I laugh humorlessly. “Please let that woman make my life hell for another hundred years.”
Crystal smiles. “Don’t you worry. She’ll outlive us both.” She reaches into her purse and grabs a deck of cards. Then she moves a small table and sets it in front of me before pulling a chair up opposite. “Let’s play. What’s your game?”
This is another part of my past I don’t want revealed, and I’m suddenly aware of how exposed I am with this woman. Too exposed. “I don’t play cards.”
“Oh, come on. You’re human. You play cards.”
“No, Ms. Smith. I do not.”
“Crystal,” she corrects softly, “and if that’s true, then there’s no better day to learn. It’ll occupy your mind, which I happen to know is too sharp to remain inactive for the next three hours.”
“I’d rather discuss the auction coming up.”
“Poker? Why, yes, I’d love to play.”
I glance up to find my father, and it’s impossible to miss how bloodshot his eyes are. He grabs a chair and pulls it between mine and Crystal’s. He lifts his Styrofoam coffee cup. “Nothing better than coffee and poker, except beer and baseball.” He glances at Crystal. “Look out, darlin’. Mark was a damn good player back in his college days. He was the undefeated champion. If not for—”
“Dad,” I warn, stopping him and then looking at Crystal. “Deal.”
She studies me a moment. “Whatever you want, Mr. Compton.”
And damn if I don’t correct her. “Mark. My name is Mark.”
—
Three hours later I’ve won every hand of poker, and my father and Crystal are laughing as they team up against me and threaten to count cards.
“That’s only done in Blackjack,” I remind my father.
“Mr. Compton?” a man says.
We all rise and turn toward the doctor who’s standing in his scrubs, his mask on his chest, looking calm. Every muscle in my body eases. “She’s doing well,” he reports, and my shoulders slump, the tension sliding from my weary body, as he adds, “You can see her soon.”
I glance down at Crystal, who smiles at me. And for the first time in days, I truly breathe again.
I’m still talking to the doctor when Crystal gets a call. By the time the doctor departs, she’s grabbing her purse and walking toward me. “I need to run over to Riptide. Can you please tell your mother I was here and I’ll be back as soon as can?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“What’s wrong, Crystal?”
She surprises me by reaching out and pressing her hand to my chest. “Trust me, please. Go be with your mother. I won’t let you, or your parents, down.”
Heat radiates from the place she touches, and yet I’m frozen in place. “I don’t trust easily.”
Her fingers curl on my chest. “I suspect you don’t trust ever.”
“And yet you’re asking me to trust you.”
She wets her lips and I want to lick them, too. “You get nothing you want if you don’t ask for it.”
The air pulses around us and my hand closes over hers. “You have no idea how much I agree.”
“So you’ll go be with your family and let me take care of business?”
“Yes. I will.”
“Mark,” my father says, and I release her hand.
Six
_
A few hours later, the hospital phone in my mother’s room rings. She shifts against her pillow, still stubborn enough to try to answer it, and moans with the pain that creates.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” my father says, quickly moving from his chair to her bedside, while I swipe the phone from the table.
“Compton room,” I answer.
“Mark?”
At the sound of Crystal’s voice, I glance at the clock, and note that it’s four o’clock. “I thought you were coming back.”
“I am. I sat in a traffic jam for over an hour, and once I got here there were all kinds of things the staff needed for our small Monday event that I didn’t plan on. You know how it is around here.”