Page 129 of Unmanageable

“Finn, wake up. It’s your dad.”

His eyes snap open instantly. He sees my face, sees the phone in my hand, and the lazy, sleepy curve of his mouth vanishes before he even sits up. “What?”

“St. Elizabeth’s,” I say, holding the phone out to him as if it’s a bomb. “It’s your dad. They found him by the tracks.”

Cash doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t even look at me. He just snatches the phone from my fingers, his long legs swinging out from under the duvet in one violent, uncoordinated movement that sends the white sheets trailing across the concrete floor.

He’s totally naked, but there isn’t a single shred of vulnerability in his posture—only a terrifying, singular focus.

“This is Finnian,” he says into the receiver, his thumb pressing hard against his ear as he stands up. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Give me the doctor.”

I don’t listen to the rest of the call. I can’t. The gravity of the situation is too heavy, and if I stand still, I’ll collapse.

I walk over to the kitchen island, my hands moving with that rapid, frantic efficiency that usually keeps me from feeling things. I start packing the duffel bags.

Our whole world—the small, stupid, perfect world we’ve been building since Washington—is collapsing into the bottoms of two nylon bags in less than three minutes.

I don’t fold anything. I just cram it in. Pack, go, fix, manage. It’s the only way I know how to exist.

***

The drive to Denver International Airport is a blur of red brake lights and highway lanes that we shouldn’t be in, but are anyway, rushing toward a flight to Boston. Cash drives with both hands locked onto the steering wheel.

He hasn’t spoken since we left the gate in the hills.

He hasn’t looked at me once.

“The flight is at seven-forty,” I say, staring straight ahead at the dash. “We’re going to make it, Finn. We’ll be at the hospital by four o’clock Boston time.”

He nods once, a short, tight jerk of his chin that tells me he heard me but doesn’t have the emotional grease to spare for a reply.

I look at his profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the small lump on his nose where it’s been broken twice by clearing-the-crease crosschecks. My throat feels dry, a small, bitter ache rising up behind my tongue that has nothing to do with the early morning air.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The question just drops between us, small and heavy, landing right on the dashboard.

“Tell you what, Scottie?”

“About the Riverview place,” I say. “About the memory. You told me you were traveling. I spent three weeks adjusting your training mileage because I thought you were working out with the trainers in London. You were moving him into a home.”

A dark, sharp flash of hurt moves through my stomach as I say it.

It’s a quiet, selfish kind of hurt, but it’s there anyway—the realization that while I was falling in love with him in every diner and gravel turnout between Boston and Denver, he was keeping the largest part of his reality completely locked away in a separate ledger.

He’d let me be Bernadette; he’d let me play dress-up; but he hadn’t trusted me with the old man who wasn’t a bit at all.

“It wasn’t your business,” he says, his voice flat.

“I’m your agent, Cash,” I say, my voice rising just a fraction before I catch it. “Your family logistics affect your availability for the winter meetings. If they ask why you aren’t at the—”

“I don’t give a fuck about that, Scottie,” he interrupts. “And you weren’t my agent last night on the counter. Don’t do that. Don’t hide behind the binder because you’re mad I didn’t give you the paperwork on my old man’s brain.”

I look out the window, the flat, ugly concrete of the car rental returns spinning past us in a gray blur.

He’s right, of course.

I am hiding behind the binder.