FORTY-THREE

Stephanie

Charlie and I rode to the hospital in the ambulance with Dad.

After the chandelier’s chain had snapped, the fixture had plowed into the wood floor, landing with enough force to crash partway through.

The noise had been like an explosion. So had the impact.

Splinters and shards had flown, pelting the walls.

Running on pure adrenaline—pure panic—I’d barreled through the back entrance to where Dad lay unconscious, one leg pinned beneath the chandelier’s heavy metal frame.

I hadn’t really been thinking about what I was doing. I didn’t even remember putting Charlie down. I’d only wanted to get to the only parent either of us had left.

I’d called 911 after that. And as soon as Dad was admitted to a triage room, because I hadn’t known what else to do, I had called Lucas.

He came. Of course he came.

“Are you okay?” was the first question out of his mouth when he’d arrived in the waiting area. I’d told him over the phone that Dad had suffered a broken femur and a concussion.

If I was going to be truthful, I would need to tell him no. And that I wasn’t sure I ever would be “okay” again.

There’d been only one other time in my life when I’d been less okay. And that had been the night Charlie had been born. The same night Mom had left us—all three of us—forever.

But I couldn’t think of that. Not right now. Not if I wanted to keep the sanity that I felt fairly certain I still had.

I had Charlie in my lap, too, her little head resting against my shoulder, thumb shoved into her mouth. So I couldn’t fall apart into little pieces like I had back then.

“Dad’s going to be okay,” I muttered at last to Lucas, who’d waited more patiently for an answer than I would have. “So . . . I’m okay.”

I said this purely for Charlie’s benefit. But I gave Lucas a look that I hoped conveyed all I couldn’t say. That I was terrified. That there were things I needed to tell him with words. At the same time, I relished the sensation of his shoulder pressing into mine as well as the embrace of his jacket, which he’d insisted I wear when he saw me shivering. Could he guess that I hadn’t been shivering from the cold?

Either way, the jacket calmed me. It was safe. The same way Lucas felt.

Guilt lobbed itself on top of my dog-piled emotions, telling me I should have told Lucas everything sooner. About Charlie’s drawing and Erik, too. Would any of us be here now if I had?

Surprising me, Lucas took my hand. Perhaps his way of conveying that he got the gist of what I was trying to telepathically communicate.

The contact, warm and gentle, soothed the rawness inside me.

Throughout my life, people had always commented on how mature I was for my age. And maybe I was that way naturally. But after Mom passed, I hadn’t really had any other choice but to grow up fast. Not when Dad stayed lost longer than me. Not when Charlie couldn’t know how broken her arrival had left us.