Part 2
“Thomas. Look at me.”
Leah noticed the name.
Not sir. Not Mr. Mercer. Thomas.
Cal knew him well enough to say his name without hesitation.
The thought landed more painfully than the image of his arm around the man.
The emergency crew entered through the service hallway with a folding stretcher and red medical bags. One paramedic asked Leah to step back. She obeyed and found herself in the colder hall, under the blue-white ceiling lights, while strangers crowded the room and cut away part of her father’s shirt.
The blood had spread from a puncture near his lower ribs. It looked worse once the fabric was lifted, but the paramedic said the bleeding appeared controlled. Thomas cursed when they fitted a dressing over the wound.
“That’s good,” one of them told him. “Keep complaining.”
Cal stood against the washer, his hands stained red to the wrists.
The silver chain remained on the floor.
A young EMT nearly stepped on it. Leah bent faster than she should have and felt a hard pull low in her abdomen. She caught the doorframe with one hand and picked up the chain with the other.
The tags were warm.
THOMAS R MERCER.
The letters had been worn smooth at the edges.
She closed her fist around them.
“Ma’am, are you all right?” the EMT asked.
“I’m pregnant, not injured.”
The answer came harsher than she intended.
The EMT glanced at her stomach. “How far along?”
“Thirty-four weeks.”
“Any pain?”
“No.”
The baby kicked against her palm as if disputing that.
The crew carried Thomas out through the hallway. He looked toward Leah as the stretcher passed, but he did not say her name again. Shame had settled over his features. He turned his face toward the wall.
Cal followed two steps behind until Leah said, “Don’t.”
He stopped so abruptly that his boot squeaked against the tile.
The paramedics continued toward the main entrance.
Leah could hear the stretcher wheels crossing from tile to wood, then the opening of the heavy lodge doors. Cold night air moved through the hall and faded.
Cal stood with blood drying on his hands.
“I can explain.”
She looked at his open vest.
He followed her gaze and pulled the leather edges together, not to hide himself but because he finally seemed to understand what she had believed she was seeing.
The gesture made it worse.
“How long?” she asked.
His mouth opened.
She waited.
He glanced down the hall, toward the departing paramedics.
“That’s not a simple answer.”
“It has a number.”
“Leah.”
“How long have you known where he was?”
Cal rubbed one thumb against the side of his index finger. It was a small habit, nearly invisible, something he did while estimating repair costs he knew customers could not afford.
“Four months.”
The hallway tilted without moving.
Four months covered the first time Cal had felt their daughter kick. It covered the Saturday they assembled the crib and discovered one rail had been drilled backward. It covered two prenatal appointments, the visit to the courthouse for their marriage license, and the afternoon Leah chose ivory flowers for a wedding that was supposed to happen in two days.
Four months meant planning.
It meant deleting messages.
It meant listening to her talk about her father and deciding she did not deserve to know he was nearby.
“Four months,” she repeated.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“After I figured out whether he was sober for real.”
“You got to decide that?”
“No.”
“But you did.”
“I was trying to keep him from showing up in your life until I knew what he wanted.”
She opened her fist. The tags had left red marks across her palm.
“He was bleeding in our utility room.”
“He came without warning.”
“Our utility room.”
“I met him outside. He fell on the service steps.”
“You met him outside because you told him where we were.”
Cal said nothing.
That silence answered her.
Leah’s vision sharpened strangely. She noticed a loose thread on the shoulder of his vest. A brown streak of dried blood on his boot. The slow rise of his chest. The fact that he had not wiped his hands because the nearest towels were still beneath Thomas’s body.
“The ambulance is going to Mercy Ridge,” he said. “They’ll need his medical history, and I don’t know all of it.”
“You know more than I do.”
“I know he’s been sober eighteen months. I know he’s in a veterans’ housing program in Pueblo. I know he has high blood pressure and that he’s missed two appointments because he doesn’t have a car.”
“You know his appointments.”
“He told me.”
“Of course he did.”
“Leah, none of this is what you thought when you opened that door.”
“No. It’s worse.”
Cal flinched.
She wished the reaction satisfied her. It did not.
She slipped the identification chain into her cardigan pocket and walked toward the guest wing.
He followed at a distance.
“Where are you going?”
“To get my bag.”
“I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“You shouldn’t drive upset.”
She stopped and looked back at him.
The words had come from concern. She knew that. His palms were still open, held slightly away from his body as if she might mistake any movement for aggression.
But concern had been his excuse for four months.
“You don’t get to tell me what I should do tonight.”
He lowered his hands.
“All right.”
May you like
She continued down the hallway.
Their room was at the far end of the lodge, overlooking a dark stand of pines and the frozen edge of the reservoir. They had arrived that afternoon with garment bags, boxes of candles, a folded seating chart, and a cooler full of food for the small wedding weekend. Twenty-three people were expected by breakfast the next morning. Cal’s mother had made six dozen cookies. Leah’s aunt Joan was bringing the flowers from Denver. Cal’s two mechanics planned to close the shop early and drive up together.
