Harder (Stark Ink Book 1) (14 page)

Adam pulled up in front of Calla’s house and put the Charger in park. He suddenly felt old. And exhausted. And nearly incapable of even making the short walk from the curb to her front door. Like an asshole, he hit the horn instead, short and sharp. He could almost feel his mother smacking him in the back of the head. Motivated by her certain disapproval, he grasped the handle of the driver’s side door at the moment that Calla’s front door opened. She hustled out and he sat frozen, hand on the door, caught between getting out and looking ridiculous or staying seated and being a jerk. Calla didn’t seem to mind, though, as she opened the passenger door and slid in. Her smile died on her face though as she caught sight of the fresh bruise on his cheek.

“What happened?!”

Adam shook his head, wearily. “Nothing.”

“That’s not nothing! Adam, what’s going on?”

“It’s really nothing.”

Calla wasn’t buying it. “I’m calling the police,” she insisted, fishing into her purse for her phone.

“No,” Adam replied and reached for her.

She tried to lean out of the way. “This is too much. I don’t know what is going on here but—”

“Dalton.”

Her fingers paused on the screen of her phone and she looked up at him quizzically. Adam sighed. It might as well all come out, he figured. He didn’t want to keep lying to her, but he didn’t relish the thought of opening his mouth and cementing the idea that he was what he’d accused her of thinking when they’d first met: that the Starks were little better than white trash. God knew Zoey’s folks had always thought that. Maybe they had a point.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The shop wasn’t robbed.”

Calla froze. “I… to get the money to open the place, I borrowed some money.”

Calla’s eyes narrowed. She wasn’t stupid and he didn’t need to explain that his loan hadn’t come with paperwork and a rubber stamp.

“I paid it,” he insisted. “I did. But Dalton knew where I’d gone for the cash, and he’s had some trouble lately. So he—”

Calla held up her hand, interrupting him. “Don’t do that,” she said sharply. “Don’t gloss over it. What does ‘trouble’ mean?”

Adam hesitated. It seemed wrong to flap his gums about Dalton’s personal life. This was Calla, and Adam trusted her, but it didn’t really give him the right to tell tales out of school. Then again Calla represented the
actual
school, and if she thought for one second Ava was in danger…

“He got hurt on the job. He did some physical therapy. It’s been going okay, I guess, but he missed work. Then… then he started drinking.”

Calla sighed heavily. She didn’t look pissed, but she didn’t look relieved, either.

“His girlfriend Zoey left him. He’s taking it hard. Anyway, he went to the same people that I went to and got some cash to pay off his truck. And he hadn’t paid it back.”

That was as much as he was willing to say. Hopefully Calla wouldn’t press him for details about who’d lent them the money. As far as Adam knew, Calla didn’t know the Buzzards existed nor did they know about her and he intended for it to stay that way.

“They came to collect, came to
me
, and not Dalton. There might have been some confusion there about who owed what.” He shrugged. “Two brothers, same last name. I paid his debt. Then I sent him away.”

“Sent him where?”

“Rehab. A place downtown. Actually the social worker helped me with that.” He looked away from Calla, toward the sun peeking over her rooftop. “I didn’t know he was that bad. I had no idea. I had to fix it.”

Calla set the phone on the dashboard and reached for his arm. “Adam, this is not on you. Dalton’s a grown man. I’m sorry for his problems but he made these choices and—”

Adam shook his head. “No, this is on me.”

“How can—”

He turned from the window and met her gaze. “I turned my back on my family, Calla. It felt like it was only for a minute, but it was a hell of a lot longer than that.”

They rode mostly in silence to a one-story brick building not too far from the tattoo shop. It had a neatly kept entrance and freshly painted lines in the parking lot. A large white sign next to the front doors read: Shady Oaks. Adam put the Charger in park and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. This was the third facility they’d seen this afternoon. Calla hadn’t bolted after his confession even though he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. This was too much to handle for
him
and Calla certainly had no skin in the game.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, not for the first time that day.

She smiled at him before opening her door.

Adam followed suit and they fell into step together as they headed toward the building. They caught up to and tagged behind a haggard-looking mother and her daughter. The girl was nearly Ava’s age. She was dragging her feet, clearly not too enthused about where they were. As he got closer, he couldn’t help but overhear their conversation, one-sided at it was. “It won’t kill you to visit,” the mother hissed quietly. The only response she received was the girl popping her gum and looking sullen.

They entered the building first. The girl held the door for Adam, rolling her eyes at him as he reached for the handle. She flounced off while he let Calla pass in front of him. In the lobby, the mother had stopped. The girl had continued on, though, toward the reception desk. “Janey!” the woman called. Janey sighed and turned.

Off to the left was a day room. It was furnished with overstuffed sofas and chairs. A TV was tuned to a daytime talk show. A few seniors were watching, others sat by themselves instead. Near the doorway, young Janey’s mother stood next to a man in a wheelchair. The woman put her hand on his arm, patting gently. He didn’t meet her eyes. His grayed, thinning hair was combed, white cotton T-shirt freshly laundered. He was clean, at least, Adam thought.

He knew he should continue on. This was not his family, not the reason he was here, but his feet seemed firmly planted on the rubber welcome mat. He couldn’t move away. In front of him, Janey paused. She looked from her mother to the man in the wheelchair. She blinked. Once, twice, three times until recognition finally set in. The man in the chair did not look up. He was impossibly thin, Adam noticed. Papery skin covered bony hands that rested in his lap, obviously placed there by someone else. Adam guessed that young Janey had never seen her grandfather so thin, so frail. Which explained how she’d walked right past him when she’d first entered the building. Adam felt sorry for her as her lower lip, which had jutted out defiantly before, now simply quivered instead.

For some reason, she glanced at Adam, as though he could tell her how the man she knew had faded away and had been replaced by a catatonic stranger. Adam looked away, because some things were inevitable and beyond explanation.

People got cancer and died. People got Alzheimer’s and lived.

He looked away from the man in the chair, as well. He didn’t need an After picture in his mind every time he looked at Pop. Calla gave the girl a wan smile and Adam, too. He took what comfort from it he could. She took his arm and led him past the girl, to the reception desk beyond, knowing he needed a purpose, a path, a problem to solve.

Adam slipped past Janey as a tear slid down her cheek.

I’ll visit
, he vowed.
When it gets to that point. I’ll visit all the time.
So would Ava, he knew. Because they were Starks, and Starks knew about family.

For better or worse, family was all you had.

Calla led him to the reception desk. “We have an appointment,” she told the woman. “For a tour.”

Adam looked at Calla. ‘We.’ She’d taken on his problems as though they were her own. She would have done it for anyone, he knew, because that was the kind of person she was.

The woman nodded. “I’ll get the administrator,” she told them and levered herself out of her chair. “Have a seat.”

Calla plucked a brochure off the counter and headed for a small couch. As they sat, she handed it to Adam. He flipped past the smiling faces of a gray-haired woman and a considerably younger nurse on the cover. A mission statement, a list of programs. No mention of monthly or yearly cost. Adam knew most of it would be covered by insurance, at least for the day program.

“They all seem the same,” he muttered.

He closed the booklet and looked up, past the neatly organized reception desk and into a room off to the right. Another day room of sorts, brightly lit with windows unshaded and thrown wide. Plenty of fresh air, at least. A woman in a padded chair was having her hair brushed by a nurse. Or maybe just an orderly. Adam didn’t know the difference unless he was close enough to see the title on their nametags. The elderly woman had her eyes closed but she was smiling.

Adam realized that if the facilities were all the same, then maybe it was the small things, the little kindnesses that made all the difference in the world.

“My grandmother died in a nursing home,” Calla said quietly.

He turned to look at her.

“It was a nice place,” she added. “We visited a lot.”

Adam tried to picture living in a place like this, but couldn’t. “Were you there? At the end?” He recalled his mother’s shallow breathing that day, the Ativan he’d had to put under her tongue to reduce the foam coming up from her lungs. He hoped Calla was spared that, at least. Maybe there was no dignified way to die. Maybe the best you could hope for was not to be alone.

Calla shook her head. “She died in her sleep, late at night. We weren’t there.” She squeezed his hand.

Adam didn’t know exactly why, but he felt a thing like hope for the first time in a long time.

The tour was short; the facility wasn’t large. The rooms were semi-private, two beds and a television. Adam pictured Pop turning up
Lucy
full blast and his roomie complaining. He almost laughed but it seemed inappropriate. The rooms weren’t important, though. Not right now, anyway. They were here to check out the day program. They were shown the art and exercise rooms. In the activities room, the residents were gathered in a circle of chairs and couches. They had small photo albums in their laps. “Reminiscing activities,” the administrator explained. After the tour, he handed them two vouchers for the cafeteria. In line for lunch, Adam surveyed the food on offer and judged it better than Pop would have gotten in the service, at any rate. Calla got her own tray and they took an empty table by the window.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly after she sat down.

Calla looked up. “For what?”

He gestured around the cafeteria. “For taking you on the worst date you’ve ever been on.”

Surprisingly, she laughed. “Are you kidding? Sightseeing? And lunch? There’s even dessert,” she said, holding up her container of tapioca. “I’ve been on worse dates.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, really. Not the worst. Not even close.”

“I don’t believe it.”

She grinned. “Junior year. Kenny Kopeckne asked me to the winter formal. But he got the flu the day before.”

“And he stood you up.”

“Oh no,” Calla said. “Nope. He picked me up. Right at seven. Sweating bullets, pale as a sheet. We made it all the way to the school parking lot. Then he puked on my lap.”

Adam couldn’t help but chuckle. “Oh, God.”

“His car was a two-seater, so I had to sit in it all the way back home. Even with the windows rolled down, the smell…” Calla wrinkled her nose. “To this day, I can’t see fuchsia without getting nauseated.”

Adam grinned. “I don’t know which is worse, the vomit or a fuchsia dress. Though probably vomit
on
a fuchsia dress takes the cake.”

“It was the nineties!” Calla shot back. “Fuchsia was
in
.”

Adam shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Wearing fuchsia, crap tattoos… It’s a wonder you’ve gotten this far, Calla. You’ve made a lot of bad life-choices. ”

She stuck out her tongue. “Like dating you.”

He laughed. “Oh, on the contrary, I think dating me is the best decision you ever made.”

Instead of laughing with him, she stopped.

He looked up from his tray.

“I’m starting to think so, too,” she said quietly.

“Calla,” he replied, just as quietly. But he didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to say ‘Thank you’, and ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘I wish it wasn’t like this’, but it all got jumbled in his throat.

“A man who loves his family,” she said. “Would do anything for them. It’d be the same with me, wouldn’t it? If it got that far.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say it already was that far, but it was too much, too soon. It wasn’t the right time, certainly not the right place. Nothing with Calla ever felt right, or rather being with her was the only thing that felt right but everything else being so wrong seemed to taint it. Once again he was struck by the fact that she deserved better.

“You don’t need this,” he said.

“But I
want you.
”