Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [99]
Dana told us that she and Bob had broken up again. This wasn’t entirely unexpected; the stress of her recent illness would have been enough to test any relationship.
“Oh,” I remember saying, “that’s too bad. I like Bob.”
“There’s more though,” my sister said.
“What’s that?”
She smiled, offering the faintest of shrugs. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t worry. I’ve stopped taking my antiseizure medicine.”
There was even more. In our family, I was slowly beginning to realize, there was always something more. Not only was my sister seriously jeopardizing her health—a worry that would plague us over the next seven months—but well on her way to becoming a single mother. We soon found out that she was expecting twins.
Then, increasing our worries, right after Christmas, my dad abruptly informed my sister she had to move out of the house, despite the fact that she had nowhere else to go.
Though I never told anyone, I secretly began to wonder if my father was not only manic-depressive, but mentally ill in other ways as well.
In December, my dad learned that the woman he’d been dating—the first woman he’d dated after my mom’s death—hadn’t actually been divorced. Instead, she’d only been separated from her husband, and had been using my father for the little money he had. By the end of the relationship, my father was deep in debt. When he could afford nothing more, she cut off contact entirely. I don’t know whether my dad kept calling the woman and she finally grew tired of his persistence, or whether it was accidental, but her husband eventually found out about the relationship. The husband was a burly police officer, and he’d physically threatened my dad in the driveway of my dad’s home. My father had been terrified by the confrontation, even fearing for his life.
It was this turn of events, right around Christmas, I believe, that finally broke him emotionally.
From that point on, my dad embarked on a downward spiral that only grew worse over time. His mood and attitude were bitter, and he became not only angry, but paranoid as well. Because he couldn’t go to the police—what good would it have done?—he bought guns and ammunition instead. He asked my sister to move out of the house. And then he bought a dog named Flame.
Flame, a German shepherd, had originally been trained for police duty, but because of his volatile nature, couldn’t be used. Though attached to my dad, Flame made everyone else nervous. The dog growled and snapped, seemingly at random, and wasn’t trustworthy. His combustible personality, combined with my father’s instability, made for a dangerous mix.
During the first few months of 1994, my brother and I talked endlessly on the phone, about both our sister and our father, wondering what, if anything, we could do.
“Should I invite Dana to live out here with us?” I asked.
“She can’t, Nick,” Micah answered. “Her doctors are out here.”
“What about dad?”
“He’s adamant that she can’t live at home anymore. And to be honest, I really don’t want her living there either. He’s really getting strange these days. And with Flame . . . no, Dana can’t stay there. Not if she has kids.”
“Can she stay with you?”
“I’ve asked, but she says she doesn’t want to. She says she can handle it. Her friend Olga has a small room that she says Dana can rent.”
Olga lived in the old farmhouse where we boarded our horses; she’d known Dana for years.
“How’s she going to handle it? She has no job, no husband, no money, she has a brain tumor . . .”
“I know. I try to tell her that.”
“What does she say?”
“She says that she’ll make do. She isn’t worried at all. She’s excited about having kids.”
“How can she not be worried? What if she