Asher's Fault by Elizabeth Wheeler

Author:Elizabeth Wheeler [Wheeler, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626390195
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2013-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

It would have been easier to pretend I had forgotten he would be there. All I had to do was head from school to the bus loop instead of going out to the pickup lane. I could have gone home, gotten something to eat, watched some television, and done my homework. I did have a lot of homework.

Dad’s Land Rover was parked directly in front of the entrance, so there was no way to miss seeing him. He waved at me when I stepped out of the school. I raised my hand to let him know I had seen him. How many Sundays had I scanned the parking lot at church for that car? And now I was going to get in it. I opened the passenger door and plopped my book bag onto the floor. I had to hoist myself up into it. The car smelled new.

“Hi. Good day at school?”

He said it like he picked me up every day, but he gripped the steering wheel and smiled too tightly to convince anyone this was normal. I thought about telling him I’d been cast in the ensemble, but I still wasn’t sure I was going to do it. Okay. I’d play along.

“It was okay.”

He shifted into drive, but the other cars cornered us in. “This parking lot’s a mess. Is it always like this?”

“Pretty much.” That was why Mom always pulled forward when she picked me up, but I couldn’t tell him that. He put his turn signal on and inched the vehicle into the line of cars.

“Here’s the plan. You and I will have a chance to hang out for a while. We’ll pick Helen up from work later and have dinner with her. That sound okay?”

Did I have a choice?

“Sure.”

“Do you want to go to the house for a while?”

The house. His house.

“Or is there someplace else you want to hang out? It’s up to you.”

So I did have a choice. I tried to think of something else I could suggest, but my brain blanked. We waited for a space to open up in the cars.

“I don’t care,” I said, and that was the truth.

The house Dad had grown up in had two small bedrooms and one bathroom. He had left college and moved back in to take care of my grandfather after my grandmother died. He and Mom had lived there when they first got married. As soon as Mom got pregnant with me, they bought the house I live in now. Even though Dad kept the house as a rental property, I can only remember him renting it out a few times. Mom, Travis, and I went over there with him every now and then, but mostly, he seemed to use it as a place to go to be by himself. He’d tell us that something needed fixing, and he would disappear for hours. Mom had wanted him to sell it. It was one of the things they used to argue about.

“Have you been by the house at all?” Dad asked.

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