Page 88 of Second Start: Family
Almost home, Hall pulled off the side of the road.
Hard to drive with all the voices in his head.
Vick’s. His mother’s. Annie’s.
This has been a shock for you all. And it’s going to be a big change. Especially considering how Annie … Well, that’s the past.
But he’d known what his mother was thinking when she said that the night before she left.
That Annie closed him out.
Give him to me. You’re not doing it right. Leave the baby to me.
But he’d let it happen, hadn’t fought her on that. Let it happen that he didn’t know one daughter’s voice from the other, didn’t know of Lizzie’s night wakings, or Molly’s solace in the barn. Didn’t know how to help Bobby start talking again. Didn’t know Dan…
Didn’t know Dan.
It’s not some bargain with the universe that if you shut out Kenzie, you’ll get Dan.
Think, Hall Quick. Think hard.
Okay, he’d think.
It took time to work through the voices, to start hearing his own thoughts.
Were his kids better off with Kenzie Smith in their lives? That’s what it came down to in what the judge would look at.
Hell, yes, they were better off.
Was he?
Heat and pressure came into his eyes. It took a moment to realize they came from unshed tears. It took another breath to realize he felt the same heat and pressure in his chest and it didn’t come from tears.
He called home.
“Everything okay?”
“Sure,” Molly said cheerfully.
“I’m going to be a while longer.”
“With Miss Kenzie?”
“I don’t know yet, Molly.”
*
Kenzie stood in the narrow passage beside the rounded end of the counter, like she’d been on her way to the door from the bedroom but he hadn’t given her time to get there because he followed his knock by immediately opening the door.
She had her sweater off, held up against her like she needed to cover herself when she still wore a shirt, buttoned from her collarbone to where her jeans took over.
They stared at each other long enough to leave awkward in the rearview mirror.
He broke it by looking at the two photos on her wall. Did she put them up to think of home? Did they remind her of her brother?
At last, words jerked out of him. “Things go okay with your brother?”
“I … I think so. It will take time, but … yeah, I think so.”
