Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76006 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76006 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Only Rhys had stuck around. He’d earned a two-year degree in exercise physiology from the community college but had stayed put at the shop. Happy with his job and all his extracurricular activities, and that was all that mattered. Soon enough he’d get back to his life and so would Emerson.
“No worries. See you later.”
After lunch, he got lost in prepping invoices and calling patients about payment plans, wondering how this had become his life. Maybe when the kids got older he would be able to return to school.
Neil had once encouraged him to take some classes, even if only for phlebotomy, but he never got around to it. He supposed he could put his nonexistent degree to work by helping nurse Rhys back to health.
When he got home, the kids were doing their homework at the kitchen counter. They had a good system going with Audrey taking the bus home with her brother, using her own key to let them inside, and by that time they had a little over an hour before Emerson got home from work.
He grabbed a water from the fridge, then walked to his parents’ room, which had been freshly painted a calming spruce green based on ideas Audrey had found for them on Pinterest. They bought a new sheet set, as well as towels for the bathroom, and if he didn’t think about it too hard, it seemed like a completely different space.
He walked toward the bed to straighten the cream comforter and sham just to give his fingers something to do. And, if he was being honest, to get himself used to being in this bedroom after ignoring it for so long.
He was the only one of the three of them who didn’t dare step foot inside unless it was necessary. Even when he knew Sam and Audrey were in there together, looking through trinkets they’d decided to keep in the top dresser drawer for sentiment’s sake. Or that one time after a particularly bad night, when he’d found his brother asleep on the bare mattress, the sheets long boxed up along with their parents’ clothes.
“Mom and Dad would want this,” Audrey said in a confident tone from the bedroom door. She might’ve been young, but she kept him grounded in ways she didn’t even realize.
He blinked away the sting of tears, which seemed to appear quite suddenly nowadays. In this instance, he wasn’t really sure why. Maybe because moving on was painful, and he never really stopped grieving; it came in waves, pulling him under at a moment’s notice.
“Yeah,” he replied. “They loved Rhys.”
“And they’d want someone to use this space.”
He nodded. “Well, now someone will.”
Rhys’s presence would be like a breath of fresh air. And even though it was agonizing to move forward, maybe ignoring their room for so long only prolonged his suffering.
This would be good. And necessary. He made the motion to shut the door as he followed Audrey toward the hallway, then stopped himself. Audrey smiled sadly.
“What do you want for dinner?” Emerson asked around a thick throat as they joined Sam in the kitchen.
“Grilled cheese?” Audrey asked.
“With tomato soup?” Sam added.
Emerson grinned. “Sounds perfect.” It was their mom’s favorite, and now it seemed apropos.
They ate dinner as they caught up, and discussed Rhys joining them in another day.
It was going to be hard for Emerson not to reach out and touch him in a more meaningful way. But he’d had to live with plenty of painful things in his life, so he’d just file this one away to that dark corner of his heart.
7
Rhys
As soon as his mother helped him through the front door of his house, Rhys breathed a sigh of relief. It was something familiar after days of feeling like his body was not his own. He was suddenly glad about his decision to stay put in his childhood home after his mother moved to Florida, not only because it provided a place for his mom to visit when she was in town, but because in this precarious instance it grounded him.
He’d been woozy a lot of last week, in part because of the pain meds, which he’d be glad not to have to rely on in due time. But the other reason was that his memory was pretty fucking fuzzy. There were chunks of time missing, which could apparently happen with a traumatic injury, and as a result, everything felt off-kilter. Add in everyone treating him with kid gloves, and he was going to scream.
He hung on to his mom’s shoulder to carefully remove his shoes, lest he topple over. In short, he basically felt like someone had beaten the living shit out of him.
When he glanced around the house, everything looked the same, if a bit too neat, which meant his mom had tidied up. His dining table had piles of mail, his kitchen island a new bowl of fruit, and he would bet his mom had done his laundry as well.