by Tom Hunt
Every night soon started following the same pattern. Ross and Shane would play music at that night’s bar for a few hours. The three of them would party afterward, throwing back drinks. Around his third or fourth drink, Shane would pop a few pills. And the night would go straight downhill. He’d become aggressive and hostile. He’d take a few more pills, start mouthing off. More often than not, the night would end with Shane getting in a fight, sometimes taking on two or three people, before Amber and Ross hurriedly ushered him out of the bar.
All of a sudden, it wasn’t fun any longer. She was in her late twenties—the all-night parties had lost their appeal. The travel had, too. And Shane was starting to truly worry her; it was only a matter of time before he did something to get himself arrested, maybe even worse.
She asked Ross to leave Shane and break up the Blood Brothers, maybe get a normal job and settle down, but he insisted that he couldn’t abandon Shane. Family, he told her. He couldn’t turn his back on family. Not after how Shane had been there for him when their parents died. Not after all they’d been through together.
But there was more to it than that; she could tell. The more time she spent around them, the more she realized that Ross was just plain scared of Shane. Unable to stand up to him. Part of it was size, with Shane being taller and twice as big as Ross, but part of it was attitude. Shane was flat-out intimidating. Outspoken. Loud. Bossy.
Amber started waitressing again, staying home and working while Ross and Shane traveled. She felt Ross slipping away from her. Felt a divide she’d never felt in their marriage before. Whenever she’d ask Ross to leave Shane, the response was always the same as before: family—he couldn’t turn his back on family.
The phone call that shattered everything came on a Tuesday morning. The police, calling to tell her that Ross had been arrested and charged with drug possession. And intent to distribute.
She drove to jail and listened to Ross explain everything. Shane had started selling drugs to people who attended their concerts, usually slipped into the cases of their CDs. He convinced Ross to join him. The wrong person found out and they were busted.
Ross begged Amber to forgive him, to stand by his side, to give him another chance, but she’d had enough. She shook her head, stood up, and told Ross she never wanted to see him again. She walked out of the jail, leaving Ross behind, and—
The car jerked forward. Ross’s singing was interrupted by a loud grating noise from the underside of the car. Amber sat up in her seat.
“What the hell?” Ross said.
The car jolted and lurched and began violently shaking. Ross pulled to the side of the gravel road and came to a stop on the shoulder. He stepped outside and popped the hood. After a minute of looking at the engine, he slammed the hood shut.
“Connecting rod is broken,” he said. He kicked the driver’s-side door a few times, hard enough to leave a dent. “Christ. You gotta be kidding me.”
“Can we still drive it?”
“Hell no. It busted a hole in the crankcase. Engine’s shot.”
“What are we gonna do?”
Ross looked around. The forest was to their left, flat farmland to their right. Not much else.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” he said. He shook his head and kicked the door again. “I’ll drive this piece of junk into those woods over there. Hide it a little. Make sure no one sees it if they drive by.”
“Then what?”
“Walk through the forest, I guess. Hope it leads somewhere.”
Amber checked the disposable phone for a map. No service. She put it in her pocket.
Ross sat back down in the driver’s seat. The car started with a loud noise. It shook and rocked as he slowly drove it into the woods. He stopped the car a couple of hundred feet into the forest and grabbed the backpack filled with money. Ross slung it over his shoulder and they exited the car and started walking. Right on the edge of the woods, they passed a worn metal sign littered with buckshot.
HAWKEYE WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREA, it read.
* * *
The day continued for Karen. She jumped from one room to the next, alternating between one task and another. A constant stream of things to do.
A few hours from the end of her shift, she was filling out a chart when she looked over at the storage room on their floor. Through the small window on the door, she saw Carmella standing in the room, her back to the door. She was alone.
Karen figured she was grabbing supplies for one of her patients, but when she looked up a few minutes later, Carmella was still there. Alone in the corner of the room.
Karen walked over and stuck her head into the room. She heard a light whimpering noise—it took her a moment to realize that Carmella was crying.
“What’s wrong?” Karen said.
Carmella turned around. There were tearstains under her eyes.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said. “You startled me.”
Karen stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“So you’re crying in the middle of the day for no reason?” Karen said. “Come on, honey. What is it?”
Carmella shook her head. She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her scrubs. A small patch of green cloth darkened.
“It was Mrs. Johnson,” she said.
“Oh dear. Did something happen?”
“No, she’s fine. It was just . . . earlier, when I was in her room, she told me one of her jokes. It was a cheesy, corny joke but I couldn’t stop laughing. After I left her room, I pulled out my phone to text the joke to my mom . . . and for just that moment, when I was holding my phone, I forgot. Forgot about the funeral, forgot that she was gone, forgot about it all.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“That’s happened a few times since my mom passed. I’ll hear a joke or see something and I’ll pull out my phone to text her about it. Then I remember, and it hurts. It hurts a lot.”
“The same thing happened to me when my mother passed,” Karen said. “Day by day. That’s how you get through it. Sometimes you have setbacks but you keep going on.”
Carmella smiled at her. She dabbed her eyes again.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Of course. Anytime you—”
“I’m not thanking you for the advice. Well, I am. I appreciate that. But everything else you did when my mom was sick—that’s what I’m thanking you for.”
“You’ve already thanked me. Plenty of times.”
“It can never be enough,” she said. “I mean it.”
Karen nodded, thinking back. Two months ago, they’d been leaving the hospital together after a shift when Carmella dropped her purse. The contents spilled everywhere—a makeup compact, her keys, a few credit cards . . . and a vial of Dilaudid. An opioid ten times stronger than morphine. A drug commonly used on the street.
Karen picked up the vial and stared at it—stunned, in total shock. She couldn’t believe it: Carmella was stealing medication from their floor. When Karen finally found her voice, she managed a single word. Why?
Carmella explained that the medication wasn’t for her; it was for her mother, who was bedridden at home with a terminal illness. The painkillers she’d been given weren’t having much of an effect, and doctors wouldn’t prescribe anything stronger. And so, for weeks, Carmella had been stealing leftover vials of Dilaudid from their floor. After she administered a portion to a patient, she’d pocket the vial instead of disposing of it in the waste bin, then smuggle it back home for her mother.
Tears in her eyes, Carmella begged Karen not to turn her in. She claimed that she just wanted to help give her mother a softer landing. Insisted that she couldn’t bear to see her mother suffer for the final few weeks of her life without doing something.
What happened next was all up to Karen. Turn Carmella in, and Carmella would be fired. She’d lose her license, probably go to jail. Had Carmella been stealing the drugs for an addiction or to sell on the street, the decision would’ve been a no-brainer. Karen would’ve reported her in a heartbeat.
But this situation was different. Could she ruin Carmella’s life for wanting to help the person who’d raised her? Karen had debated that question for a long time. A few sleepless nights, plenty of back-and-forth. In the end, she decided not to turn Carmella in. The decision weighed on her heavily. Had anyone found out what she’d done, she would’ve lost her job, her livelihood, everything.
But she just couldn’t bring herself to ruin Carmella’s life. Turning her in would’ve been the right thing, but Karen would’ve felt so guilty, so horrible.
For a few weeks, Karen had looked the other way as Carmella stole partially used vials of Dilaudid during her shifts. And then one day she didn’t need them anymore.
“I know I’ve already thanked you, but I want to do it again,” Carmella said. “It made the ending so much easier for my mom.”
“I’m glad it helped. Let’s leave it at that. Now, come on. We better get back to work.”
Carmella wiped her eyes a final time. They walked out to the floor.
“By the way,” Karen said, “what was the joke?”
“The joke?”
“Yeah. The joke Mrs. Johnson told you. Your mother might not be around to hear it, but you can share it with me.”
“You sure? It’s cheesy. I’m talking really, really cheesy.”
“Come on. Tell it to me.”
“Okay. How many doctors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
“How many?”
“Depends on whether it has health insurance or not.”
Karen smiled.
“You’re right,” she said. “Good Lord, that’s terrible.”
* * *
• • •
When the day finally ended for Karen, she changed and left the hospital. Took a different route than she had that morning and pulled into a small parking lot next to a Chevy dealership. She walked inside and found the man she was looking for in an office right past the entrance. He was sitting at a desk, wearing khakis and a button-up with the dealership logo on the front.
“Teddy,” she said.
He looked over. Seemed to take him a moment to recognize her. “Oh. Hey.”
“I had a quick question,” she said. “Figured you might be able to help me.”
“Just gimme a second.”
He pecked away at his keyboard. She stood at the edge of the room and watched him. It never ceased to amaze her how much Joshua looked like his father. Teddy’s face was fuller, but he had the same jawline and nose as Joshua, the same blue eyes. More than anything, it was the hair that made them look so similar—Teddy and Joshua had identical shades of hair, so blond it looked white.
It was impossible for her to look at Teddy and not think that she was looking at a forty-two-year-old version of Joshua. Only difference was that Teddy was a good thirty pounds heavier than Joshua was, with the bump of a beer gut hanging over his waistband.
He tapped a final few keys and swiveled around in his chair.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Joshua. His car windshield is all busted up. He claims he was horsing around and his friend fell onto it. I was wondering, could I get the crack fixed here? In the dealership garage? The sooner the better. I figure I’ll pay for it and he can reimburse me.”
“You could get it fixed here, but you’d probably get laughed out of the place if you pulled in with that old beater. And the cost would be double. I’ll text you the numbers of a few people who could help. Independent garages.”
“Any idea how much it will run me?”
“No clue. I only sell the cars. Don’t know the first thing about fixing them.”
They made small talk for a bit. As far as exes went, they had a pretty good relationship. Not really friends, but not scorched-earth enemies. They chatted when they ran into each other at Joshua’s golf meets, occasionally texted back and forth about him. She’d even bought her current car from Teddy a few years back.
A coworker dropped into Teddy’s office and asked to speak with him. Teddy stepped out into the hallway and Karen waited in the small office. Teddy’s desk was littered with various framed pictures of Joshua. One of him and Joshua standing on a golf green, both wearing polos and sunglasses. Another photo of Joshua when he was just a child, probably five or six, holding up a set of Fisher-Price plastic golf clubs. Taped to a file cabinet was a cutout newspaper article about Joshua’s high school golf team winning their conference tournament last year. The sentences that mentioned Joshua were highlighted in yellow marker.
Other golf decorations hung from the wall. IT’S TEE TIME SOMEWHERE, read a sticker. I’D RATHER BE DRIVING A TITLEIST, read another, accompanied by a picture of a cartoon character swinging a golf club.
Teddy stuck his head back into the office.
“Looks like I’m needed. I’ll have to text you those phone numbers of mechanics when I find them.”
“Sure,” she said. She walked out into the hallway.
“I meant to ask you—how is he?” Teddy said.
“Who? Joshua?”
“Yeah. He seemed down last time I saw him. Wanted to make sure he’s doing all right.”
“He was a little out of it this morning. Distracted. Not that that is anything new. Girl problems, school problems—could be anything. He’s a teenager.”
Teddy disappeared through an open door and she walked back out to her car.
* * *
• • •
Twenty minutes after leaving the car dealership, she arrived back home. She and Joshua lived in the same house she’d grown up in, a beige ranch house in the country with an American flag and a wooden WELCOME sign next to the front door. A narrow driveway led from the gravel road to a two-car garage.
When she was younger, she never imagined she’d end up living in the house she grew up in. But here she was. After Joshua was born, she moved back home so her parents could help raise him, and she’d never moved out, even after she inherited the house when they passed away more than a decade ago. There was something comforting about having spent a majority of her life living in the same house. She figured there was plenty out there she’d never gotten to experience or see—a whole world, really—but she didn’t really feel like she was missing out. There was no sense of emptiness or regret.
She parked her car in the garage and walked across the yard. Outside the front door, she checked the mailbox before going inside. There were three letters.
The first was their energy bill.
The second was a Walgreens ad.
The third was a letter that nearly made her collapse.
* * *
• • •
“So, what was the highlight of your day?”
Karen stared across the kitchen table at Joshua. She could tell that whatever had been bugging him this morning was still bugging him. He hadn’t so much as cracked a smile since his friend Freddy dropped him off after golf practice an hour ago, but the real reason she knew something was up was the burger on the plate in front of him. The burger was from the Map Room, their favorite local burger spot. Joshua normally wolfed down his burger in the time it took her to swallow her first bite. Tonight, the monstrous burger sitting on the plate in front of him was missing only a few nibbles.
“Well?” she said. “What’s your highlight?”
“Nothing, really,” Joshua said.
“Come on. You know how to play the game. You can’t respond with nothing. What’s the best thing that happened to you all day?”
They did this every night during dinner, sharing the highlight of their
day with each other. She’d done the same thing with her parents growing up.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” Karen said after a nonresponse from Joshua. “Mrs. Wellington, that nice old lady who’s been my patient for a few weeks? She had a checkup today. She’s improved so much that she was released this morning. Her family was overjoyed.”
“That’s cool,” he said.
“Yeah. It is.”
She took a few bites from her burger and carried her plate to the counter. She wrapped up half of it for lunch tomorrow, then washed her plate under the faucet. She grabbed a manila envelope off the counter and carried it back over to the table.
“Think of a highlight yet?” she asked.
“Not really.”
She set the envelope on the table in front of Joshua.
“I’ll help you out, then. That envelope was in the mailbox when I got home from work. That, right there, is the highlight of your day. Probably the highlight of your year.”
He picked up the envelope. The corner was stamped with a logo: Clemson University. She’d been tempted to tear it open when she found it in the mail earlier but resisted. She had a pretty good idea of what was inside. An envelope that big could mean only one thing.
Joshua opened the envelope and pulled a letter from inside. He scanned it.
“I got in,” he said.
Karen was unable to hold back a beaming smile. “Congrats, sweetie.”
For a year now, Joshua had had one goal for college. Get into the Landscape Architecture program at Clemson. A highly competitive program that was one of the best in the nation. He liked to draw and he loved to golf, and he combined the two into his dream of designing golf courses for a living someday. Getting into a landscape architecture program was the first step toward that.
They’d devoted endless hours to studying for college entry exams and putting together his application. He’d submitted an entire portfolio of drawings, some of golf courses, some of random things he’d drawn over the years. They’d spent countless late nights worrying about when they’d finally hear back. And all of those endless hours had been leading up to this one moment.