Page 27 of Second Start: Family
Although she did wonder why Kenzie had stiffened at the mention of Bardville. She had the definite impression the teacher opted to stay outside to minimize contact with the others, including the two from Bardville, Cambria Weston and Hannah Randall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Damn.
Hall went to the kitchen cabinets and swung the doors wide open, arms spread to hang onto the handles.
The girls’ birthday…
He remembered that night. He’d awakened in the darkest part at the sound of Annie swearing. Or maybe at the sensation of moisture seeping under him. Her water had broken before she could get to the bathroom.
They’re coming fast, Hall.
And she’d smiled, like she always did when it came to babies and having them.
Rather than trying to rouse Dan, he’d picked him up — he’d already gotten so long — and carried his sleepy warmth to the truck, wrapping him in blankets and maneuvering him in the narrow back area of that Chevy truck that had been old when he’d gotten it in high school.
Then he’d helped Annie down the stairs. They had to pause twice as contractions seized her.
Better hurry, Hall, or the next babies you deliver will be your own and not some — damn, damn! — some cow’s.
Between peering through the windshield into a darkness that seemed to be broken only by the highway’s center line, he’d glanced at Annie’s strained face, and over his whitened knuckles to the speedometer as he pushed the old truck to its limit.
He pulled right up to the ER door, left his door open as he sprinted inside, hollering for help. He didn’t wait to see if it came. He grabbed the first of the wheelchairs lined up at the door and ran out. A nurse was there as he half-lifted Annie out of the car and put her in the chair. Then another nurse. And a doctor. They took over.
He parked the truck, bundled Dan out, barely stirring, and headed inside. An aide said she’d watch the boy so he could be with Annie. But as soon as he showed up in the delivery room, Annie ordered him out in no uncertain terms. He was to stay with Dan. This was her show.
So he’d sat in that waiting room…
The same one he’d later sit in with the kids, waiting for the doctor to tell them how Annie was.
He’d dozed off when a nurse woke to tell him he was the father of two girls, mother and daughters were fine and they’d be ready to say hello to him in a few minutes. Hello was about all he had time for. Annie was tired and adamant that he get Dan back to his bed.
The boy never woke up, even when Hall’s hold on him slipped at the end and the boy plopped onto the mattress.
At full light, when he told Dan he had two little sisters, Dan glanced toward the empty cradles, then faced him again, clearly not believing him about the trip to the hospital. The disbelief hadn’t melted until Hall brought Annie and the girls home from the hospital, and Annie told Dan, yes, these were his little sisters, and, yes, he’d been in the truck on the drive to the hospital.
Maybe that had been the start of things going wrong between him and his son.
A pulling ache in Hall’s arms dragged him out of the past.
He still stood in front of the open cabinet doors, arms spread wide as he held the handles, staring at the spaghetti sauce, soup, peanut butter, and canned peaches as if one might suddenly transform into a cake. Like Cinderella’s fairy godmother made a coach out of a pumpkin.
The spaghetti sauce, soup, peanut butter, and canned peaches sat there and stared back at him. No fairy godmother for him.
He pushed the doors closed and shook out his arms.
Where the hell was he going to get a cake by morning?
He could get to the all-night diner that served railroad employees at the crossroads called Bill, and it would probably have slices of cake. Maybe even a whole one.
But shouldn’t he make the cake himself? And for that, didn’t he need more stuff than he had in these cabinets?
He needed help — and he needed it close by. He had one hope.
He went upstairs, saw the faint light from the crack of the not-quite closed door to the boys’ room. Dan, still wearing a t-shirt and jeans, had the small lamp clamped to his headboard trained on a book he was reading. In the darkness beyond that shallow pool of light, Bobby’s breathing was deep and even.
Hall waited for Dan to look up. He could have gone into the room. Neither the movement nor a conversation would wake Bobby. But he stood in the doorway and waited.
