Breakup In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

held the plate out. The kids took it to the table and began to eat.

      “Uncle Aiden will be here at the end of the week, and maybe once he’s settled, we’ll figure out a new schedule. Until then, it’s the bus after school.” The kids nodded, but kept their attention focused on the table. “I mean it, boys.”

      Jenny pushed past Adam and began to clean the apple peels off the counter. She rinsed the cutting board and small knife. She didn’t even look at Adam. “You shouldn’t be standing on that knee. You know what the doctor said.”

      Of course he knew what the doctor said. The words that damned man said circled around in Adam’s mind all day long. Don’t put undue pressure on the knee. Even the smallest twist or turn could set back his recovery, especially since they couldn’t perform the needed surgery on his leg until the epilepsy was under control.

      “Cutting an apple isn’t putting my knee under any stress.”

      “Walking on tile and hardwood is.” Jenny kept her voice even, but shot him a sharp look then motioned to the living room. She held the handles of the wheelchair expectantly, but Adam was damned if he was going to sit back in that thing and be talked to like he was a seven-year-old. He turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen, gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee as he moved. When they were out of earshot of the kids, she said, “And what if you’d had another episode? With a knife in your hand? And the boys in the house?”

      “It’s a paring knife, Jen. It’s not going to kill me.” And nothing had happened, so what was the big deal?

      “It’s a sharp blade, and it will cut no matter how little it is.”

      “Whatever.”

      “Stop giving me that answer, Adam. You know your limitations—”

      “Peeling an apple for my kids isn’t going to kill me, Jenny.” He threw his arms to the side. “Neither is walking around in my own home instead of wheeling myself in that damned chair.” He pivoted, and pain wrenched through his leg when his Nike caught on the hardwood. His knee gave out, and as he fell to the floor, he saw horror flit over Jenny’s face as she rushed across the room. She cradled his body against hers the way she might hold one of their kids, and that annoyed him more than the pain in his knee hurt. He wasn’t a damned child. He didn’t need a damned babysitter.

      “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, her voice soothing as she ran her hands over his denim-clad leg. Once upon a time, a touch like that from her would have him hard and ready to take things into their bedroom. He pushed away the heat that flashed through him at her touch. Neither of them needed him acting like a horny teenager right now. “I don’t feel anything out of position. Let’s get you up.” She helped him to the chair.

      “Stop, just stop,” he said, when she started running her hands over his leg again. He didn’t think he could keep pushing away his physical reaction to her, not when she was this close to him. Not when he could hear her breathing take on that ragged edge. Part of him wanted her reaction to him. The other part, the smart part, knew physical attraction wouldn’t do either of them any good. Not when his body was out of his control. He grabbed her wrists and pushed her away. “I don’t need a nursemaid. I twisted the knee—it’s not a big deal.”

      “It is a big deal,” she said, but she stepped away from him, shoving her hands into the pockets of her pink capri pants. “It’ll be okay, though. Aiden will be here on Friday. I’ll figure out a new schedule for the kids, and for you. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay,” she said again, and didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m just going to check on the boys.” She disappeared down the hall.

      It wouldn’t be okay, Adam thought. It couldn’t. Not as long as he was in this chair. Not as long as his brain wasn’t working. Nothing would be okay for his family as long as he was sick. And he was tired of being the reason everyone in this house walked around on pins and needles all day.

      * * *

      JENNY BUCHANAN SAT on the pretty, plaid sofa in her living room, staring at the ceiling. She’d gotten the kids to bed a little while ago, and still hadn’t heard a peep from Adam. Her husband of six years had retreated to the guest room after the after-school fight. The guest room where he’d been sleeping since coming home from the hospital three months ago.

      The guest room where he’d made it clear she wasn’t wanted. Or needed. Or even invited.

      God, she hated that guest room. If she could, she’d set fire to it so she never had to deal with it again. Burning down part of the home she’d built with Adam wasn’t a solution to their current problems, though. As satisfying as it might be.

      Her mother’s chattering voice continued through the phone line, but Jenny had stopped paying attention five minutes before. She wasn’t sure if the occasionally muttered uh-huhs and okays she offered were for the poor turnout for her mother’s annual Coats for Kids drive or for the fact that her father still hadn’t fixed the loose downspout on the side of their house. Either way, she didn’t really care.

      It wasn’t even October yet. The first cold snap hadn’t hit southern Missouri. In fact, they had yet to see nightly temperatures drop under the seventy-degree mark. And, really, what was the big deal about a downspout that was only slightly off center? There were bigger problems in the world.

      Terrorism, for one.

      Her husband’s continued depression/anger/denial of the very real medical issues facing them since the tornado that nearly destroyed their town, for another. Not to mention the business issues. She and Adam had made big plans to turn Buchanan Cabinetry into Buchanan Fine Furnishings before the tornado hit; his parents had been mostly retired, splitting their time between Slippery Rock and Florida when they weren’t traveling the country in their RV. Since the tornado and Adam’s hospitalization, though, they’d moved home to Slippery Rock full-time and were now back to running the business. Straight into the ground.

      The elder Buchanans had “mislaid” messages from the company suppliers, and when a furniture outlet in Springfield called to ask about a new partnership, they had refused to even consider the option. That was a partnership she and Adam had been working on for months, and his parents had killed the plan without even consulting her. Or Adam.

      Adam’s response had been to shrug his shoulder, get a bottle of soda from the fridge and wheel himself back into the guest room, where he shut the door and turned on the television.

      When she knocked on the door, trying to talk to him, he’d simply turned up the volume until she left him alone.

      She didn’t know how to reach her husband. She hated her job.

      She hated her life.

      More than any of those things, she hated that she felt so helpless in this situation. “Mother, I’d like to talk about me, please,” she said, detesting the whining note that came into her voice. She wasn’t whining; she’d called for advice. But in typical Margery Hastings fashion, her mom had steamrolled right over Jenny’s needs and straight into her own.

      Margery didn’t respond well to whining, though, so Jenny backtracked. “I don’t mean to belittle your problems, I’m sure Dad is just focused on work. You know, the bank was hit really hard by the tornado.”

      “It isn’t as if they had to rebuild,” Margery said, her voice stiff with self-righteousness.

      No, the bank hadn’t had to rebuild. They’d had to create loans for local businesses to rebuild, had dealt with construction companies that needed to expand to deal with the devastation, and had to explain to their corporate bosses why capital outlay had increased so much in a single quarter.

      “What I meant was that I really do need your advice. I’m just not sure how to reach Adam. He’s...not the same man that he was before the tornado.” As frustrated with Pre-Tornado Adam as she’d gotten from time to time—she’d begun to refer to him as that—she would take that reckless, carefree, playful man over the dark, depressed man living in her home any day.