by Lorrie Kruse
“I wish I would have met you a long time ago.”
She brought herself up onto her elbows and stared down at him. “Before you were opinionated and stubborn?”
“Before I was paralyzed.”
She put her hand on his heart. “You’re not paralyzed here.” She moved her hand to his forehead. “Or here.” She concentrated on the feel of his body next to hers, so strong, safe, and secure. “So what if your legs don’t work. You’re perfect, just the way you are.”
He turned his face away. She touched his cheek, the bristly growth of coarse hair prickling her fingertips as she brought his face forward. “I mean it, Matt. You’re absolutely perfect.”
For a moment, he was quiet. She could almost see the gears working inside his head as he worked to reject her words and then slowly grow to accept what she said.
“If I can get someone to pick me up, would you mind going back to Milwaukee alone?”
Alone. Without Matt. The beginning of the end.
“Dad said the group home will be done this week. I want to be there for the completion. It’s something I feel I need to do. So can you manage hauling the camper back to Milwaukee on your own?”
Him, going home to Fuller Lake, to the family and job he loved. All of the things he needed. And she wasn’t one of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With his head tipped back and rolled toward the side window, Matt watched the countryside roll by. He’d been “asleep” for the last hour. Feigning sleep to keep from talking. More to keep his father from gloating. Knew you’d come back, had been his father’s greeting words. It had only gotten worse after that.
Beside him, his father tapped the steering wheel in tune to an old rock song wailing from the radio. Made Matt wish he really were asleep.
Mile by mile, familiar landmarks whizzed by. Thirty miles south of Fuller Lake was the farm that had a corn maze every fall. He’d had his first kiss there, with Emily Schaftner.
Eight miles later came the huge cement badger at the entrance to the petting zoo. He smiled as he remembered the goat that had nipped Brad right where a thirteen-year-old boy never wanted attention called to in public.
Ten more miles and they passed the go-kart track where he’d spent many a weekend as a kid pretending he was the next NASCAR champion.
Fifteen minutes later they passed the used car lot where Matt had bought his first car. Then the restaurant where he’d had his high school graduation party. When they passed the first house he’d helped remodel, he knew he was truly home.
Within five minutes, they crossed the distance from the southern city limits to the northern edge of town where the whole family lived, Brad two blocks east of their parents’ and Matt’s house four blocks north.
He frowned when they passed the road to his parents’ house. Probably taking a detour to the grocery store. Instead, his father turned left onto Park Street. Toward his own house.
He didn’t want to go there, yet he eagerly looked down the road, mentally picturing his house. “Forget the way, Dad?”
“Have a nice nap?”
Damn it, they couldn’t go to his house. The idea of coming home was to cut himself free of his old life, not cement him to it. “Shouldn’t we be getting home? If I know Ma, she’s watching the clock, wondering where we are.”
“Don’t worry. We’re right on time.”
His house was just a block away now. He wished he was in a drivers-ed car with his own brake. He’d be stepping on it about now. Except that would require the use of his legs, and if he had that, going to his house would be no problem.
Without consciously doing so, he craned his neck. His heart sped up when he saw his neighborhood. And then, there it was. The beautiful Victorian home with the front porch and the gingerbread trim.
This moment felt all too familiar. Much like when he’d come home from rehab. But it was startlingly different because nothing in his life was the same. The hope was gone now.
His dad pulled into the driveway. Matt had barely grabbed hold of his wheelchair when his mother came running down the driveway. His door flung open. He was almost knocked sideways with the impact of his mother’s hug.
“I can’t help on the group home if I can’t breathe.” He tried to pry her fingers loose. Other than the death grip, he had to admit he wouldn’t have wanted anything less from her.
Despite his complaint, she held him longer than normal. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
Home. He sighed as he looked at his house. May as well get it over with, he decided as he set up his chair. With more experience than he’d ever wished to have, he transferred into his wheelchair and then wheeled up the driveway, conscious that he was hurrying and powerless to control his eagerness.
In the kitchen, he paused, taking all of it in, like he was seeing the room for the first time yet seeing everything only as a long-time lover could. How could he ever have been eager to leave this place? This town? His family?
He moved through the house, inspecting every room. This house was a part of him. He hung his clasped hands on his neck and pictured Abby. Coming here had been a mistake. Just like he’d feared. Now that he was back, he didn’t know if he could leave.
§
“Just like old times,” Matt’s father said the next morning as he pulled his Buick to a stop in the group home’s parking lot.
Aware of the wheelchair behind his seat, Matt stared at Derrick’s pickup on the other side of the lot. He’d spent a lot of time in that truck just like Derrick had spent a lot of time in Matt’s Silverado.
A beat-up, once-red pickup pulled up beside his father’s Buick, effectively blocking Matt’s view. A barely-twenty-something kid Matt had never seen before climbed from behind the wheel and performed a surfer’s wave at his father. The kid trotted off toward the nearly-completed group home that had been built without Matt’s help.
“Yeah, just like old times,” Matt answered.
“It’s good to have you back.”
This might not be just like old times, but his heart gave a couple of hard thumps at the thought of being back. A dizzying concept. One he wished could be lasting.
He needed to tell his father he wasn’t staying. That he was only here to finish out the build.
His father pulled the door latch. The door opened a crack.
“Dad.”
Holding the door handle, Carl Huntz looked at Matt with eyebrows raised.
Go ahead, tell him. Tell him you’re never going to walk again. Tell him that construction’s not a job you can do anymore. Tell him you only came back because you need to put this part of your life behind you.
Despite the curious wrinkles around his father’s eyes, his dad looked happier than Matt could remember. How could he disappoint his father?
His father tipped his head and arched his eyebrows a bit further.
“It’s good to be back.”
His father’s grin made Matt feel like a fraud. The big bear hug was even worse. Gripped in his father’s powerful grasp, he said, “I can’t work if I can’t breathe, remember?”
“Sorry,” his father said as he let go. “It’s just that it feels like a lifetime you’ve been away. But you’re back now, and things are going to be good.” He nodded. “Things are going to be great.”
Great, Matt thought as his father got out of the car and headed for the building. His dad was going to be crushed when he found out the truth.
Delaying the inevitable, Matt took his time putting the wheels on his chair. He hauled his ass into the chair and then slowly made his way across the yard that had been leveled smooth. Rolls of turf lay off to the side, waiting to be spread out.
He circled the building, checking things out. Huntz & Sons Construction had done a damn fine job. The contract for next year’s group home build was already theirs, and his father had plenty of winter jobs lined up. As many as any of the larger construction crews in town. Matt had gotten his wish. Huntz & Sons had reached the big leagues.
“Yippee,” he whispered. What good were wishes come true if he couldn’t be a part of them?
He came around the corner of the building and stopped short of plowing into someone. Derrick. Standing close enough to sucker punch. Or hug.
Derrick stood perfectly still for three long seconds as the two ex-friends stared at each other. Finally, Derrick said, “You look good.”
Matt took in Derrick’s tired, bloodshot eyes, and the way his clothes hung on him. He wished he could say the same. “You look like shit.”
Derrick smiled, the dimple piercing his cheek, and for a second he looked like the same guy Matt used to go fishing with, play basketball with, just sit quietly with. But then the smile vanished. He looked like a guy who slept way too little and worried way too much.
“You say that like you care,” Derrick said.
“I do.” Surprisingly, he did care. “Seriously, are you feeling okay?”
Derrick ran his hand through hair that looked like it’d thinned out in the last three months. “You don’t really want to hear me whine about my problems.”
“Want to? No. But…” He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Damn. Had he really been about to say that’s what friends are for?
The skin around Derrick’s eyes sagged. “I need to get back to work. My job’s already hanging on a frayed line as it is.”
“Like my dad would fire you.”
Derrick raised one eyebrow. No words necessary to confirm it was true.
“I’m sorry,” Matt said. And he was. Derrick was a damn good worker. A hard worker. And he’d been family.
Still planted where he’d been standing, Derrick rubbed his thin fingers across his forehead. He looked too exhausted to move, and Matt envisioned his friend’s toothpick legs being too weak to hold him up.
“You’re supposed to be mad at me, not nice. Mad, I can understand. Mad, I deserve.” Derrick dropped his hand to his side. “I don’t deserve your sympathy.”
“No. You don’t.”
The sad eyes looked even sadder. Like he knew they were the proper words but not ones he wanted to hear. He nodded. “I know I’m not someone you want to be stuck working with. It’s probably better for all of us if I quit, but I hope you don’t mind if I wait until everything’s done on the group home. I’d like to finish out this project.”
Derrick didn’t deserve his sympathy. Friends didn’t deserve anything. And that, right there, was what being a friend was all about. Could he tell Derrick that? That friends care about one another because they’re friends. Matt hung his hands on the back of his neck. His stomach flipped and his heart raced. Could he forgive? Forget? Just put it all behind them and move on?
As though the silence granted permission, Derrick nodded once. “I’ll tell your dad on Friday that I’m quitting.”
Your dad. Not Pops like Derrick had always called Matt’s dad. Derrick was quitting more than just a job.
“Derrick,” he called out to his friend’s back.
Derrick stopped and turned around.
“You’re right. You don’t deserve my sympathy. You have it as a free gift, because that’s how it works with friends.”
Derrick’s eyebrows tipped in toward his nose. Questioning. Puzzled. And then his eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”
“It might take some time before I’m ready to start telling you my darkest secrets, but yeah, we are friends.”
It took Derrick less than two steps to clear the distance between them. Derrick reached out like he was going to hug Matt but then pulled back in an awkward moment. With a grin that brought out his dimple he shrugged. “What the hell.”
In a flash, Derrick strangled Matt in his embrace. And it felt wonderful.
§
Abby walked into her mother’s room to find her sitting at a table, stringing large beads onto a leather cord. Could this really be the same woman who seven months ago couldn’t turn the page in a book?
Her mother looked up. Her content expression morphed into one of horror. She flopped her body over the pile of beads. “You can’t see. Go away, out in the hall, just for a minute.”
“Can’t see what?” Abby asked, pretending she hadn’t seen a thing.
Her mother waved her hand. “Just go. I’ll call when it’s safe.”
Out in the hallway, Abby leaned against the wall. She had so many reasons to be happy. Her mother was doing better than Abby could have ever imagined. Her mother moving into less restrictive housing was now a very believable concept. Below the surface, though, she was disappointed in herself. How could she, the physical therapist who’d gone to school to work with brain-injured patients, have not been able to help her mother?
She let her head tip back against the wall with a thump. She was letting her frustrations with her job color her judgment. Working with patients like her mother was a slow process. Much slower than helping someone learn to walk again after a hip replacement or knee surgery. There were days when she wished she were back at St. Luke’s. The rewards of her job were more evident then.
“Okay,” her mother called out. “You can come back in now.”
Abby stepped back into her mother’s room and almost laughed. An entire box of loose tissues covered the table like a blanket.
“Matt didn’t come today.” Her mother adjusted a tissue that’d been neatly lined up just a second ago.
“He went home to visit his family. Remember?”
“I miss him.”
Fully aware of the emptiness inside her that only Matt could fill, she said, “I do too, Mom.”
“Will he be back tomorrow?”
The question felt too much like the old one about her father. She put her hand in her pocket and crossed her fingers. The superstitious motion hadn’t helped her as a child, but maybe that was because she hadn’t wished hard enough. And God knows, she was wishing plenty now. “Not tomorrow, but he’ll be back.”
“Good. Because he promised to help me put the ends on—” She covered her mouth. “He’s going to help me with something.”
Abby crossed her arms over her stomach and prayed that soon it’d be Matt’s arms around her. “He’ll be back.”
§
“Just like old times,” Derrick said twelve hours later as he pulled into Matt’s driveway. He parked in front of the garage in the spot where Matt’s Silverado used to sit and slid the gear stick into park. Some kind of rock music that both Derrick and Crystal loved played on the radio.
Twin headlights illuminated the vinyl garage door panels, beyond which was a room filled with the toys Matt had found necessary to buy over the years, toys that no longer had a purpose in his life.
There was still a wheelchair tucked away behind his seat just like there’d been this morning. He hadn’t done anything more than play gofer all day. And Derrick wasn’t coming in for a cold bottle of beer because that would be just a little too weird, given the circumstances. But Matt nodded, anyhow, because this was the closest it’d felt in a long time. “Like old times.”
“Pick you up in the morning?”
“Bright and early.” Matt grabbed his wheelchair and hauled it over the seat. Rock music blared as Matt put the wheels on the chair. Beyond the lace curtains on Mrs. Mezmitz’s darkened kitchen window, Matt knew his elderly neighbor was watching. He hauled his body into the chair and started to close the truck door when Derrick stopped him.
“Thanks for talking to your dad.”
It had been easy telling his dad to stop being so hard on Derrick. If only it were as easy to tell his father he wasn’t going to walk again. “You’re a good worker, even if you do make a shitty friend at times.”
Derrick laughed. Just enough light came from the dash for Matt to see the deep dimple in Derrick’s cheek before it disappeared and the mood became serious again. “I’m sorry about what I did. I wish I could go back and change things.”
Matt settled back in the wheelchair. “Why didn’t you hook up with Crystal after I left?”
; Derrick was silent for a moment, like he was weighing the benefits between a brush off and the truth. Then he sighed. “Truthfully, we tried. Even though you’d broken up with her, it still felt like we were cheating.” He shook his head. “We just couldn’t get past that.”
“Do you still love her?”
“With all my heart.”
Matt knew all too well what that felt like. He’d only been away from Abby for one day, but it felt like a lifetime. He’d hate to know what a real lifetime apart felt like. “Life’s too short to not spend it with the people you love.”
Derrick frowned and Matt shook his head and grinned. Now this felt like old times. “For being so smart, you can be darn stupid. If you love Crystal, you should be with her.”
The furrows in Derrick’s forehead deepened. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You figure it out Mr. Class Valedictorian.”
§
The beautiful weather from the weekend held throughout the week and Friday was no different. The hot sun seared Matt’s arms, but it felt wonderful. Being outside was glorious. Working with the guys was a dream come true.
Matt wheeled over the brick path toward the raised flower bed where flats of red and pink flowers waited to be planted. He stopped sixty feet short of his destination and watched as Crystal dug her fingers into the soft dirt, with Derrick at her side. They looked good together. Happy. Exactly as Matt wanted. So why’d he have such a hard time making his arms move? His shoulder muscles were tighter than the fan belt on a brand new car and his stomach was tangled like a string of Christmas lights.
Derrick caught sight of Matt and waved, his dimple evident even from that distance. Crystal looked up, her head twisting to see who Derrick was greeting. She was stunningly gorgeous, even with dirt shadowing her face.
His eyes locked with hers. The knots in his stomach released their hold and his shoulders relaxed. She could have been a stranger. A beautiful one, but a stranger nonetheless. That’s what he felt as he looked at her. No attachment. No anger. No love. Granted, there was a sense of loss for what could have been, but overpowering it was relief that “what could have been” hadn’t happened.