“…to the point of remembering his correct shoe size,” she added, her gaze soft and warm even when she was upset.
“I thought they’d be a good ice breaker with Dad and Sammie.”
“It was nice of you,” she said, and then asked softly, “What’s up with your father? Is he angry that we’re here?”
“No. He’s just not used to being around people. Not anymore.”
“You said he has a job.”
“On an Alzheimer’s unit, cleaning floors and fixing things that break, not working with the patients. Or even the staff, really.”
Frank hadn’t been around kids since Cal had grown out of being one. And Cal was giving away too much. The more he answered, the more questions she’d have. He had to stop this.
“Will he be okay?”
“He’ll be fine,” Cal assured himself as much as her. Today’s episode had been just one more failed attempt to bring his father out of himself and back into the living world.
Not that he blamed Frank. He thought of Ramsey. Of the suspicions that had followed them for twenty-five years. They weren’t ever going away.
Which meant that his father would never be free.
* * *
MORGAN BOUGHT THE CURTAINS right away. She wanted to be able to get back, just in case she received a call that there was a problem.
She wasn’t sure about his father. The man was more than just depressed. He was removed from the world.
He’d kind of given her the creeps. To the point that she’d considered not leaving Sammie, after all. But she trusted Cal.
And her son needed male companionship now. Before their court date in nine days. Stating that she’d applied to a mentoring program wasn’t going to be good enough.
Not when she was up against her father.
Instead of going grocery shopping next, Morgan drove to the state park that was only a few miles from Cal’s place. Pulling into a lot that overlooked the lake, she turned on the MP3 player hooked up to the car’s stereo system, chose her country music playlist and turned up the vol
ume. She lay back in the driver’s seat to indulge herself for the last private half hour she’d have this weekend.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SAMMIE TOOK THE BALL in and shot at the net. The leather spun off his little fingertips and swooshed through the hoop.
“Good one,” Cal said, rebounding and taking the ball out for a three pointer.
He made the basket.
“You ever play on a team?” Sammie asked, going in for his next attempt. He performed a mock hook shot layup by jumping, launching the ball with one hand and using the backboard to propel the ball where his height couldn’t take it.
“No,” Cal answered, grabbing the ball as it came through the net. “My dad’s the real basketball player around here. He used to coach.”
“You’re pretty good.”
“We spent a lot of time playing one-on-one, or Around the World, when I was a kid,” he said. “But I didn’t play sports in school.” He hadn’t been at any one school long enough to make a team. Nor had he been able to take a chance that any newspaper clippings regarding local games might somehow trigger something for someone in connection to what happened in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts.
The boy double-dribbled and made another shot.
“Why don’t you like my mom?”
Cal missed his answering lob. “What?”