LITMIR.BIZ

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to manage whom.

      But despite her intelligence, Flick was still a child. Kristin had kept her daughter in the dark about her grandfather’s stroke early last week, the day after Max’s visit, in fact, in an attempt to shield Flick from the worst of it. She’d hoped her father would be well on the road to physical recovery before Flick saw him again.

      Her father’s face—eye, cheek and mouth—sagged on the right side, giving him a frightening appearance, which worsened when he tried to speak. Her nine-year-old daughter might be intellectually ready to help her grandfather. But Kristin wondered how she would react when she saw him in his hospital bed.

      “Please, Mom,” Flick pleaded. “Let’s go see Gramps.”

      Kristin was torn. “Flick, I’m not sure—”

      “Please, Mom!”

      Kristin realized that if she didn’t take Flick to see her grandfather, her creative daughter would find some way to get to the hospital on her own. “He’s very sick, honey. I’m afraid seeing you will upset him.” And you.

      “I won’t upset him, Mom,” the girl promised. “I just want to talk to him.”

      Talk to him? He can’t talk! Kristin knew her daughter didn’t comprehend the seriousness of her grandfather’s illness. But there was no keeping the two of them apart.

      Harry Lassiter had been a part of Flick’s life from the day she was born, a surrogate father. No wonder her daughter was so desperate to see him. And Flick’s appearance might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

      Kristin’s father, a man who’d kept himself in excellent physical condition his entire life, was infuriated by his helplessness after the unexpected stroke. Harry had resisted the idea of physical therapy that could only promise improvement, rather than perfect health. Maybe Flick’s presence would encourage him to try harder to get back on his feet, even if he needed help walking from now on.

      Kristin studied her daughter’s eager face. The bright blue eyes, strong chin and straight black hair from her father. The high cheekbones and uptilted nose from her mother. When she set her mind to something, the nine-year-old was a force to be reckoned with.

      Harry Lassiter was as helpless to deny this extraordinary child whatever she wanted as Kristin was herself.

      Hopefully, her father would be swept up by the whirl wind that was her daughter. By the time he came down again, he’d be standing on his own two feet.

      For the first time in a very long time, Kristin smiled. Maybe things were finally going to turn around. “Come on, Flick. Let’s go see Gramps.”

      3

      Kristin perched on the edge of her father’s bed at Jackson Memorial Hospital and said, “Dad, I have a surprise for you. You have a visitor.”

      “On ahn un,” her father replied.

      Don’t want one.

      Kristin knew what he’d said only because she knew how her proud father felt about anyone seeing him like he was now. “I know you don’t want to see anyone. You don’t have a choice.”

      His gray eyes blazed with anger, and one cheek lifted as the side of his mouth turned down in a snarl. “No!”

      That was clear enough. But Flick was waiting in the visitors’ lounge down the hall. God knew how long the inquisitive nine-year-old could last in a hospital waiting room without getting into trouble. Kristin had warned Flick to behave herself and hurried to her father’s room to prepare him for seeing his granddaughter. She didn’t have a lot of time to argue with him.

      Her stomach knotted as she watched the once-invincible Harry Lassiter visibly struggle to say, “I ih e ere?”

      Why is she here?

      Kristin had debated whether to tell her father that Flick had gotten herself thrown out of school. It was one more thing he didn’t need to worry about. But she didn’t want to set a bad example by asking Flick to lie, and Flick would likely blurt it out anyway.

      “Flick was worried when you stopped emailing. She got herself thrown out of school so she could come find out what happened to you.”

      Kristin thought she saw the flicker of a smile cross half her father’s face. If so, it was the first since his stroke.

      He sighed audibly. “Aw igh.”

      “Well, all right,” Kristin said with a smile of her own, relieved that he’d given in so easily. “I’ll be right back. I left her—”

      “Gramps!”

      Kristin turned to find Flick poised in the doorway, a look of horror on her face.

      “Ow! Ow! Ow!” her father howled, creating a gar-goyle face that caused Flick to whimper, before he turned away with a sound of anguish, flailing with his one good hand under the sheet.

      Out! Out! Out!

      Kristin fought the urge to grab Flick and run—from her father, from her job, from her self-destructing life.

      But she stood her ground. Because in her head she heard: Never run from a challenge. Remember, you’re invincible.

      “You’re scaring Flick, Dad,” Kristin said in a firm voice. “Flick, come here,” she said in an equally firm voice.

      Flick tore fearful eyes from her grandfather’s supine body and stared dazed at her mother.

      “Come here,” Kristin repeated, holding out her hand to her daughter. “I know Gramps looks different. I would have prepared you, if you’d waited in the lounge. Because of his stroke, the right side of his face droops. That’s why he looks so…funny. So…weird. So…odd,” Kristin finished, after searching for the right word and never finding it.

      “Dad, look at us,” she commanded her father. “I want Flick to see your face in repose.” His face would still look strange, but not so horrible as it had when he’d howled. Kristin kept a reassuring hand on Flick’s shoulder, to stop her in case she was tempted to run.

      Kristin caught the stab of betrayal in her father’s eyes as he slowly turned back to face his granddaughter.

      Grandfather and granddaughter stared at each other somberly for a full thirty seconds before her father said, “Iz oo, ik.”

      “I missed you, too, Gramps,” Flick said.

      “Air oo, uh?”

      “Yeah,” Flick agreed. “You scared me pretty bad.”

      Kristin barely managed to avoid rolling her eyes. Trust Flick to be totally honest.

      “I’m okay now,” Flick continued. She left the security of Kristin’s side and crossed to her grandfather, bracing her hands on the bed to lift herself up and plop her rump down next to his hips. “But your face does look bizarre.”

      Bizarre: Strikingly out of the ordinary. That was the word Kristin had been seeking. Trust Flick to root it out of her enormous vocabulary.

      Kristin glanced at her watch, a twenty-five-dollar Timex with a brown leather band that Flick had given her for Christmas, which lit in the dark and kept perfect time. If she didn’t leave soon she was going to be late for her meeting with SIRT. “Dad, I’ve got a meeting. We have to leave, but—”

      “Ik an ay ere.”

      Flick can stay here.

      “I don’t know, Dad,” Kristin said, staring worriedly at her daughter.

      “I’ll be fine, Mom,” Flick said. “Visiting hours aren’t over till four. I checked.”

      “You’re sure it won’t be too much for you, Dad?”

      “Gramps, you need to comb your hair,” Flick said, eyeing his tousled blond hair with her head tilted. “It’s a

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