“You. Maisy. Tyler. In the middle of all that,” he says, frowning. Lark shakes his head. “We had practically all of New Iberia at our doorstep wanting to help out. Watch the little ones. Cook meals. Donate blood. Did you have support like that?”
My sigh is answer enough. He nods, still frowning
“What happened to your dad?” I press on. “Was he injured?”
Lark’s lips purse. “Physically, yeah, he had some injuries. Dehydration. A broken rib. Abrasions. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”
Lark’s hands rest on the table on either side of my laptop. Maybe I should, but I don’t fight the urge to reach across Nanna’s table. Before I even make contact, Lark grabs my hand tight.
As soon as he does, I know reaching out was the right thing to do. It’s like clouds burning off overhead the way his face brightens.
“There you go again,” he mutters.
I tilt my head to the side. “What do you mean?”
He squeezes my hand, wearing a wiseass smile. “Always making sure everybody around you is okay. Maisy, Tyler, Pen. Livy, Nina, me. You’re always looking after us.”
I blush. Maybe I do take care of others. I’m used to that. But right now? The feel of his hand around mine doesn’t feel a whole lot like caretaking.
It feels like sharing.
And maybe even something else.
Something I don’t want to examine right now.
“If his injuries weren’t bad, what was the worst of it?” I ask. And it’s not just because I need a distraction. It’s become clear in the last few minutes that this story is a big part of who Lark is, and I want to know it.
Because I want to know him.
He squeezes my hand again and lets out a sigh. “The mine was shut down for weeks. Investigations. Repairs. Safety checks.” He rolls his eyes like this last one is worthless. “When they let us go back down again, Dad’s injuries had healed, but—”
He pauses, and his jaw clenches.
“I knew he wasn’t himself.” He looks at me for just a moment before glancing away. Like he’s ashamed. This time, I squeeze his hand. “He’d been pretty quiet. Once he was able to move around, he spent most of his time outside on our land. Mowing. Clearing brush. Woodworking. He hardly ever came inside except at meal times.”
Lark shakes his head, and I can just read his self-censure in the gesture.
“Anyway, that first day back, he gets in the elevator and can’t breathe. Thinks he’s having a heart attack. The guys take him back up, call 911, get the defibrillator, the whole nine yards.”
Hearing this, my hand has tightened around his. I can’t imagine a worse place than underground to have an experience like that.
“I think Dad would have preferred a heart attack,” Lark says sourly.
I bite my bottom lip. “It was a panic attack?” I ask, because, shit. I’d have a panic attack going down into a mine even without surviving a mining disaster.
“Full-blown. The next day? Same thing. Shortness of breath. Sweating. Hyperventilating. All of it.” He wrinkles his nose. “Any idea how tough it is to get a sixty-year-old Cajun man to talk about mental health and PTSD?”
“Oh man.” My dad would never. He’d just pretend nothing happened until he actually did have a heart attack.
Lark nods. “For a while, it was really bad. He couldn’t get why he couldn’t work if his body was fine. And everything just snowballed. Panic attacks even at home. In bed.” That look of pain is back. “Depression set in. My mom was at her wit’s end.”
I squeeze his hand again. “That sounds terrible.”
His look saysyou’re telling me.“Takes forever to get disability benefits when you don’t have X-rays or scars to point to. Once we could get him to get a mental health diagnosis, that is.”
I was twenty-six when I had to navigate all of that bureaucracy to get Tyler where he needed to be. It wasn’t easy, but there was no denying his disability. Judging from the timeline he’s given, Lark was about eighteen or nineteen when that happened, and it sounds like his mom leaned on him a lot to help sort things out.
He wasn’t kidding. He’s twenty-three, but he’s not a young twenty-three.