Chapter 4 #2
But he was more concerned about me. “Have you been crying?”
I brushed my fingertips over my cheeks, but there were no tears left there.
I guessed that when he did his doctor stuff, he had to be very observant and it carried over into his interactions with others.
And yes, I had been crying, because I had been unhappy when I’d left Sophie’s house.
I didn’t compare myself to my sisters, but witnessing her life tonight had made me glad for her and sorry for myself.
Which was what I said. “I was upset.”
“About the fish? I didn’t mean to worry you so much. Come see them,” he invited, and I followed him into the dim reception room. “I leave the lights low at night when I’m here, so that they can rest.”
It was typical of him to be considerate. I nodded and took the liquid test kit out of my bag.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a new system I bought that could be more accurate,” I answered, and carefully removed the top of the tank. “By the way, Quintus Hortensius might want this lid back.”
“Quintus Hortensius is the human man who owned Dandan, the fish that’s now deceased,” Theo filled in. “I took notes to remember them. He’s getting another pet?”
“His grieving process is complete,” I told him. “I was thinking that you might want a different system anyway.” I explained my ideas about additional fish, increased tank size, improved filtration, live plants, snails, and other features. “All of that will come with a cost.”
“Do you mean money, or something emotional?”
I had meant the latter because more fish meant an increased psychological attachment, but I realized that money was also an issue. “You live in that old cabin,” I commented. I hadn’t yet figured out what he was doing with the money he must have been making as a successful doctor.
“Yes, I do live in a snake pit but I could swing the expense of a new aquarium. What’s your opinion on these guys?” he asked, pointing to the glass. “Are they all right?”
I’d been observing them as we waited. “I think they’re fine. But how are you? Is your bruxism bothering you? How was your trip to the dentist?” Between me and Regina, we had gotten him to make the appointment but he had gone last week, when I wasn’t around to check in.
“Now I have to see a neurologist who’s also a sleep-medicine specialist,” he said. “I’ll set that up.”
I took out my phone and texted Regina, who got back to me almost immediately. I showed him the screen. “She says that she already set it up for you, but then you told her to cancel.”
He looked at my phone. “I can do it myself and I don’t need Regina to mother me. Why is she asking about your new address?”
“She wants to send my final paycheck.”
“And you moved?”
“Temporarily,” I explained.
“I’m glad. I didn’t want you to be in the…” He hesitated. “Regina and Pinar were calling it a flophouse.”
“That’s a good name for it,” I agreed. “The place I’m staying now is nicer and there are no drug users or felons.
It’s my parents’ house—just my mom’s now, since they’re getting divorced and my dad moved out.
They briefly thought about working it out but he decided that they couldn’t. It’s better that way.”
“My parents just fought all the time. I would have been relieved if they got divorced.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear it, but I meant that it’s better for them to live apart, because it would have been uncomfortable to have my dad’s girlfriend showing up at the family home.”
His eyes widened. “Your father—you know, why don’t we get out of this office and go talk somewhere else? Have you had dinner?”
I had eaten at my sister’s house, but I was willing to go with him again.
We walked out together and went to our cars, which were still parked side by side and were easier to find that way.
Then I followed him to a place that he knew was still open, and when we got there, he also knew the menu backward and forward. He had been here a lot, I figured.
“Why do you work so late, so often?” I asked after he had ordered.
Theo played with a sugar packet. His fingers were long and he moved the little paper envelope in a way that reminded me of the magician I’d worked for when he did his slight of hand tricks, and before he’d gone up in smoke.
“I’m young for this job,” he said. “Dr. McGonagle hired me and I joined his practice, but both of us expected him to stay for at least five more years. He had a stroke and he had to retire. I feel a lot of pressure taking over from him. I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. ”
“You’re thirty-one,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Your blood type is O negative.”
“Yes, and how the hell did you know that?” he wondered. “Why is it significant?”
“I just want to make sure of my facts,” I said. “Regina told me that she started at the office when she was twenty-two, and now she’s fifty-nine. She also has A positive blood. Anyway, with all that experience, she would know about doctors, and she thinks you’re amazing.”
“I don’t know why blood type…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“Pinar is also impressed and you get all those gifts from your patients, so they must be happy, too.”
“We lost a significant number of people to other practices when Dr. McGonagle left. I have a lot of work, more than I expected to handle on my own, and I worry about keeping us going. I have Regina and Pinar depending on me.”
“You need money to remodel your cabin, too. I talked to an expert and he believes that the walls could cave in at any time.”
Theo looked horrified. “What?”
I explained what my sister’s husband had told me about wood rot and carpenter ants. None of it was good.
He seemed worried, too. “I know it’s a mess but I never considered that bugs were eating it from the inside out. What’s your brother-in-law’s name?”
I gave him Danny’s information, because I also thought they would get along. From what Regina had said (and she had been watching), Theo didn’t know many people around here. He also didn’t have a lot of time to spend with anyone, but a working relationship would be a good start.
“Can you afford to remodel it, all those costs?” I asked. “Danny would need to be paid. I have a niece and a nephew and I worry about their futures. Based on what my sister told me tonight, they’re already reading so they’ll probably want to go to college.”
He looked a little offended. “I planned to pay him. I do have money.” Then his expression changed to something that I might have called “furtive,” which was what Brenna had called me when she didn’t say “sneaky,” “conniving,” or “hateful.”
“I do have money,” he reiterated. “My grandfather left me the house and he left me other things, too.” He coughed slightly, like my dad did when he was about to discuss something uncomfortable for him. I’d heard it a few times during our last conversation.
“Like what? What did he leave you?” I asked Theo. “A disease? A curse?”
“No, something nice. He left me a lot of assets,” he said. “He left money in the bank, real estate, and a big investment portfolio. It’s very strange.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I’m not used to it. When I started working with Dr. McGonagle, he told me that I had to start dressing better in front of my patients.
I went to shop for new shirts and ties and it was the oddest experience.
I walked out with everything I needed without worrying about the cost—I did worry, because I had spent a lot,” he clarified, “but I didn’t really have to be concerned, because I had the money. ”
“You stuck with the same old socks and underwear,” I pointed out, and he stared at me.
“How do you know that I have old underwear?”
I had looked, of course, on the night that I had fallen asleep at his house.
I had fallen asleep in his bed and on the side where he usually slept himself, which I knew because there was a book on the nightstand that didn’t have a layer of dust covering it.
He’d let me stay for the whole night. My guess was that there wasn’t another bed with sheets that were mostly clean, because he had slept next to me.
He had put a row of pillows in between us that must have prevented me from kicking him and him from touching me.
I had woken up to him saying, “Grace, it’s morning,” and with my arms and legs wrapped around one of those pillows like I was a baby capuchin.
Someone had dropped one off at the animal rescue, the poor little thing.
“Grace, how do you know about my under—” But as Theo was repeating his question, his dinner arrived and he shrugged and gave up.
I had questions for him as he started to eat. “If you have the money to fix your house, why haven’t you? My mother remodeled without having the money and that was a mistake, but my sister Nicola spent what that she actually had and it turned out great. Why don’t you do that?”
First, he wanted a brush-up on my siblings, which I quickly provided: Nicola, Sophie, Addie, Juliet and Patrick, Brenna, and me. And Dion, the new one. Then he answered.
“There are several reasons that I haven’t done anything to the cabin,” he said.
“I told you that I’m not totally comfortable spending money.
After not having any for most of my life, I’m actually very uneasy about it.
Also, I feel a little strange about altering the place.
In a way, it seems disrespectful to rip apart my grandfather’s home after he did so much for me. ”
I nodded, because my father had felt the same way about the house that his parents had given to him and my mother, the place where my siblings and I had grown up. Many things had stayed exactly as Grandma and Grandpa had left them, up until Dad moved out.