Home for Good. Jessica Keller

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СКАЧАТЬ sounds good. But he pushed open the Jeep’s door and climbed out onto the sun-warmed pavement.

      The over-bleached smell of the nursing home assaulted his senses. The hollow clip of his boots on the laminate floor echoed along with the one word ramrodding itself into his head. Failure. Failure. Reaching the door bearing a nameplate reading Abram Freed, Jericho froze. He pulled off his battered Stetson and crunched it between his hands. Then he took a step over the threshold.

      The sight of Pop tore the breath right out of Jericho’s lungs.

      Once the poster of an intimidating, weathered cowboy, Abram now just looked...weak. His hair, brushed to the side in a way that Jericho had never seen, had aged to mountain-snowcap-white, but his bushy eyebrows were still charcoal. Like sun-baked, cracked mud, cavernous lines etched the man’s face. The once rippled muscles ebbed into sunken patches covered by slack skin.

      Jericho waited for his dad to turn and acknowledge him. Or yell at him. Curse him. But he didn’t move. What had the doctor told him about Pop? The call came months ago. Stroke. He’d lost the use of his right side. None of it meant anything at the time. But now he saw the effects, and his heart ached with grief for the father he hardly loved. Abram Freed looked like a ship without mooring—lost.

      “Hey there, Pops.” He hated the vulnerability his voice took on. Like he was ten again, chin to his chest, asking his dad’s permission to watch cartoons.

      Pop’s body tensed, and his head trembled slightly. With a sigh, he raised his left hand off the white sheet by a couple inches. His dad couldn’t turn his head. A stabbing, gritty feeling filled Jericho’s eyes as he skirted the hospital bed and pulled out the plastic chair near his father’s good side. His dad’s eyes moved back and forth over Jericho’s frame, and the left side of his dad’s face pulled up a bit, while the right side remained down in a frown.

      A nurse bustled into the room. “Well, now, look at this, Mr. Freed, how nice to have some company. Saw you had a visitor on the log—thought it was that pretty little lady always popping by.” She moved toward his father as she spoke.

      Pretty little lady? Jericho scanned the room. A fresh vase bursting with purple gerbera daisies sat on the nightstand next to a framed picture of Chance. The photographer had captured the boy’s impish smile, crooked on one side and showing more gums than teeth as his blue eyes sparkled. He was holding up a horseshoe in a victorious manner.

      Ali?

      The nurse poured out a cup of water and set it on the bedside table. “And who are you?”

      “I’m his son.”

      “Mercy me.” The nurse leaned down near Pop, speaking loudly. “I bet you’re glad to see this young man, ain’t you?”

      “Ith...Ith.”

      Unwanted tears gathered at the edge of Jericho’s eyes as he watched his father struggling to speak.

      Abram smacked his left hand on the bed and closed his eyes. “I dondt know. I dondt know.”

      Jericho searched the nurse’s face. She offered him a sad smile. “That’s the only understandable phrase we get. It don’t mean anything. He says it no matter what’s being talked about. But he can hear just fine. He likes when people come and talk to him. Don’t you, Mr. Freed?”

      Pop’s drooping eyes slid partially open, and his head nodded infinitesimally.

      Everything inside Jericho seized up. He clenched his jaw, blinking his eyes a couple times. His last meeting with his father whirled in his head—him screaming at Pop, blaming his father for all that had gone wrong in his life.

      Over the last eight years, Jericho had pieced back together his world. He’d returned to Bitterroot Valley for two reasons—to repair his devastated marriage, and to restore his relationship with his father. But how could he do that with a man who couldn’t speak? He wanted his father to tell him that he was sorry for the abuse and neglect after Mom died. But that apology would never come. And like it or not, he had to be okay with that.

      “Since you’re here, will you help me move your pa?”

      “What?” Jericho scratched the top of his head. “I guess whatever you want me to do, just say.”

      “We try to move him every hour or so. Prevent sores. It helps to fight the chance of pneumonia, which is always a possibility.” She leaned back to Pop. “But we’d never let that happen, sweet man like you. We take good care of you.”

      She motioned for Jericho to move his father, and after a moment of hesitation, he lifted Pop’s frail body in his arms. The old man fit against his chest. Tiny. Breakable. His father’s right side hung limp, whereas the muscles on the left side of his body pulled, straining for dignity. A flood of compassion barreled through Jericho’s heart, burying all the anger he’d felt for the man who’d caused him such suffering. Abram Freed could never hurt him again. His dad deserved to be treated with respect, no matter their past.

      The nurse indicated a beige wingback chair. Jericho recognized it from his childhood home. With extra care, he set Pop down. As he began to move away, his father touched his hand. Jericho turned, and Abram pointed to a nearby chair.

      He looked back toward the nurse as she inched toward the door and raised his eyebrows. She smiled. “It’s okay. Just go on and talk to him.”

      Clearing his throat, Jericho rubbed his hands together, eyes on the floor. He looked back at his father, and the despair swimming in the old man’s eyes unglued Jericho’s tongue.

      So he began to ramble. Told Pop about the past eight years, and went on about still loving Ali. Told stories about the war, and in the midst of it an emotion filtered across his father’s face that Jericho had never seen before. Pride.

      Swallowing the giant lump in his throat, Jericho leaned forward, and in a voice barely above a whisper said words he hadn’t planned. “Pop. I’m sorry I left that night. I didn’t just walk out on my wife. I walked out on you, too. We had our bad times between us, but it was never like that when Mom was alive. I understand now why you drank. Losing the woman you love...I get it. I forgive you.”

      Jericho waited, bracing himself for the backhand to his face or the kick to his side that didn’t come. Instead a soft, weathered hand covered his and squeezed. He looked up and his breath caught at the sight of tears slipping from his father’s eyes.

      “Forgive me?” Jericho whispered.

      With his good hand, Pop patted Jericho’s cheek, trailing fingers down his chin as if memorizing every inch of his face. His father sighed. He pointed, shaking his finger at the top drawer of the nightstand.

      Jericho shifted his chair and set his hand over the handle of the drawer. “Want me to open this?”

      “Yeth, yeth.” Pop nodded. He opened the drawer and found a single envelope with “Jericho” written on the inside. Could Pop still write? Or had this always been waiting for him?

      “You want me to have this?”

      His father waved his arm, motioning toward the framed picture of Chance. Jericho scooped the photo up and handed it to him. Pop stroked the picture, tapped the glass then pointed at the envelope bearing Jericho’s name.

      Jericho СКАЧАТЬ