For This Life Only by Stacey Kade Page A

That was weird. I couldn’t drive while I was on pain pills, so she’d insisted on driving me everywhere, including to and from school. She didn’t trust anyone else behind the wheel, particularly friends who might be distracted and get into another accident.
    I dug in my pocket for my cell to see if I’d missed a call or text from her.
    â€œJace. Jacob!”
    I searched faces and cars until I saw the open passenger-side window on the black Escalade hybrid, and the familiar figure behind the wheel summoning me with a sharp wave of his hand.
    Dad.
    My heart sank.
    I lugged myself toward the Escalade. “What are you doing here?” I asked through the open window. Dad was in casual mode today; he wore a dark blue button-down shirt, with a tie instead of a formal clerical collar pressing tight against his neck.
    â€œYour mother thought it would be good for you to start working at the church again, get back to another part of your routine,” he said, staring straight ahead through the windshield. There was nothing to see but the dead brown grass and muddy patches of the baseball field in the distance.
    It took me a second to run those words through the Parent Filter. Translation: My mom was pushing my dad and me together, hoping that would somehow make everything magically better.
    Reluctantly I opened the door, releasing a wave of new leather smell from the pristine interior. Unlike my mom’s van, which was frequently decorated with crushed Goldfish crackers, empty Gatorade bottles, and leftover streamers and poster paint from whatever project Eli had been working on, my dad’s SUV was in factory condition.
    The church paid the lease on it, so there was no eating or drinking in it and there was definitely no borrowing it. Even my mom didn’t like to drive it, for fear that a gallon of milk would split open in the cargo area or that Sarah would barf in the backseat.
    I hauled myself into the seat, shrugged out of my backpack, and dropped it on the floor. It took me extra time to get my leg arranged around my bag, the door closed, and my seat belt on, and the entire time, I could feel the distance growing, like the driver’s seat was moving farther and farther away from me. In the old days, before the accident, Dad would have asked me about my practice schedule, what the coaches were saying, if they were recommending changes to my workout.
    But now, without baseball, my dad and I didn’t have much to talk about. Except all the things we couldn’t talk about. And my healing injuries and impaired movements were vivid reminders of how everything had changed.
    â€œCarol and Delores have been taking on the extra work, which is too much for them, especially during Lent,” he said as he pulled away from the curb. “We need you to come back.”
    â€œI thought you would have hired someone else to take my place,” I said. Or Eli’s, at least. No matter what I did, the internship had been designed for two.
    â€œYou made a commitment to the council and to the Riverwoods community,” my dad said.
    Which meant if I didn’t come back, it would be one more thing my dad would have to explain away.
    I leaned my head against the headrest and closed my eyes.
    My dad took a corner too quickly, and the force of it knocked my arm into the center console.
    My eyes snapped open, watering, and I sucked in a sharp breath, my right hand moving reflexively to cover my elbow. The stitches were gone, and I was technically “healed” (after a second surgery to correct the first failed one). But tell that to the bones, ligaments, and muscles involved; they didn’t seem to be getting the “all better” message.
    Dad frowned, looking over at me for the first time. “Are you managing your pain medications appropriately?”
    Because I’d screwed up in so many other ways.
    Fury flashed through me but vanished before I could catch hold of it.