Page 101 of Take Me Home

“And we won’t ever do it again.”

“Okay. Thanks,” he said, eyeing the check and then his sisters’ contrite faces, “but I don’t need this.”

His mom nudged the check closer. “Put it toward a new car.”

“No, Mom,” he said, pushing it back. “I really don’t need it. I have savings. I have plenty.”

“So do we.”

“It’s time to do things differently,” his father said. “Girls, you can go.”

Laurel’s and Leanne’s chair legs scraped with the urgency of their departure. His sisters offered identical sheepish smiles, and even though physical contact of any kind felt like it might crack him open right now, he pulled them each in for a quick hug before they retreated to their room.

“Do what differently?” he said on a sigh, sitting back down.

“It’s come to my attention that I’m not the easiest patient.” His father popped his knuckles, and Ash realized he was doing the same thing under the table. “Well, I already knew that, I guess. What I’ve really come to see is that my frustration with my…uh, limitations, puts other people—your mother, you—in the position of having to manage more than what’s fair.”

Ash’s mother cut in. “For the record, supporting you isn’t a burden. We’ve both needed each other at different times, and that’s as it’s supposed to be. No one’s keeping count.”

He nodded. “The burden I mean is my pride about it, myoccasionaldesire to reject all the support. Feels like people telling me what to do, fretting over me, managing me, even though I know it’s only you all wanting me to stay healthy. You,” he said, meeting Ash’s eyes, “don’t know if you can trust me to take care of myself. I hate that you’ve taken that on. I hate that you’ve planned your whole life around that. So, here’s the deal, son. I’m taking responsibility for myself. And your mom has my back. And beyond that, there are doctors, health insurance, home care if or when it comes to that, all the safety nets that mean our kids don’t have to limit their lives just in case things go south.”

Ash’s mother leaned across the table toward him, her expression pleading, a little watery even, which put Ash on high alert. She shook her head at his sudden straightening but doubled down on her imploring expression. “The only person we need you to take care of is yourself.”

“I do take care of myself.”

“You’re living like you expect the sky to fall. And like you’re the only one who could hold it up. I know you don’t want to accept it, but you can’t stop the inevitable. Not the people you love having infuriating minds of their own, and not the MS.”

Ash swallowed. His throat felt thick and tight.

“And because you can’t stop it, you should choose what makes you happynow, and trust that you’ll rise to the occasion when you need to. Don’t deny yourself the comforts you can afford. Don’t put off having what you want. Because, who knows, a meteor could wipe us all out tomorrow anyway.”

“Jesus, Mom.”

“Well?” She shrugged.

The irony of her telling him thistodayburned.Hazelmade him happy. She was the first thing in a long time that did. Her laugh, the big, loud version of it when amusement snuck up on her and she couldn’t filter it. That was all he wanted. Her, laughing like that. But the way she’d left, the finality of it—he couldn’t see how to fix it. He’d overstepped with his parents in the hospital, and even though he’d tried to avoid the same mistake with Hazel—had heard what she was saying, knew how scared she was—he’d pushed too hard with her, too. And now he didn’t even know where she was, or if she’d ever hear him out.

“I cannot emphasize enough how badly we want that for you,” his mom continued. “The freedom to live an ordinary, happy life, based on whatyouwant, not what you imagine everyone else needs.” She swiped a tear from her cheek, and Ash had to blink away the sting in his own eyes.

“Okay,” he said, partly to stop her from crying over him and partly because…he did want that. An ordinary, happy life.

“You’ll try?”

He hardly knew what that would even look like. His life felt like a game of Whac-A-Mole, and he got so caught up in the urgency ofbashing down every new problem that it never occurred to him to set down the mallet and let the game play itself out. That was essentially what they were asking him to do, wasn’t it? Not attempt to stem the tide of his dad’s illness. Not to write the ending of a story before he was even through the twisting, turning middle. Let it play out.

If he didn’t follow his usual instincts with Hazel, if he gave her the space she’d asked for, she might just run and never look back. That was a real possibility.

But a lot of things that he’d never thought possible had also happened this week. And they’d happened because hehadn’tbeen the only one in the driver’s seat. Hell, from the start of this, Hazel had literally taken the wheel. He could give up control, as scary as that was.

Ash nodded toward his father and said, “If he can try, I can try.”

Chapter

Twenty-Four

For hours, Hazel drove. At first, she drove through big, deep, wracking sobs that burned her throat and blurred her vision. She drove through every new chime on her phone. She drove until the rising sun made her squint and realize she was headed southeast, back toward school. She hadn’t decided this, but it made sense. Turning her phone off to quiet the notifications left only the radio for a distraction. Every thirty minutes or so, she had to find another station that wasn’t punched through with static.

The flat West Texas prairie gave way to gradual rises and falls. Two days before Christmas, and yet Hazel didn’t see another car or house or any sign of civilization, only empty crop fields. She’d said she needed space. This was certainly space. A forever road through endless, rough landscape and limitless gray sky. Where waist-high crops might have waved in summer, there was mostly just empty dirt, everything brown and dead. She’d driven herself into the literal middle of nowhere, and she had never felt so achingly, brutally alone.

---