stuff. What about the rest of it?”
“The lab work is great, but I had my first session of PT this afternoon, and I can barely walk.”
“Take a hot shower before you go to bed. Doctor’s orders.”
“I can do better than that,” Joanna answered. “I think I’ll hop in the hot tub.”
“They have a hot tub there on campus? That’s a big step up from when the facility used to be downtown. That place was nothing short of grim.”
“It’s not just a hot tub on campus,” Joanna returned. “I happen to have a hot tub right here in my room. It even works.”
“Amazing,” Adam
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Joanna said with a laugh. “Some people seem to have all the luck.”
While classes were in session, Dave Thompson tried to limit his drinking to the confines of his own apartment, but that Tuesday night he sought solace in the comforting din of his favorite neighborhood watering hole, the Roundhouse Bar and Grill.
Holidays were always tough, but Thanksgiving was especially so since that was when the problem with Irene and Frances had come to a head. Even more than Christmas, that was when he missed his kids the most, when he wished that somehow things could have turned out differently. Unfortunately, when it came to living happily ever after, Dave Thompson had ended up on the short end of the stick.
In his mind’s eye, he still saw the kids as they had been six years earlier when Irene took them and left town. At least he supposed they had left town. All Dave got to do was send his child support check to the Maricopa County court system on the first of every month. He didn’t know where it went from there. He wasn’t allowed to know. Irene’s lawyer had seen to that. She had been a regular ring-tailed bitch. So was the judge, for that matter. By the time that bunch of hard-nose women had finished with him, Dave had nothing left—not even visitation rights.
And maybe that was just as well. Truth be known, Dave didn’t want to know what kind of squalor Little Davy and Reenie were living in or what they were learning from Irene and that goddamned “friend” of hers. In fact, it was probably far better that he didn’t.
For months after that last big blowup—the one that had landed Dave in jail overnight—he had rummaged eagerly through his mail each day, hoping to receive a card or letter. Something to let him know whether or not his kids cared if he was dead or alive. But none ever came. Not one. All these years later, he had pretty much given up hope one ever would. In fact, he doubted he would ever see his children again, especially not if Irene had anything to do with it.
Of course, there was always a chance that eventually they might grow up enough to ignore her. If somebody else ever told the kids their father’s side of the story—if they ever got tired of all the lies and bullshit Irene had to be feeding them—they might even come looking for him one day. If and when that happened, Dave was prepared to welcome his children back home with open arms.
But that kind of thing was years away at best. Now the kids were only eleven and twelve. Davy was the older of the two, by sixteen months. Brooding over his beer, Dave wondered how tall the boy was and whether or not he still looked like his father and if, also like his father, Davy was any good at sports. As far as Reenie was concerned, Dave tried not to think about her very much. She had been a sweet-tempered, dark-haired cutey the last time saw her. But the problem with little girls was that they grew up and turned into women. And then they broke your heart.
Clicker in hand, Butch Dixon was surfing through the local news broadcasts. “Hey, Dave,” the bartender said, interrupting the other man’s melancholy reverie. “Isn’t that one of your students?”
Thompson turned a bleary eye on the huge television set. Sure enough, there was Joanna Brady being interviewed about something. Dave had come in on the story too late to catch what was going on, but Joanna was there. Next, Leann Jessup stepped forward and said something about how the system had to do better.
