Page 8 of Before We Fell

So I made one decent choice for Riley, moved back to Carlton, and bought the only decent house I liked that wasn’t in the golf resort neighborhood. But if I was doing this, she was going to live how Amanda and Jake lived, how she and I were raised…in a modest home in a good neighborhood and close enough to enjoy all that small town living.

Which wasn’t much outside the park at the end of our street.

Odd, because living in a small town with nothing more than a couple of diners, a one-screen movie theater, and very few parks, was one of the reasons why I’d moved away when I went to college. At least now we were close enough to my folks where they could help out and they did.

Unfortunately, knowing I needed them also sucked. Needing help meant I couldn’t handle it and I might have known I couldn’t handle this all by myself, but knowing and asking were two completely different things.

I swung the hammer again, relishing the burn in my muscles. Riley was at the folding table in the living room, shoveling spoonfuls of sugary cereal into her mouth and watching television like she did all day, staring at that stupid mindless tube, not even smiling or laughing anymore when her favorite movies were on. I hadn’t even seen her pick up a toy since we’d been here. No Barbie Doll. No Legos. And the few times I tried to get her to kick the soccer ball around with me went completely ignored.

But I was still fucking trying. It was just more exhausting trying to figure out how to connect with her than it was to tear out a kitchen or start building the addition I was working on at the same time.

If I stopped working, I’d have too much time on my hands to think. And thinking these days only made me want to start drinking. Thinking made me miss the firm, even if I was still consulting with them on a few of my old cases. Thinking made me feel lost. Thinking made me miss my damn sister so much it was liable my fist would end up through a wall instead of a sledgehammer.

Thinking sucked.

I was mid-motion swinging again when the doorbell rang.

I dropped the hammer but before I could move, Riley pushed back from the table and on wooden legs, with her eyes missing the damn sparkle she used to always give me, she picked up her backpack and trudged toward the front door.

“Come in!” I shouted. This early, it could only be my mother.

She took Riley to school every morning, stopping by our place on her way into town for her morning errands. She promised it was no problem, and that meant I got more work done during the day. A win-win.

Plus, Amanda always used to take Riley to school and since my niece looked at me like I was gum on the bottom of her shoe, I figured my mom taking her was the better choice.

“Good morning,” my mom’s voice rang out before I could see her at the back of the house.

“Come on in,” I called back, grabbing a towel so I could wipe my hands.

Like I always thought when I saw my mom, I grinned at how good she still looked. She’d had me when she was twenty, and at barely fifty-five now, Krystal could still pass for a woman only a few years older than me. She took care of herself, worked because when you live on a ranch, you always worked, but she was also stylish despite that I knew she’d been up since four working with the horses she trained.

“Hey, Mom,” I said when she peeked her head around the corner.

Riley stood off to the side, her mess of blonde hair getting worse by the day but she would run away whenever I tried to get her to brush it.

“Leave it be,” my mom had said once. “She’ll come to you when she needs you.”

The problem was that Riley always used to come to me. She’d run to me and demand I’d fling her in the air until she laughed so hard she was breathless and her tummy hurt.

Now, she spent more time running away from me.

I missed my damn niece.

And I was a horrific father-substitute.

“You ready for school?” I asked, going to her and crouching down so I was at her eye level. I forced a smile, even though none of them felt right anymore.

She nodded, and I reached out to squeeze her hand, but she pulled back. That killed. If she could just tell me what I was doing wrong, I could fix it. But I wasn’t a mind reader and I had no idea how a child’s worked, especially not one who’d been through as much as she had been.

“Okay then.” I stood and curled my hand around her little shoulder, giving her a quick squeeze. If I moved fast, I could show her affection before she moved away from it. “I’m picking you up after school today, remember?”

“You are?” my mom asked, surprise registering on her raised brows.

“Yeah, her teacher wants to talk.”

“Oh.” Her brows furrowed. “Didn’t you talk to her at the pre-year conferences?”

I scrubbed the towel I was holding between my hands and tossed it over my shoulder. Glancing at my mom, I cringed. “I sort of forgot.”

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