Chapter 2
Finally, he was finished. “There it is,” he gasped, panting heavily.
I heard a slight whistle from his lungs with each exhale because his respiration was always a struggle, even when he wasn’t worked up like this.
“Yeah. That was amazing.” He picked up a shaking hand and wiped sweat from his upper lip, then flicked it onto the floor.
I nodded. He seemed satisfied, but it had taken forever.
The steam heat was blasting, since he liked to keep things so hot, and the house was extra stuffy and damp today.
I thought that the smell of his cigarettes had seeped into my clothes and probably my hair, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe right now, either.
“Come here.” The same hand reached out to me, but I immediately shook my head. That was a rule: no touching.
“Fine. The money’s on the table next to the door,” he said, and I nodded again. I was used to the routine. “My sister’s coming into town and you can’t be here when she’s around.”
“For how long?”
“Two, three weeks?” He shrugged and carefully scratched his crotch. “Maybe more. I’ll text you when the coast is clear and we can get back to things.”
“Ok.” I sighed a little as I said it, though, and thought about how much I’d accumulated lately.
It probably wasn’t enough to last me two or three weeks, or maybe more.
I did have my secret stash of savings, but I was holding onto that for a major, major emergency.
Did this really qualify? I could go eat lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at my mom’s house.
Previously, it had been where both my parents lived, but they had separated a while ago and were finally divorcing.
Now she and her lodger Dion were there, but he had a girlfriend and he’d gotten the good job he’d been interviewing for, and Mom was busy with a serious yoga practice and with multiple grandkids.
No one would care what I did, and she might even have been able to help me with something: I was still trying to hold the crow pose.
For now, I took the money and left. First I went to the room that I rented and got a quick shower, and then I gathered up my supplies and drove to the medical building where I had first gone with my brother-in-law.
I had been there a few times since, too.
I had scrubbed the tank (it had been filthy), tested the water more, cleaned the filter, and then performed other tasks that it seemed no one had been doing.
I enjoyed it and the fish were a lot happier.
Regina, the nurse, commented on that when I entered the office.
“Hey, Grace,” she greeted me. “The fish are doing great. How is your week going?” Now that she was sure I wasn’t there either to steal anything or somehow harm Dr. Winter, she had warmed up a lot.
He had told her the story about how I’d been trying to get the ring, and she said that she would have helped me if I had explained it at the time.
Looking back, that would have been a better choice.
I answered her question about my week without thinking: “It’s not bad.” But then I actually considered it. “I’ve been better,” I admitted. “How about you?”
She actually didn’t look so good. “We’ve had a sad day,” she told me, and I understood what she meant.
They had lost a patient. Dr. Theo Winter spent time here, having appointments and doing administrative stuff, and he also spent time at the hospital overseeing treatments and doing surgeries.
Regina had previously explained how things could go wrong there, and how sad it got.
“She was a nice lady,” she said very quietly.
I nodded and looked at the empty chairs in the waiting room. I hoped that the patients who filled them tomorrow would receive good news like Beckett had gotten when I’d accompanied him here, instead of…
I turned to the aquarium, also hoping that it might brighten up their time here.
I noticed that the little guys were much livelier than the first time I’d met them, and I watched them chase each other.
“I’m glad someone is having a good time,” I said.
I didn’t really have a lot of chores to complete but I still lingered for another moment, studying them.
“Come chat,” Regina called, so I went around the back of her curved desk area. She’d asked me to sit there before as we’d discussed tank maintenance, and she had offered me a muffin. There didn’t seem to be any of those around today, although I looked.
“Do you live close by?” she asked me.
“I live in the city, on the East Side.”
“I thought you were dropping in here on your way home. This is a long drive for you to make so frequently,” she mentioned.
“It’s not bad.” It was a lot of gas, though, if I didn’t have any money coming in.
I thought of what I might have been doing with my time instead of monitoring the aquarium.
“I’m not married and I don’t have a family of my own like some of my siblings do.
” Nicola, Sophie, Addie, and Patrick all had children; Juliet was married to Beckett and Brenna had also gotten married not long ago.
Those sisters might have some of their own babies soon—JuJu wanted that a lot.
Regina wanted to hear about my family, and that was a topic that could fill a lot of time because there were a lot of us. I explained that I was one of seven, six sisters and a brother. “They must have all doted you as the youngest,” she said.
I thought. “No,” I answered, and she blinked.
“You guys don’t get along?”
“They mostly like each other,” I said. “Nicola and Sophie used to be best friends when they were kids and they’re close again now.
Addie likes everyone. Juliet and Patrick are twins, so they always have a bond, and Brenna hasn’t ever cared if people hate her.
Lately, she’s been acting nicer, though. ”
Regina was counting on her fingers, like she was making sure there really were seven of us. It was true that we were sometimes confusing but I was positive about how many siblings I had.
Except I had missed one. “There’s also Dion,” I remembered. “My mom and Brenna are trying to bring him into the fold.”
“Another child?”
“He’s twenty-five, I think. He used to work with my sister until their gallery burned down in an arson fire, and now he lives with my mother.”
“Wow, arson.” Her eyes were big. “And your mother has a twenty-five-year-old boyfriend, wow.”
“No, he’s like another son. I guess she wanted more,” I explained.
“Seven of us wasn’t enough. She tried to fill an emotional hole with children but it didn’t work.
It’s better that she’s taking on someone who’s already an adult because she didn’t like the part when we were young and she was supposed to raise us.
” She did better with her grandchildren, because she only needed to care for them sporadically.
My siblings made sure that she didn’t have any real responsibility.
Regina’s eyes widened even more, maybe close to popping.
“Wow. My family hasn’t ever messed with arson and I only had two children.
” She told me about them and how much she missed them.
Her son was an attorney in Chicago and her daughter was in graduate school in Ann Arbor.
“She must be around your age,” she said, and looked at me appraisingly. “How old are you, Grace?”
“I’m twenty-three. I just turned.” My sister Sophie had made me a pie to celebrate and we’d had a little party, but my mom hadn’t attended. She and Dion had been at a yoga conference in Cleveland. No one had thought to ask my dad because he’d never been a big part of our birthdays.
“Twenty-three,” she repeated. “That was around my guess but it was hard for us to pin down the number. The doctor and I were talking about you.”
“You were?” I tilted my head. “Why?”
“It’s a little unusual that you come in here and do our tank maintenance for free,” she said. “Right? Most people your age have jobs during the day, or sometimes at night. What do you do?”
“Client services,” I told her. “It’s more of a sporadic thing without a schedule. I’m going to have two or three weeks off, in fact. Or more.”
“Really? Are you looking for work?”
I guessed that I should have been. My sisters were always on me about having a job that was regular and legal. “I am,” I said.
“We budgeted for a temporary employee but Dr. Winter has been so busy that I haven’t started looking for someone. I thought he didn’t have time for another project, but we really need help. And you showed up!”
“I work here already,” I reminded her. She had forgotten the fish, so I pointed to the tank to remind her.
“No, I don’t mean that.” She went on to explain that Theo Winter had joined this practice as a junior partner, and that the senior guy had retired about a month before I’d visited for Beckett’s appointment.
Now, the old doctor’s patients had a choice: they could stay here but with Dr. Winter, or they could get their care at a different practice.
“The records are the problem,” she said.
If someone was leaving, then their chart needed to be transferred.
Also, the old guy who had retired had done things differently.
Regina wasn’t prepared to say that Dr. McGonagle had done things wrong, but there were problems with how data had been entered and there were problems with how the charts had been organized.
“We’re looking for temporary help to sort that out. ”
I nodded. My sister Nicola could have taken care of everything in about a minute, because she was amazing. Sophie would have been good at it, too, and Addie. Even Juliet and Brenna, but there was a problem. “My sisters all have jobs,” I commented.
“Good for them. Um, why did you tell me that?”
“They can’t help you,” I explained.
“I was thinking about you,” she said. “You could work here temporarily with me and Pinar.”
“Me?”
She nodded.