Chapter 10

They spent the next few days taking turns holding vigil at Bob's bedside. Will had ceded the spare bedroom in Bob's house to Kate, and taken up quarter at Claire's place instead. There were usually two people by Bob's side at all times, and when New Year's Eve came around, they all gathered in the ICU together. The doctor had upgraded Bob's prognosis to a cautiously optimistic one earlier in the day, and they allowed themselves a little levity, putting on party hats for the midnight ball drop, and carefully placing one on Bob's bandaged head as well.

New Year's Day came, and with it one of the rare East Tennessee snowfalls. It was nothing like the Christmas blizzard in Maine, of course, a scant inch of snow that was mostly gone a day later. It was just enough to remind Will of the thing he disliked most about this part of the country, and that was the lack of seasons. He loved the short, cool summers, the gorgeous falls, and the snow-laden winters of Maine. Here, the summers seemed to stretch for nine months, and he could not understand why Bob had chosen this corner of the country to put down roots. Bob had gone to school at the University of Tennessee instead of following the family tradition of sticking with the University of Maine, which had a perfectly fine campus not twenty minutes from where they had grown up. While in college, Bob had met Christa, who grew up in western North Carolina, and they had married right after their senior year. Then Erica was born a year later, and Bob had never voiced a desire to return to Maine. The fact that the two halves of the family were a thousand miles apart most of the year had always seemed like a blessing to Will, and now he felt a bit of shame for that.

"Why don't you take Bob's truck to drive around in?" Christa suggested one afternoon, when Will was driving her to the hospital to keep her company at Bob's bedside. Erica was at home with Kate, and Claire was at her store to reopen it after the long Christmas break. Will was still driving the rental he had picked up the day he had come to Knoxville to rush to the hospital.

He looked at Christa, trying to figure out a way to turn down her offer without offending her, and failing. He merely shrugged his shoulders.

"I mean, it's not like he's going to be using it any time soon, and this thing must cost you a few hundred bucks per week."

"I guess," Will conceded. "I haven't really thought about that. Hasn't been at the top of my priority list, you know?"

"Well, it should be. I know it would be on mine, with all that money we don't have."

"What do you mean?" Will asked. "Doesn't Bob have health insurance?"

"We have private health insurance," Christa replied. "It's about eight hundred dollars a month for the three of us. I'm sure they'll pay whatever the contract says they have to cover, but I don't even want to think about the first bill we'll get from the hospital." She buried her face in her palms and exhaled sharply.

"When Erica was three, she had an ear infection, and one day she just refused to eat and drink because her ears hurt so badly when she swallowed. We had to take her to the ER at Children's Hospital to get her hydrated with an IV. Two bags of saline, two hours on a cot with her, and a blood test. The bill was almost a thousand dollars, and our co-pay was almost half that. And that was just a stupid IV. Can you imagine what they'll charge for this?"

"Look, Christa, I wouldn't even worry about that right now. Anyone comes bitching to you about money, you send them to me, okay?"

She looked at him with dismay in her eyes.

"Oh, Will, I love you for saying that, but I can't expect anyone else to help me pay our way. Bob wouldn't want you to do that, either."

"Yeah, well, Bob's not in a position to contradict me right now," Will said. "You're not going to go back and work for the school, are you?"

"Of course I am. We need the extra money. I mean, we've needed it all along, but especially now."

"Doesn't Bob get royalties for his books every quarter?"

"Yes, he does," Christa said. "And I deposit them as soon as they come in. It's just not quite enough to make the bills for the next quarter sometimes, you know? Especially not with the amount I have to take out each time for health insurance and income tax."

Will felt shamed once again. Here he was, living on one successful book in comfort, and his brother wrote three novels a year and probably got fewer royalties all year than Will received in a quarter.

"We'll worry about that when the time comes," he told his sister-in-law. "All things considered, I'd rather get a big bill from the hospital than a small bill from the funeral home."

Erica returned to school with reluctance. Will knew that high school was no fun fair for a bright and sensitive teenager like her, and he completely understood her when she balked at the idea of going back to her high school while her father was still breathing and eating through a bunch of tubes. Still, Christa was insistent, and unwilling to negotiate.

"You don't want to have to repeat the year," she told Erica. "Then you won't be able to get out of here and off to college until you're nineteen, you know."

Erica's gruff response was unclear, muttered under her breath while she was leaving the room in a huff. Will thought he made out the words "screw" and "college", but it turned out that she saw the logic of her mother's position after all, because she trotted off to meet the school bus the next day without further resistance.

"You should go to the hospital with her more often," Claire said that evening, when Will told her about the day over a glass of wine in Claire's kitchen. "Maybe take her somewhere else, to get her mind off things. Have her see something other than hospital rooms."

"I'll go with your mom and Christa when I have time," she continued when he looked at her in question.

"Why do you say that?" he asked. "Getting tired of eating Mrs. Freshley's Donuts from the vending machine with me in the ICU?"

"Of course not," she smiled. "Don't be stupid. It's just that the girl loves the hell out of you, and you're kind of the only conscious male in the family right now. She's pretty attached to her dad, you know. I have the feeling that she's more comfortable with letting her hair down in front of you than doing it in front of her mom."

"Did she tell you that?"

"No, no. It's just a feeling, you know? She's more relaxed around you than anyone else, I think."

Will pondered Claire's observation for a while, watching the bare branches of the tree in her front yard through the kitchen window.

"We're buddies. Always have been, since she was old enough to have a conversation. I'm good at doing buddy stuff with her. We hang out together, go to the bookstore, talk about everything under the sun, that kind of thing. She needs a parent right now, not a buddy." He took a sip of his red wine.

"I make a good buddy, but I'm not cut out for the parent thing."

Claire shook her head slowly.

"And what exactly do you think the 'parent thing' is, exactly? Changing diapers, paying bills, saying stuff like 'be at home by ten, or else'? Will, parenting is exactly like the stuff you've been doing with her all along."

"Oh, no, it's not," he protested. "I've just played fun uncle for fifteen years. It's like being a grandparent. You get to do all the spoiling, and they get to have all the work."

He sat back in his chair and ran his finger around the rim of the wine glass.

"I know I've said that I envy Bob for having the family he has, but don't believe for a second that I want to step into his place."

"I don't mean you should take his place," Claire said. "Just fill in for him, for a little while. Erica's scared out of her mind at the moment."

"Aren't we all?"

"Yes, but we're not fifteen years old, and we've come to terms with the idea that people we love can sometimes die. We've all had our share of grief, and we can deal with it, right?"

Will thought of Claire's tale of sorrow, and he shifted in his chair, uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had never been in a position to face the kind of grief she had endured a few years ago.

"I love the kid," he said. "I don't want to see her crawl further into that shell of hers. I'll do whatever I can to get her back out of it."

"They caught the guys who did it," Christa said when Will came over to the house early next morning.

"No kidding?" Will said, dropping the bag of take-out breakfast he had bought at the drive-through. He muttered a curse, picked up the bag, and put it on the kitchen table.

"Chicken biscuits," he grinned when Christa gave the bag a questioning glance. "I got hooked on the damned things. They're like crack on a biscuit. If I spend another month in Tennessee, I'll put on another twenty pounds."

He sat down at the table and fished one of the biscuits out for himself.

"So what's the story? Did the cops catch them?"

"Sheriff's office called last night," she said. "They thought we'd want to know. I suspect that the family name didn't hurt things. I doubt they pass on stuff like that to people who aren't related to famous writers."

Christa plucked a biscuit from the bag and sat down at the table with Will before she continued.

"Two little brats, from Sequoyah Hills. That's the money area of town," she explained. "Can you believe that? Most places out there cost more than any three houses on this street put together. They were just robbing the place for kicks. Turns out the cashier that night was in on the whole thing. They were just going to lock the cashier up in the bathroom or something and split the cash and the smokes later, but then Bob walked in."

"Son of a bitch," Will said. "They catch all three?"

"Yeah. Looks like the cashier cracked and ratted out his buddies. The cops figured he was in on it from the tape footage, and they told him he'd be looking at Murder One if Bob died. Told him it would be very smart to spill the beans and then get to plea-bargain with the DA in exchange. So he did."

"Ain't that a bitch," Will muttered. "A few years in Club Fed for a few hundred bucks and a few cartons of Marlboros. Crime pays, huh?"

"Not for them, it won't," Christa said darkly. "It's a good thing for Bob these kids are from the Hills. That means their parents will have money to pay the judgment on the lawsuit that's coming their way. I'm already shopping for a lawyer who will take the civil suit on contingency."

They munched on their biscuits, and Will checked the clock above the stove. He had left Claire's house at ten past six, and it was only a quarter to seven now.

"When does the kid get up?"

"Oh, she's probably up already. On school days, I don't usually see her until she comes dashing into the kitchen to throw some lunch into her backpack."

"Mind if I drive her to school today?" Will asked.

"No, not at all," Christa replied at once. "What's gotten into you, bringing breakfast and offering to play taxi? I thought you were a late riser like Bob."

"I used to be," he shrugged. "Claire gets up at five thirty, and I'm starting to get used to the whole 'up before the birds' kind of thing."

Erica gladly took him up on the offer to drive her to school. Apparently, even her dad's truck was an upgrade over the yellow bus. Will had taken some time to clean the passenger cabin of the truck the day before, and it turned out there was a serviceable vehicle underneath the layers of papers, magazines, snack food wrappers, and accumulated grocery receipts going back half a decade.

When he took a left turn out of the subdivision instead of a right, Erica tapped him on the forearm.

"Wrong way, Uncle Will."

"You're playing hooky today," Will announced matter-of-factly.

"I am?"

He sensed the faintest hint of a smile.

"Yup, you are. I'll call the school and have you excused for the day. Family business, and all that."

"Where are we going?"

"First, we'll go and have a decent breakfast," he said. "I didn't see you eat anything before we left the house. Then we'll do something fun, and after that, we're going to have a good lunch. That bird food you packed is not enough to keep you running until dinnertime."

"It's roasted seaweed, from the Korean grocery store by the mall. It's good."

"I saw the package. It's half an ounce of food, for crying out loud. My accountant's embossed business card weighs more than that."

They went to the same trendy coffee shop Claire had taken Will on the morning of his last departure from Knoxville. The place was new to Erica, despite her knowledge of the brainy and alternative hangouts in town, and Will could tell that she enjoyed the ambience. He sent her to claim a table, and then went to the counter to order for both of them, knowing that Erica would only order her regular starvation ration if he left the process up to her.

"You see, this is the kind of place where you want to drag that laptop to get your writing done," Will said as they had settled in with large mugs of tea and fresh apple pastries.

"Why is that?"

"You get more work done. Fewer distractions, as long as you don't pick a café with free wireless Internet. And you look sufficiently artsy to attract the kind of guy who's into brains."

"That work for you?" she asked, and he could see a small twinkle of mischief in her eyes. Seeing a little bit of the old Erica behind the façade of stoicism she had adopted over the last few weeks was like watching a ray of sunshine break through the clouds.

"Yeah," he admitted with a smirk. "It used to, at least. Back when I could have a Frappuccino in the Barnes & Noble in Bangor without people coming over and asking for an autograph. Or trying to sneak a peek at my computer screen. I was always aiming to attract the girls, though."

Erica chuckled softly.

"I need to start doing that. Maybe try out a fake foreign accent, too. 'Ello, monsieur, '" she added, mimicking a cartoon French accent. "'I am-a very French, and you are, how you say, ze beefcake, no?'"

Will snorted into his tea.

"There you go," he said, after he had wiped his chin with a napkin. "That'll get you all the brainy college boys you want."

They smiled at each other, and Will was once again reminded how perfect a blend of her parents' attributes she was. There was Christa's grace and beauty, and Bob's fierce streak of individuality, all combined in an intellect that showed so much potential already that Will knew she would surpass her parents and everyone else in the family by a wide margin.

"Hey, can I ask you something, Uncle Will?"

"Sure thing."

"You've never been married, right?"

"You know that," he replied. "I've never brought anyone home and called her your aunt, have I?"

"Could have been before I was born," she said. "People marry young, you know. Could be mom and dad aren't telling me everything." She took a sip of her tea and looked at him over the rim of the mug.

"Dad says you don't stick with anyone longer than a week or two."

"He told you that?"

"Not directly," she said. "He was talking to mom. I was just nearby."

"Well, I've been with Claire for longer than that, haven't I?"

Erica smiled and shifted her gaze back to her stoneware mug.

"Yeah, that's pretty much how the conversation went. Dad says you're probably going to move on when you've had your fill of Claire, and mom thinks this one's going to be different."

"Wow," Will replied. "Your dad sure has a high opinion of me, doesn't he?"

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A Bettered Life

Michael Lindgren

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