Pa’s chest rumbled with a chuckle but it didn’t reach his somber face. “What Charlotte and Austin don’t know won’t hurt them.”

“Pa?” I slowed the already-slow dance. “I’m Austin.”

He blinked sluggishly, narrowed his eyes, and sighed with acute disappointment. “Of course you are.” His bottom lip trembled as he stared past me.

We made another slow turn before Pa reached over and restarted the somber song. Between that and Pa confusing me with Mama, I was close to splintering into pieces just like the pile of flooring.

“You ever hear of bloodletting?” Pa asked out of nowhere, snapping me from my inner turmoil.

I looked up and found his expression serious. “Umm . . . no, sir. You?”

He nodded. “The guys at the hardware store were talking about it the other day. One of ’em saw some documentary about it. Said in the olden days, doctors would withdraw blood from sick patients because their health was off-balanced or something . . . Bloodletting righted it.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that, so I said nothing. Just continued letting Pa lead me in this awkward dance as my body tautened with anxiety tighter than an overstretched rubber band. One that was ready to snap at any moment.

The glassiness of Pa’s eyes intensified. “I’d imagine it would be quite a relief to purge out impurities with just a simple cut . . . and feel right.” His voice trailed off for a few beats. “Don’t ya think?”

What I thought was Pa needed to stop his visits to the hardware store. I made a mental note to add hardware store supply runs to my to-do list even though that list was already to the point of making me buckle under the load of it. It’s why I rushed to finish school. It was either that or just drop out, because something had to give.

Clearing my throat, I finally commented, “I don’t think bloodletting is in practice nowadays.”

“Maybe. Still think it would be worth checking into.”

“Maybe it would be better to go talk to a doctor about you not feeling balanced,” I suggested.

Pa deflated, shoulders sagging from a weight I would never completely understand. It appeared my realistic advice robbed him of some delusional hope he seemed to have found in a morbid, outdated practice. He let go of me, and with a sluggish flick of his hand, the needle screeched across the vinyl. Saying nothing else, he lumbered past me and drifted up the stairs to his room, where I knew he would remain for another dark spell.

Panic burned my chest as I switched off the record player and made my way toward the kitchen to put a Band-Aid on the gushing problem within the walls of this farmhouse.