Thank You for All Things Read Free

only a routine check.” Her gaze sweeps over the apartment and she pulls me to her, her hand subconsciously drifting to my neck, as if she’s trying to keep the lurking toxins from slithering down my throat. She glances over at Milo, who has his head up, staring. I stare back at him. “Oh, my. No wonder that boy’s had so much trouble breathing,” she says. She keeps me tucked under her arm and hobbles me across the room so she can place her arm protectively around Milo too.
    “We have to have our stuff out of here by the end of the month. They’re promising us relocation benefits for displaced tenants, but what in the hell is that going to amount to? And how long will it take to get it? Shit.” Mom’s face has gone the color of asphalt—the color of the “yard” she no doubt imagines for us when we are forced to move into a cardboard box. “I paid off my past-due bills and my credit cards with my advance, then had to run them up again, and it’ll be a couple more months before I see any royalties. Who knows how long these repairs will take. Shit!”
    “Honey, your language,” Oma says.
    Mom collapses on her office chair and lets the letter drop onto her lap. Her arms fall over the armrests and dangle limply. “It looks like we’re going to have to barge in on you for a while, Ma, though how we’ll all fit into your tiny utility apartment is beyond me.”
    “You can’t,” Oma says, but there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of regret in her voice. “They’re changing the carpets and renovating the bathrooms in our complex. They did thefirst floor last week, and they’ll start in on mine next week. I’ve already told them that I won’t be there. I can’t bear to be around all those horrid glue fumes. I could even smell them wafting up from the first floor, and they made my sinuses and throat burn like they were on fire. Lord knows what they would do to Milo’s asthma if he were there.”
    “Oh, this is just great,” Mom says.
    “It
is
great, honey! Now things will work out perfectly.”
    “What things?”
    “You and the children coming to Timber Falls with me.”
    Mom stops blinking. She stares up at Oma like she’s gone mad.
    “Honey … your father is dying. Your aunt Jeana called last night. She’s been taking care of him since his first stroke, but now she’s convinced that her Chihuahua has a brain tumor and she wants to hurry him back to his vet in Pennsylvania. Besides, she says she’s fulfilled her sisterly obligations to Sam and that if I don’t relieve her immediately, she’ll put him in a nursing home. He developed congestive heart failure after his second stroke too, so she says it won’t be long.”
    “And this is
our
problem
how
?” Mom says, once she can close her mouth enough to say anything.
    “Tess, I promised your father years ago that I’d never let him go to a nursing home if it ever came to this. That man never kept one of his promises to me, but still it’s important to me to honor mine.”
    My ears are perked up like a German shepherd’s at the mention of my grandfather, because if there’s any topic Mom views as more taboo than her Christian romance writing, it would be the topic of fathers. Hers
or
mine.
    “You’ve got to be kidding, Ma. You divorced that mantwelve years ago, and neither of us has spoken a word to him since. And
I
certainly never promised him anything.”
    “No, you didn’t. But you owe it to yourself to go.”
    “To
myself
?”
    “That’s right.” Oma stands taller. “You’ve got unfinished business with him, Tess. And that unfinished business has ruined every relationship you’ve ever had.”
    Oma is referring to Mom’s most recent boyfriend, no doubt. Peter. The man I hoped would become my dad. Peter is tall, built like a logger, and has sandy-colored hair just a shade darker than mine, so strangers would probably think he’s my birth daddy. He keeps it tethered in a ponytail that hangs halfway down the back of his leisure