“You look stressed.”
“I’ve got a handle on it.”
He picked up a cookie. “You sure? You’ve said this before and then you tell me later how stressed you were.”
“I told you I’m—put that down.” She eyed him and stopped working. “I also seem to remember you saying you wanted to eat less junk food.”
“But they’re here.”
“They’re for later.”
He sucked in his bottom lip and set the cookie down. “The doctor said he could do moderate activity without any risk of a seizure.”
“Sean, please. I just didn’t need any help, okay?”
“All right, all right. You need anything else?”
Elise stopped, puffing her cheeks. “Actually, I need chicken stock but there’s none in the pantry.”
“You need one from the reserves?”
She nodded.
“We’re not supposed to be taking from the reserves,” he said.
“It’s just one can.”
“It’s not just the one can. It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Then you can explain to my brother and his wife why your principles made their food dry.”
Sean and Elise stared at one another until they both cracked smiles. Sean laughed. “God forbid. I would never hear the end of it.”
Whenever Michael and Kelly visited—which thankfully wasn’t often—there was always something not good enough for them. They never said anything outright, but they had an attitude about them, a snootiness. Sean just needed to tolerate them for a week and it would be over. Any more and Sean was sure they would end up killing each other.
Sean went toward the door leading down to the reserves. His wife’s voice stopped him. “Were you out chopping wood?”
“Yep.”
“I chopped a bunch yesterday.”
“I just had to clear my head.”
“Of what?”
Sean read the stress in his wife’s face. She didn’t need the extra burden of what his boss had told him, not with her brother and his wife coming into town. “It’s not important,” he said and changed the subject. “Where’s Molls?”
His wife paused. “Upstairs.”
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You hesitated.” Her jaw drew slack, but she said nothing. Sean lowered his chin. “Is he up there too?”
“Sean, please don’t.”
“I thought we talked about this.”
“We did. And we didn’t come to a conclusion.”
“I came to a conclusion. He’s not supposed to be up there with her.”
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
He scoffed. “Out of nothing.”
Before his wife could say more, he moved back into the living room. The floorboards creaked under his weight as he rounded the staircase railing. His son spun on the couch to look back at him. “Hey, Dad. The news. There’s something—”
“Shut that off.”
“But Dad—”
“Not now, bud. Shut it off.”
Sean charged up the steep stairs. When he came to the top, he gripped the rail, pivoted toward the hallway on the left, and walked to the end. A light bass thumped behind the closed door. A movie. To disguise other noises, if he knew anything about teenage boys.
He reached for the handle but stopped himself. He had always trusted his daughter, and she had done nothing to make him question her judgment so far. But she was sixteen. Sean’s most foolish and rebellious years didn’t start until then. He heard his wife’s words: Be more diplomatic, don’t jump to conclusions.
He pulled his hand back and rapped his knuckles against the door. Molly opened it ten seconds later. She said nothing. Her boyfriend, Andrew, sat on her bed behind her—on her bed—propped up by pillows. They were both clothed. A good sign.
“What?” she asked.
“Your mom said you were up here.”
“And?”
“What have I told you about having the door closed?” he whispered.
“Dad…” she said with eyes wide.
“No, it’s all right Molly,” Andrew said and looked at Sean. “Sorry, Mr. Cain. I didn’t know that was a rule.”
The kid had manners, sure. Always spoke politely, played the part of a good guy. Sean had known plenty of guys just like him. Two-faced. Said one thing and did another. Snakes like him would take advantage of girls and leave them crying—for their dads to pick up the pieces.
Sean pasted on a smile. “Good to see you, Andrew. Didn’t know you’d be over today.”
“Molly invited me.”
Couldn’t have guessed that.
“Mom said it was all right,” Molly said.
“Your mom is a little more lenient than I am.”
“She said if I kept the door open—”
“The door was closed.”
Molly took a few steps outside and pulled the door shut behind her. Sean nodded to Andrew with a toothless smile before the door clicked. “We weren’t doing anything.”
“I know that, sweetie,” he whispered.
“Then why are you being weird about this?”
“Because it’s my job.”
“Well, you’re doing great at it.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge between them. “Please just keep the door open, okay? I’ve told you your whole life: if you knock down one barrier, you get momentum. Soon, the other barriers aren’t so hard to break down too. You’ll end up doing things you never dreamed of.”
“I don’t need a lecture, Dad.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are.”
He raised his hand toward her and pumped it a few times to tell her to stop.
She said, “We’re not like that.”
“Not now, you aren’t. Just be careful. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
It had happened sometime when he wasn’t paying attention, her drifting from him. When she was a kid, they were always close. They would spend hours together, go on father-daughter dates. She talked to him about everything. Something had changed after the move, or maybe before that and he had never realized.
“You know I love you, right?” She nodded, and he kissed her forehead. “Keep the door open.”
As he walked away, he watched her return to her bed. Return to him. He hoped she wouldn’t let the slow, creeping decay of her values take hold. Change for the worse never happened overnight. It was always slow, like a cancer. It was so easy and gradual, that change. So easy to rationalize that the bad behavior is actually good.
The human heart—so easily convinced.
Chapter 2
MICHAEL HAD SEEN snow this bad before, but that didn’t make navigating through it easier.
The Appalachian terrain forced the luxury SUV to work hard just to stay on the roads. Or at least where he thought the roads were. Couldn’t be sure. Most were unpaved except for the main routes. And in hick country, there wasn’t a snowplow that would touch them.
The GPS on his cell phone had taken him into the center of no-man’s-land and then dropped its signal. Every house he passed was a mile away from the last. Rusted cars were scattered across many of the properties. Huge volumes of smoke poured from brick stacks. The smell of fire lingered in the crisp air.
Michael tried rubbing the windshield with his coat sleeve. No help. It was fogged with snow that stuck and froze instantaneously. The side windows were the only ones clear enough to see through. He cranked up the heat.
“Maybe we should pull over,” Kelly said.
“And do what? The forecast said it’ll be like this all night.”
“I can’t see a thing.”
“Neither can I, but if we stop, we’ll get stuck.”