One Last Thing Before I Go

the shit out her.
    “Silver! What the hell?” She jumps off of her bed instinctively. Casey, on the window seat across the room, jumps up as well.
    “Dad?” she says. His daughter’s voice, calling him Dad, his adrenalized assault on the house, it all packs an emotional punch he isn’t prepared for, and suddenly he’s crying.
    “Hi,” he manages to get out, after a stifled sob.
    “Where’s Rich?” Denise says.
    “He’s outside.” He turns around and locks the bedroom door. Denise’s eyes grow wide.
    “What are you doing?”
    “I just . . . I just need to catch my breath for a second,” Silver says, leaning against the wall. Casey, her eyes red from crying, has moved across the room and is now standing in front of him. “Hi, baby,” he says, and cries a little bit more.
    “What’s wrong with you?” Casey says.
    “Nothing. I don’t know.” He can smell Denise’s moisturizer. In all these years, she hasn’t changed it. He used to rub it onto her arms and legs after she showered, her wet hair, longer then, dripping onto her naked shoulders, and he would think to himself, I will love this woman forever.
    He looks down. There are patterns in the carpet. You don’t see them right away because it’s gray on gray, but they’re there—little floral shapes repeating until they make no sense. She picked this carpeting out herself, furnished this room, this house, by herself, because she was alone. Because he’d made her that way.
    “You’re crying,” Casey says.
    “So are you,” he says.
    They look at him, these two women, his lost family, at an utter loss to understand him. He knows how they feel. “So,” he says. “What did I miss?”
    Casey laughs. Denise doesn’t. “Why are you here?”
    “My daughter is pregnant.”
    “And suddenly you’re Father of the Year.”
    “I’m just trying to be her father right now.”
    “She has enough to deal with as it is.”
    He turns to Casey. “You came to me. I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
    “Thanks, Silver.”
    She doesn’t call him Dad. He guesses that that was a temporary thing. Still, it was something, right? Below them, the room shakes lightly as the motorized garage door opens. He’s running out of time.
    “Listen,” he says. “This, right here, the three of us, we’re a family. We’re a screwed-up family, sure, and that’s my fault, but still. There was a time when the entire universe was outside the front door, and it was just the three of us, in our house, happy. And we’re still those people. That’s not gone.” He turns to Denise and he can see that she’s crying now. He’s made contact. “Please, Denise. I know you haven’t forgiven me. But the thing is, I still love you, I still can feel us, how we were then. Let me help my daughter.”
    He can hear Rich’s footsteps pounding up the stairs, and then his body hitting the door. “Denise!” Rich shouts. His body hits the door again. Silver can hear wood splintering.
    Denise looks at him for a long moment. He hasn’t been nearly as coherent as he needed to be. He doesn’t know exactly what he was hoping to accomplish coming here, but even though he can no longer recall most of what he’s said, he’s pretty sure he didn’t accomplish it.
    “It’s OK,” Denise says. “I’m just going to let him in.”
    As she moves past him to the door, he reaches out for her arm. She stops, and for one electric moment, he can feel her fingers come up and wrap themselves around his forearm, her nails digging into his flesh. He feels her connected to him, and once again, the universe seems to be shifting beneath his feet. But this all happens in a fraction of a second, and before it can settle into reality, before it can actually take on any weight, Rich, who is on the other side of the door and thus has no idea of the nature of things on this side, hits the door with his shoulder, hard enough to break the latch. And the door flies open with violent force, connecting solidly with the face of his bride, who flies back across the room, going down hard when the corner of the bed takes her out at the knees.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 21
    D enise rides, pumping away fiercely as she hits the first incline. Lake Terrace Boulevard is a long, winding road with three major inclines, which makes it a favorite among the local cyclists, all gluttons for the punishing hills. Denise, in black spandex shorts and a yellow top, crests the first hill without the usual sense of adrenalized