn't have. Clint squatted down to say more in a voice too low for Erica to hear.
Erica could swear her father's wrinkled expression eased a little.
Liam lowered his forehead to the hand he held.
For her part, Erica felt paralyzed, unable to move any closer, unready to walk away. She was about as useful as a block of wood.
At least comfort Liam, you big embarrassment.
As she forced her limbs to move closer to her brother, she happened to look up and catch Brennan's eye. She thought she detected a tiny glimmer from him, the oddest, tiniest glimmer that he could somehow guess how conflicted she felt.
As tiny as it was, and possibly not even true, this miniscule drop of understanding acted like a lever on whatever emotional crack lay inside her. Erica felt the crack widen as she put an arm around Liam's shoulders.
"Hey, Dad, you feel better," Liam murmured.
With the frightening crack inside her composure widening, Erica was afraid to open her mouth, assuming there were any words she could say. She didn't love her father. How could she love the person who'd ruined her childhood? The man who at any moment might burst into some loud tirade or throw a beer can across the room?
On the other hand, he hadn't always been awful. When she was very little, he'd taken her to ice skating classes, had cheered her on when she'd gotten herself up from a fall. Once, she remembered him putting her on his shoulders in order to get a better view of a holiday parade. God, that had been a long time ago. She couldn't have been more than three or four.
The lever Brennan had stuck in her with his understanding glimmer shifted her cracked shell yet more. From somewhere very deep down, so deep she hadn't known it was there, grief materialized, after all. A horrifyingly large, indeed overwhelmingly gigantic, grief.
True terror seized Erica. No! She did not want to feel grief. It was—untrue. A phantom. She dragged in a large breath and pushed the emotion back down. Uh-uh. Not wanted. Not real.
Her father went very still, even stiller than before.
"Goodbye, Dad," Clint said. "You've been the greatest. Have a safe journey, there."
Liam's voice was barely audible. "Goodbye, Dad."
"Richard," Brennan rumbled. "Don't you worry. It'll be okay."
Erica had no idea what he was talking about. Meanwhile, what was she supposed to say? She felt so choked with a plethora of conflicting emotions that she could barely breathe.
She ended up not saying anything.
So much for emotional insurance.
