Page 52 of Soft Flannel Hank

But the wrappers shamed him as he crushed them in his fist. He’d insisted she wasn’t a prisoner, and yet he’d fed her like one. Hank hadn’t been to a proper grocery store in months. He bought staples and canned goods at the gas station down the road and relied heavily on Magda dropping off food every so often. The grocery store was too bright with too many sounds. People talking, cash registers beeping, cart wheels squeaking. And then there was the chatting. Once upon a time, he couldn’t get through an aisle without someone stopping to talk to him.

Once upon a time, he hadn’t minded. Now, the thought of someone asking him to make small talk next to the canned beans gave him a physical rush of anxiety that tightened around his chest like a vice. He could think of a thousand things he would rather do than make small talk at the grocery.

But Esther deserved to eat more than chalky protein bars and canned beef ravioli.

Hank turned off the coffee pot and scoffed as it occurred to him that he would have thrown himself in the path of a vampire for this woman, faced a sure and violent death for her, but the thought of going to the store and buying her food gave him hives.

He loaded their mugs in the dishwasher and headed for the stairs. As he climbed, the wood creaked softly under his feet. As it always had. When his daughter was a baby, he’d joked with Marnie that she’d never be able to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night as a teenager because the creaks would give her away.

Turned out she’d gone out the window, and he had felt far too much like an innkeeper instead of a father to stop her.

Hank should have known that Anna would defy his expectations. Just like her mother. Just like everything else in his life.

Suddenly the creaks didn’t feel quite so homey and comfortable anymore.

As he reached the top of the stairs, Hank could hear Esther’s voice through the closed door of Anna’s old room. He knew he should keep walking, and he started to, but then he heard Esther say, “I’m so ready to go.”

There was silence as whoever called her replied, and then she said, “Yeah. It’ll be great. I can’t wait.”

Hank felt his stomach plummet. He didn’t need to hear anything else.

He walked quietly to his room and closed the door behind him. He dressed and sat on the corner of the bed to put on his socks. This made it much easier.I’m so ready to go. That was what his brain had needed to hear to take control of the battle with his heart. A reminder that she was as good as gone once the dust settled.

Frankly, it was better this way, though Hank’s stomach was in knots about it. He couldn’t afford to love someone who would leave him behind again. He’d survived it once. He didn’t know that he’d survive it again. Not like that. Not with Esther.

And so he slammed the door shut on the cage he kept his heart locked in, the cage that he’d allowed to open just slightly when Esther shocked his whole damn body with her electric heat and light. But he couldn’t afford to leave it open. He couldn’t afford to be left behind again.

She was a person who needed his help, and he was happy and able to help her. That was all. That was all it could ever be. Better that he knew now when he could still pull himself back from the brink.

With that, he went downstairs, put on his boots, his coat, his hat, and went to the damn store.

Five unwanted conversations and a hundred dollars later, Hank carried the groceries into the kitchen from the mudroom, entirely too many plastic bags dangling from all ten fingers because he refused to make two trips.

He’d just set the bags down on the kitchen table when Esther appeared.

“Oh, there you are!” she said brightly as she joined him at the table, helping to pull food out of the bags and set in on the table. “I wondered where you went.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he missed her, but he bit the words back as he took her in. She’d showered. Her curls were damp and making wet spots on her T-shirt, which already looked threadbare from wear but now clung to her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of shorts that looked like a pair of sweatpants that she’d cut off a scant few inches below her—

“Hank?”

“Hmm?” he replied, shaking his head slightly and looking at her face. Esther’s eyes were bright and her cheeks pink, no doubt from her shower.

“You really went all out,” she said with a brilliant smile. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You can’t live off of those protein bars for the next however long.”

She cocked her head to the side and bit her lips, her eyebrows sliding together. Hank wanted to rub his thumb against the line that movement created in between them, to smooth it away.

“You have.”

“You deserve better.”

He looked away as soon as he’d said it, reaching into a bag and pulling out bags of frozen vegetables. Esther took them from him gently.

“So do you, Hank,” she said quietly, that little, maddening line still creasing between her eyebrows. He was looking at that line, her forehead, the top of her head, over her head and into the hall. Anywhere but in her eyes.

She saw too much. She was far too perceptive.