“Girls.” His voice was deep and calm, the way he probably spoke to a frantic homeowner when he arrived at the scene of a fire. The girls’ eyes went wide. They never seemed to know if they were getting happy, loving Dad or grouchy, stressed-out Dad. It always took a few minutes to figure out which one had shown up that day. “Get the plates and utensils, and set the table, please.” He pointed to the dining room, and Amelia passed the supplies to them silently.
As Cora went to open the swinging doors into the dining room, Steve added, “And no more fighting. You hear me? Your mom has enough to deal with. She doesn’t need you two mouthing off. Okay?” There was a stern lilt to his voice at the last minute, and Amelia could see both of the girls stand a little taller.
“Yes, Dad,” they said in unison like they’d practiced it, and then scooted out to the front room, arms loaded with supplies.
“I had that,” Amelia protested.
“Those girls walk all over you sometimes.” Steve glanced around the kitchen like he was searching for a needle in a haystack. “So, the potatoes ready to go on the grill?”
Amelia rushed over to the counter and hastily cleared off a few stray potato and carrot peels into her hand and tossed them in the trash. “Here, I just finished putting them into the foil. When everyone gets here, I’ll bring you the steaks.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get that.” Amelia dropped the aluminum foil pouch filled with veggies into Steve’s hands and then wiped her own on the dingy apron wrapped around her midsection. Just as her foot hit the tile by the front door, there was a quiet, hesitant tap—Caleb. Amelia swung the door open and held back a self-satisfied smile.
Caleb, hands shoved in the pockets of a wrinkly pair of khakis, stood on the other side, glancing over his shoulder at the van pulling up the driveway.
“Hey, Caleb. Glad you could make it tonight.”
“Thanks for the invite.” He hesitated like he was searching for a line in the school play. “I put up the ramp . . . for Ellie and Chief Brown. I hope that’s okay.”
“Oh yeah.” She peeked around behind him at the black and silver ramp that fit over Amelia’s front steps. She’d given in and ordered it after breaking her big toe in an attempt to get her father’s wheelchair into the house on her own.
“You are just the lifesaver today, aren’t you?” She hated the way she talked to him lately, like he was a child and she was his teacher. It was strange being the boss’s wife, given their history together. They rarely had real conversations anymore, not like when they were younger and would spend hours on the Sangamon Bridge, tossing sticks into the water and talking about all their hopes and dreams until the sun set over the river. Sometimes Amelia wondered if she’d imagined that Caleb, made him up like a fictional character in a story.
But then she remembered how he was the only one around when the call came in from the firehouse about her dad. When she hung up the kitchen phone, the white push-button that was probably as old as the house, reality hit. Her father, who’d always been the one saving everyone else, who ran into burning buildings, was now the one who needed to be rescued.
She’d held the paper with the information Billy from the station had given her: what hospital her dad was taken to, whom to ask for, who was driving the ambulance. What she didn’t have written on that notebook-paper scrap was how she was going to tell her sister that her hero had fallen. That he could die. That they could be orphans. That their lives were permanently changed in this one moment.
She’d taken no more than two steps and then collapsed onto the kitchen floor. Caleb must’ve heard her fall, because he was in the room seconds later. Amelia couldn’t explain. It was too much to say the words out loud, so she handed him the crumpled note.
Without a word, he walked out of the room, coming back moments later with keys and Amelia’s jacket. Arm around her waist, he half carried, half guided her to his car and drove her to the hospital one town over in Frampton. They didn’t speak the whole way. He parked the car and took her into the hospital, but he didn’t stay. Somehow his silence spoke more clearly than any small talk they’d engaged in recently.
“I’m just glad it got you where you needed to go.” He shrugged, his shoulders enveloped by his ill-fitting polo. Amelia pushed the door open wide and pointed to the front room.
“Well.” She paused, not sure what to say next. “Come on in and grab something to drink.” Caleb gave a half smile and shuffled through the door. “There’s beer in the fridge and soda in a cooler on the back porch. Steve’s out there cooking on the grill if you want to join him.”
Caleb nodded and headed toward the table. As Amelia stepped out the front door to greet Ellie, she could hear the girls shout their hellos to “Uncle Caleb.”
Ellie already had their father lowered down from the otherwise normal-looking dark blue minivan to the gravel drive by a motorized elevator. Collin was with her as soon as the platform stopped moving, unhooking all the straps that’d kept Chief Brown immobilized. Both with quick hands and medical minds, he and Ellie worked efficiently and compassionately as a team.
Ellie waved at Amelia from the driver-side of the van as she pushed the button inside that closed up the elevator. The van cost more than Amelia and Ellie made in a year combined. The payments on it took up nearly all of their father’s pension every month, but that van provided a safe, convenient ride for Ellie and Amelia when they were caring for their father.
Amelia wasn’t sure if she’d ever figure out how to make this all up to Ellie—dropping out of med school indefinitely, coming back to the one town she’d been running from since she saw her first skyscraper on MTV. But when she saw her with Collin, tall, strong, intelligent Collin, Amelia knew that there were plenty of good things lying ahead for her sister, and some of them were even native to Broadlands.
“Hey, M!” Ellie called out as she slammed the driver-side door and walked around to meet Collin by her father’s wheelchair. Her dad sat half-slumped in his wheelchair, dressed in dark pants and a button-up shirt, a knitted blanket tossed over his legs.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t walk, but the physical therapy was slow and he tired easily. Stairs in particular were difficult, and so to spare him the embarrassment and frustration and his following outburst from both, Amelia and Ellie preferred the use of a wheelchair in public.
He didn’t look up at first, just stared at the tattered notebook in his hands, shaking and mumbling to himself. The stroke had many negative effects on her father, several physical, like the difficulty walking and the slur in his speech, but the biggest blow was mental. The stroke had caused vascular dementia in her previously bright and active father. Now he was a confused, frail old man who lived more in the past than the present and didn’t know the difference between a book and a shoe.