Chapter 5 - The Reconstruction of the Shelf
By the following August, the heat in central Ohio was thick and heavy, the air smelling of cut grass and asphalt.
I stood on the asphalt track behind Upper Arlington High School, my hands resting on the handles of two black aluminum forearm crutches. My right leg was bare, the twelve-inch purple surgical scar now a faded, silvery white line that traced the path where Dr. Chen had laid the plates against the bone.
Every step was still an exercise in deliberate calculation. Heel, plant, flex, lift. The joint didn't move with the fluid, thoughtless ease it had possessed twenty-six years prior; it was a mechanical assembly now, a system of flesh and metal that protested whenever the barometric pressure changed or the morning air was too damp.
But I was standing on my own two feet.
Marisol was sitting on the low concrete bleachers near the fifty-yard line, a stack of legal documents on her lap. She was currently completing her final application for the restored status of her residency, backed by an official certification from the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office identifying her as a key state’s witness in an ongoing corporate fraud prosecution.
Nolan had taken a plea deal three weeks ago.
He had pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated felonious assault and one count of grand theft via identity fraud. The judge, a no-nonsense woman with thirty years on the bench, had sentenced him to eight and a half years at the Marion Correctional Institution. He wouldn't be eligible for parole until he had served at least eighty-five percent of that time. His law license had been stripped before the ink on his plea agreement was dry.
My mother had received three years of probation, accompanied by five hundred hours of community service at a local food pantry in the south side of Columbus—a place where she would spend her mornings sorting through the actual, physical boxes of unwanted things she had spent her life avoiding.
My father walked toward me from the concession stand, carrying two bottles of cold water. He had gained ten pounds since the night in the kitchen, his shoulders broader, his beige cardigans replaced by simple short-sleeved shirts that showed the sunburn on his forearms.
“The therapist said you did twenty yards without the crutches yesterday,” he said, handing me a bottle.
“Twenty-two,” I corrected, taking a slow sip of the cold water. “The last four were ugly, but they counted.”
He looked out over the green turf of the football field, where a few local kids were running routes in the heat. “I went by the old house yesterday, Leah. The bank put the lockbox on the front door. The privet hedges are dying because nobody’s watered them since June.”
“Let them die, Dad,” I said, shifting my weight to my left leg to give the titanium shelf in my right knee a moment of rest. “It was just wood and glass.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But I spent thirty years thinking that if I kept the grass cut and the windows clean, nobody would notice that the foundation was rotted out.”
Marisol stood up from the bleachers, gathering her files into a neat leather tote bag—the one I had bought her with the first installment of the restitution money the court had ordered Nolan to pay from his remaining personal accounts. She walked over to us, her boots clicking against the gravel of the track with a bright, steady rhythm.
“The alignment is done,” she said, showing me the stamped document from the magistrate’s clerk. “The firm’s remaining cash reserves have been split. The Reno marriage is officially dissolved by order of the court, and my name is my own again.”
“Good,” I said.
I looked down at my phone, which was resting in the small mesh pocket of my crutch. There were no messages from my mother. There were no alerts from the legal blogs. There was only a notification from the school district confirming that my classroom assignment for the fall semester had been finalized. Room 214. Honors United States History.
I lifted the black crutches, setting the rubber tips into the hot asphalt two feet ahead of me.
“Let’s go get some lunch,” I said, looking at my father and the woman who had helped me turn my brother’s iron rod into the lever that broke his world apart.
“Can you make it to the car without the sticks?” my father asked, his hand reaching out instinctively to steady my elbow.
May you like
I looked at the silver scar on my knee, then at the wide, open blue of the Ohio sky above the stadium. I pulled the crutches up, tucking them under my arms, and took a single, deliberate step forward onto the grass.
“Watch me,” I said.
