Desperate Paths Read online

  “Life is full of unexpected twists and turns, girls, no matter how much you plan or try to play it safe,” her mom said that day. “You might as well go for it.”

  “Oh my God, I love that accent,” Cindy had remarked. Nina and Jess agreed. Her new friends were all from the East Coast and had never associated Illinois with anything other than Chicago. They couldn’t believe that Brooklyn had never even been there. But Eden, five and a half hours south and close to the Kentucky border, was in coal country, more mid-South than Midwest, as most locals could trace their roots to the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

  “Where’s your accent?” Jess had pressed Brooklyn.

  “Yeah, where is it?” her mom had teased.

  “Actually, not everyone in Eden sounds like Mom,” she’d said. It was true, but Brooklyn had worked hard to drop any hint of it and even used YouTube to learn different accents. She’d understood long ago that she didn’t belong in Eden. And despite the beautiful scenery, she had no interest in reminding people of her connection to a place with little more claim to fame than being home of yet another racially charged police-misconduct case.

  Her mom had looked fantastic that night at the restaurant, having dropped twenty pounds since the previous Christmas. “A low-carb diet,” she’d said. Four months later, she was dead. Everyone had known she was sick. Everyone except Brooklyn.

  And now, just five months later, her dad . . . Her heart began to race as the word orphan came to mind—she’d be all alone in the world, and before her twenty-first birthday. It was premature to panic—don’t spin out. It was only his hip, assuming Ginny had shared the full story. And then she remembered that painful text from December when Ginny had said only that Mom was “sick.” The understatement of the century.

  She wrote a quick note to her roommates, grabbed her bag, and headed home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BROOKLYN’S DAD WAS ASLEEP IN a bed surrounded by machines and a web of tubes and drips. A large bandage covered most of his forehead. Lifting his hand, marred by seventy years of spots and scars, Brooklyn was relieved to feel its warmth as she stroked the translucent, paper-thin skin. This was too familiar, too soon. The last time she was here, she’d arrived too late. Mom had already slipped into a coma. Four days later, she was gone.

  A nurse walked in. Her bouffant-styled, platinum-blonde hair reminded Brooklyn of her mom, and she smiled, a silent hello, but the woman’s face hardened. “Sorry, dear. It’s after regular visiting hours. Family only.”

  Brooklyn blinked hard to contain her irritation before responding. “I’m his daughter.”

  “Oh,” the nurse said in a tone laced with judgment before she turned and left. It was a quick jab, just enough to remind Brooklyn of why she’d been so glad to leave this place.

  She sat in the chair beside the bed, watching her dad sleep. She’d always been aware that he was older than the other kids’ dads, but at six five, with his blond hair still cropped like a marine, he’d never seemed old before. He’d always been the biggest, most intense man she knew—her personal protector, like a righteous version of the Godfather, sitting in that big chair in his study whenever he wasn’t at the store.

  It was the first day of middle school when she first watched him yield that power. Tommy Waters had knocked her camouflage backpack to the ground, joking to all the kids around them that her curly hair looked as if she’d been electrocuted. She was quietly picking up her bag when she spotted her dad approaching. With that eyebrow raised like an inquisitor, his deep voice aimed at Tommy, he said, “You’re not messing with my daughter, are you?” Tommy began walking away with his head down, but Dad just walked beside him, asking for his name. After Tommy answered, Dad said, “I know that name. I know everyone in this town. Well, almost. And when I don’t, I just call on my good buddy Sheriff Wilson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hey, I know how it is,” he said, placing his giant hand on Tommy’s shoulder, softening his tone. Brooklyn crept closer to hear the conversation better. “First day in a new school. Time to make yourself known. Well, you did it. Now I know you. And you need to know that Brooklyn is my girl. So maybe you can spread the word for me. I don’t take it well when anyone messes with my family. And people who mess with us, well, they tend to regret it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” he said, removing his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Tommy.”

  The intimidation hadn’t worked—Tommy had teased her relentlessly for most of middle school—but she loved that Dad had tried. People in Eden called him a hero. His medals from the war hung in frames behind the counter at the store. He was fierce. Unstoppable. Loud. Well, except in church.

  Brooklyn checked the wall clock and stepped over to the window, surveying the parking lot below. It was after six. Ginny should have been here by now. A few more television trucks had arrived, and several camera crews and commentators were hanging out by the hospital’s main doors. Someone famous must have been admitted. Maybe a politician.

  “Well, hello.”

  Brooklyn turned toward the voice. It was another nurse. Dozens of long, beaded black braids rattled like maracas as she entered with a laptop in hand.

  “I’m Wanda. I hear this is your dad. I’ll be taking care of him throughout the night.”

  Brooklyn returned to his bedside and held his hand. “Yes, I’m Brooklyn. How’s he doing?”

  “Just fine, hon, all things considered.” Wanda examined all the machines and tubes.

  “Did he need stitches on his head?”

  “Let me see here.” She opened the laptop and pulled up his chart. “Twelve stitches. Not too bad. Looks like he suffered a mild TBI too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Concussion. But he regained consciousness in the ambulance, and his CT looked good.”

  “So it’s no big deal?”

  “As long as we don’t let him get another one anytime soon, I think he’ll be just fine,” she said with a wink. “Sometimes it takes a little time. The doctor will tell you what to look out for.”

  Brooklyn turned her attention back to her dad, wondering whether it was normal for him to look so . . . frail. His face had thinned since she’d last seen him; he even looked smaller . . . She stopped herself. She was panicking again.

  “Has my sister been here today?” she asked.

  “Wouldn’t know, hon. My shift just started.”

  She needed Ginny. Ginny was a nurse—she knew what had happened and could tell her exactly what would be involved in their father’s recovery.

  She alternated between holding her dad’s hand and pacing the room. This time, when she reached the doorway, she spotted Ginny in the hallway, her unmistakable platinum-blonde hair twisted into a knot and secured with a pencil. She was talking to the attendant at the nurses’ station. From behind, she looked like a scrawny thirteen-year-old girl. She wasn’t wearing scrubs—just leggings, an oversize shirt that seemed to swallow her five-four frame, and flip-flops.

  “Hey,” Brooklyn said.

  Ginny turned. Brooklyn was struck by the dark circles under Ginny’s icy blue eyes, the caked makeup failing to hide them. She worked with a couple of women Ginny’s age—lifers, as the other waitstaff liked to call them—who’d morphed from dreamers to realists, but none of them looked as haggard as Ginny did right now. She was only thirty-seven. Had she looked this bad at their mom’s funeral? Brooklyn couldn’t remember. That entire week was nothing more than a haze of casseroles and an endless parade of her parents’ fellow parishioners at the house.

  Ginny reached out and hugged her awkwardly. The pencil in her hair nearly poked Brooklyn in the face. “You made good time,” Ginny said, pulling away. “You have the car?”

  “Yeah.” Brooklyn had taken an Uber after Ginny ignored her request for a ride from the train station in Carbondale, so she’d had to go to the house and grab her dad’s car before heading on to the hospital, adding an extra thirty minutes to the journey.
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br />   “Sorry I didn’t see your text. Crazy day.” Ginny’s gaze shifted from Brooklyn’s face. She was a terrible liar. Ginny never went out of her way for Brooklyn.

  “Whatever,” Brooklyn said, walking back toward her dad’s room. She’d spent a lifetime trying to get Ginny to like her, to accept that adopting her didn’t mean their parents were replacing Ginny, but now that she’d moved away, she was done trying. “What happened, anyway?”

  Ginny brushed past and went inside. “No idea. He was unconscious when I got to the house.”

  “What were you doing there?” Ginny rarely went to their parents’ house. She barely spoke to their dad. Brooklyn had assumed that once their mom died, Ginny would never go home, except maybe on holidays, when she tried to fake family harmony.

  “He called and asked me to come over,” she said.

  “Where did you find him? How’d he hurt his head?”

  Ginny walked to the windows and turned around, resting against the air conditioner. “Probably hit it on the floor. I don’t know. He was just lying there when I got there.”

  “Where?”

  “In his study. Enough questions,” she said. “Listen, he’s not going home.”

  Brooklyn moved to the opposite side of Dad’s bed. “What do you mean? It’s a broken hip and a concussion. The nurse said he’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not just that,” Ginny said. “He’s disoriented a lot. We think it’s dementia.”

  “That’s crazy. I was just here a few months ago.” Brooklyn put her hand on her dad’s. “He’s fine.”

  “You had to notice when you were home.”

  No, she started to say, but had she? He’d lashed out a couple of times, and he didn’t always seem like he was there, sometimes staring blankly for long stretches, but wasn’t that normal? “He was sad. Mom just died. Of course he wasn’t himself.” He’d worshipped Bonnie. She may have been half his size, but she was his center. And she’d always taken care of him.

  “He doesn’t always recognize me.” Ginny came closer, bracing her hands on the rails at the end of the bed. “He gets dizzy. He falls. It’s not safe for him to be alone in that house. I’m thirty minutes away. You’re in New York. We can’t leave him there.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “He’s going to need physical therapy for the hip. The doctor said that after he gets discharged, he should move into a rehab facility for a few weeks. And then a nursing home.”

  Brooklyn shook her head. “He’ll need something to look forward to.” She lowered her voice. She didn’t want him hearing this nonsense. “What about the store?”

  Ginny’s gaze answered her.

  Brooklyn dropped her dad’s hand. “Sell the store? Jeez, Ginny, just kill him now.” He was only seventy. They couldn’t take him out of the town he’d lived in for almost fifty years, take him from his business, church, and home, and put him in a box for the rest of his life.

  Ginny looked at her. “I’ve thought about it a lot . . .” It seemed like she had more to say, but she stopped.

  Brooklyn glanced at their dad. “I haven’t seen any signs of dementia. I talk to him every week.” At least . . . she used to talk to him every week, back when her mom was alive and reminded her that her dad missed her, even if he didn’t show it. Brooklyn would call home on Sunday nights, and the three of them would all be on the line. Her mother was like a great dinner host, instigating conversation topics. But since she had died, Brooklyn missed a week here and there, and when she did call, it was always the same. He’d ask if she’d gone to church, if she’d become an actress, if she needed money. She’d lie about church, stretch the truth about auditions, and always say she needed nothing. They weren’t frequent talks, but he certainly knew who she was.

  “He’s just sad!” Brooklyn continued, her voice now raised enough to wake someone, though her dad didn’t even stir. “He fell down. Can’t we just help him get better?”

  Ginny shook her head, and once again, her eyes suggested there was something more she wasn’t saying. “You’ll see.” She turned toward the giant wall clock behind them, then headed for the door. “Anyway, the staff will try to get him moving in the morning. I just wanted to check in on him and see that you got here okay, but I gotta get home to Simon and the kids.”

  “So go.”

  Ginny turned at the doorway. “I’m not trying to be cruel. I just have to do what’s best.”

  “So that’s it? You’re in charge?”

  Ginny didn’t answer. They both knew she was. It didn’t matter that Brooklyn could count on both hands Ginny’s visits home over the last twenty years. Suddenly, age—and blood—trumped the rest. Another reminder that, in Ginny’s eyes, Brooklyn wasn’t really family.

  Brooklyn didn’t know what else to say. She grabbed the nearest chair and pulled it close to the bed. Arms crossed, she fixed her gaze on her dad, willing him to wake. All he needed to do was raise that brow, say hello to her with that big smile, look at Ginny the way he always did—as the wayward child he’d lost twenty years ago—and Brooklyn would know he was going to be fine.

  “He’s not well, Brooklyn. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  Brooklyn didn’t even look at her sister. “Maybe I should be the judge of that.”

  Ginny sighed. “I’ve got to get home. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Brooklyn took her dad’s hand again after Ginny left. There was no way he would want Ginny making decisions for him. She might look like their mother, but it didn’t mean she could step in and take charge the way Mom always did.

  Her dad began to mumble.

  Brooklyn squeezed his hand. “I’m here, Dad. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. Can you open your eyes?”

  He lifted his lids slowly, shut them a few times, as if wiping the windows. He turned toward Brooklyn and smiled.

  She dabbed at her tears. “Hey, Daddy-o,” she whispered.

  “What are you doing here?” The sound barely escaped his mouth, but he was fine, just sleepy.

  “Ginny called me. I heard you broke your hip.”

  “I’m pretty brittle these days.”

  “You’re gonna be fine.”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m ready to go. How do you like it there?”

  “New York?” Brooklyn asked, confused by the sudden topic change.

  He blinked and smirked, a slow-motion reaction. He winced as if the tiny gestures hurt his whole body. “If New York is heaven, then we’re in real trouble, B.”

  Brooklyn froze. B was what he’d always called her mom, Bonnie.

  “No, Dad, it’s Brooklyn. I’m home. I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  His brow rose as he stared at her, getting a better look. He closed his eyes again. “Brooklyn,” he mumbled. “My little actress.”

  “That’s right.” He’d been calling her that since years before she found the stage in high school. It started one day when she went to the store after school and said she’d had a good day, while her eyes were still puffy from tears. He had been quiet for a moment, and then he patted her head. “My little actress.” He nodded knowingly. “You’re a tough kid, Brooklyn. It’ll serve you well.” Tough kids didn’t spend lunchtime hiding out in bathroom stalls, but maybe she was tough if she pretended she was okay when she wasn’t.

  “You feeling all right?” she asked.

  “Just sleepy. I’m fine.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and his eyes remained closed. She let her head collapse onto the bed, resting on her folded arms, as the exhaustion of the full day of travel, the late night, and early morning all started catching up to her. It was hard to believe that twenty-four hours earlier, she’d been a few blocks from Times Square, balancing drinks and dishes, running around a dining room full of hundreds, capping off the night with her mind-numbing tequila-and-Tony routine while her dad had been in a hospital, in pain, needing her.

  She felt a hand patting the top of her head, almost bouncing atop her curls. “That�
��s my girl,” he said. “My baby girl.”

  Brooklyn lifted her head.

  His eyes were open again. “You came back to me. I knew you’d come back someday.”

  “Of course.”

  “I wanna tell you something.”

  “Okay,” Brooklyn said.

  “I forgive you.”

  Steely armor rose up inside her, despite the bridge-building words. She didn’t want to defend her decision to drop out of college again, and she didn’t really want or need his forgiveness. She just wanted his support.

  “Dad . . .”

  “Ginny, don’t . . .”

  Brooklyn’s heart sank again. Something was definitely wrong. There was nothing about Brooklyn that could remind her dad of Ginny or her mom. But he was looking through her. Brooklyn’s eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t lose him too. “Dad . . .”

  “I forgive you, Ginny. Okay? And I’ll never tell. I always protect my family. You’re my daughter, no matter what.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NURSE WANDA STEPPED INSIDE THE room, asking if everything was okay. Dad had closed his eyes again, and now Brooklyn couldn’t revive him.

  “He was talking to me a second ago,” she said, “and now he’s sound asleep again. He seems really confused.”

  “All normal stuff,” Wanda said. “Now I gotta change some dressings. You should get some coffee. Two floors down, family waiting room.” Wanda’s gruff, no-nonsense attitude was surprisingly comforting.

  Brooklyn took her advice and left, but she couldn’t shake Dad’s comments. She knew that Ginny had been a difficult child, but her dad just said he forgave her, that he’d never tell—as if there was a secret between them. He’d said he’d protect her. From what? Brooklyn couldn’t imagine—whether it was something Ginny had done recently, or even years ago.