The Royal We (3 A.M., #6)

We found him sitting on the back porch. “You two just let me be,” he said. “I’ve heard enough.”
Paul and Maggie asked if that meant he’d come to a decision.
“I’ll decide when I’m good and ready to decide.”
We exchanged a look that said should we leave it alone for now? Maggie raised an eyebrow that suggested later might be too late.
Paul asked our dad why he was so against the idea. “You said yourself the place and the people seemed nice.”
“Spain and its people are nice too, but it doesn’t mean I want to live there,” he said.
“You’ve never been to Spain, Dad,” Maggie said.
“You don’t know what I did and saw before you were born. I don’t tell you everything.”
We sat down on the steps, one on each side of him. It was a tight squeeze, but he didn’t complain.
“Do you think Mom would want you to stay here like this?” Paul said.
“Like what?”
“Alone. Sick,” said Maggie.
Dad looked up, gestured towards Banks, our seven-year-old beagle patroling the fence line. “I’m not alone.”
“Banks can’t call someone if something happens to you, Dad,” Paul said.
We sat there with him for a long time. His body grew tenser with each passing minute. He didn’t like when we ganged up on him like this. We knew he felt both relief and regret that Shelby, our younger sister, was not here. She was his baby girl, the child that always took his side. But with Mom being gone and his being sick, a part of him knew there was a possibility that this time she wouldn’t.
Shelby didn’t know that we were here, or that moving Dad to a nursing home was an option we were considering. Finals were next week and we decided it would be best not to add to her stress. Last fall, Mom passed right before her finals and she had to repeat the semester.
We glanced at each other behind Dad’s back and exchanged a nod that meant we should give him some time. He hadn’t flat out said no, and his considering the idea seemed like a good sign.
Maggie stood up first, then Paul. “Sleep on it, Dad,” Maggie said. “We’ll talk about it some more in the morning.”
Inside, we shared a bottle of wine.
“What do you think he’ll decide?” Maggie said.
“It’s hard to tell, but it’s clear he’s conflicted. I don’t think he wants to be put there, but I don’t think he wants to be alone here either.”
“Maybe we should have called Shelby.”
“You know what she’ll want to do,” Paul said.
Now that school was going to be out for summer, Shelby would suggest that she come move in with Dad, just until fall semester starts. But we both knew that if we let her, she wouldn’t go back. And we wanted her to have the education we missed out on.
“We’d have three months to warm her up to the idea of Dad going to Glen Oak. And when she sees how sick he is, when she really has to deal with it first hand, we won’t even have to really convince her. She’ll know for herself that it’s best.”
“I think you have our sister confused with someone else,” Paul said. “Remember how guilty she felt for not being around when Mom died? She’s not going to let that happen again with Dad.”
“And Dad won’t let her drop out of school to take care of him. He’d drive himself to the nursing home before it came to that.”
And that’s how we knew that Shelby was what we needed. Shelby, whether she agreed with it or not, was the only thing that would get Dad to go to Glen Oak.
We picked up the phone and dialed.