Chapter 6 #2
The situation was getting better at his cabin, and his car was definitely improved. I’d watched videos about detailing and then, one morning when he’d been sleeping, I’d gotten busy. He’d come out of the house just as I saw faint streaks of light in the sky, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“I thought that I heard something,” he’d said, which demonstrated his outstanding auditory abilities.
I had been extremely quiet. Then he’d been shocked at how good the car looked.
“I got this used, and it’s never been so clean and shiny.
Thank you, Grace. It’s amazing,” he’d said, and since then, he’d kept it up.
The cabin wasn’t quite so clean and shiny, but things were moving along better than I could have hoped.
I’d finished Theo’s bedroom but I hadn’t discovered anything of real interest besides the mystery door and that wouldn’t open.
Based on the layout of the house, he believed that it must have been another closet and that there was probably more junk inside that would need to go.
I hadn’t come across anything very personal to him, like fetish-specific porn or monogrammed items, but there had been a lot from the room’s previous occupants.
I’d found letters between his grandparents and cards they’d exchanged for Valentine’s Day, starting when they’d first gotten together and up until what I assumed was the year of her death.
“I’ll love you always,” they’d both written, and his grandma had drawn lots of hearts.
On the way home, Theo asked me questions about my family, because in between getting the third degree by many of them, he’d been observing their behavior. “Is Brenna angry at Juliet?” he asked.
“No, not anymore. She was always jealous of the attention that JuJu got for being so good at sports and so pretty, but she’s calmed down a lot. We’re all very different and it’s not smart to compare ourselves to our other sisters.”
“That’s very astute.”
“Brenna still hates me, though,” I continued.
“Why?”
“I think I’m very annoying,” I said. “I do a lot of things that drive her bananas, like how I messed up our great-grandma’s pie server.”
“That silver thing? I thought that your brother-in-law believed it could be fixed.” Campbell had said the accident was his fault and had pledged to repair the utensil.
“I do that kind of stuff a lot, though. Brenna was really afraid I would cause a ruckus at her wedding. She thinks I’m trying to get attention.”
“Are you?” he asked, and it was something that I’d wondered, too.
I hadn’t yet come to a conclusion, so I answered, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Uh, ok.”
“My mom is definitely a person who acts out for attention,” I said.
“She used to think that she had a lot of unusual illnesses but that decreased once she started doing so much yoga. It really does make you feel better, even if you can’t hold the crow pose.
But she still sometimes bothers Nicola with medical questions and there’s a lot more drama, too.
I think my dad got tired of it all and wanted less of… less of so much.”
“Less energy and chaos,” he interpreted, which showed how much he’d understood my mother. “She didn’t know where you were working or living.”
Yes, that was true. My family had been aware of the problems at Theo’s cabin but before today, I hadn’t told any of them that I had moved in.
That explained why my oldest sister was going to do a drop-in visit.
“Nicola may show up without warning. If she does, she’ll hide her location first so I won’t know that she’s coming, but I actually will know because she only hides her location when she’s trying to be sneaky.
I’ll know, if I can find my phone,” I added.
“They’re worried about you.”
“Nicola is. Sophie is sure that I’ll do something dumb and she’ll have to try to clean it up, Addie believes that things will turn out great, Juliet is too concerned about Beckett and the baby to think about much else, and Brenna hates me.”
“What about your brother?”
“Now I have two. Patrick does get worried sometimes but he doesn’t freak out like my sisters, and he’s more inclined to action.
Instead of arguing with me, he would try to drag me out of a place, for example.
” That had happened, more than once. “Dion…” I considered him.
“I’m not sure quite yet. He may understand me better.
” I turned so that I could see Theo, which was more difficult because it had gotten dark and we were now leaving the city with its lights.
“At first, some of my brothers-in-law got overwhelmed by all of us. What did you think?”
He considered before he answered and when he spoke, it was more general than something like, “Brenna is a real brat.” “Families fascinate me,” he said. “When I was a kid, I would watch how everyone interacted. We’re all so different.”
“That’s true. Out of seven siblings—now eight, I guess, we’re completely unlike.”
“No, you’re also the same,” he told me. “For one thing, you all love each other a lot. I don’t believe that Brenna hates you and she also loves Juliet. She was so concerned when I was answering those health questions.”
“There were a lot.”
“Which makes sense, given what’s been happening with Juliet’s husband.
A diagnosis like Beckett’s usually leads to anxiety for everyone surrounding the case, sometimes even more for the loved ones than what the patient feels.
It comes out in different ways. You know all the phone calls I get?
Many are from patients, but even more are from the people who love them. One woman records every word I say.”
“To catch you making mistakes?” I couldn’t imagine that Regina would have stood for that.
“No, not at all. There’s so much information that it’s overwhelming and sometimes what I tell them is so terrible that people can’t process it.” He sighed.
“And sometimes, you get to tell people like Beckett that they’re going to be fine. We’re all so glad to have you.”
That didn’t seem to cheer him up. The idea that my brother-in-law’s life and all our happiness depended on him must have been a trillion pounds of weight on his shoulders, even more than what was on the Thanksgiving table.
“Do you like your job?” I asked, and when he didn’t immediately answer, I understood. “That’s why I’m glad to be a failure.”
“What did you just say?”
“No one expects anything from me,” I said. “Well, they do have expectations, but they’re for things like my head getting stuck in a fence or me ruining a pie server.”
“You got your head stuck in a fence when you were a kid?”
“The last time was when I was twenty-one. My way is much, much easier than people wanting you to save their lives. I would have a hard time dealing with that, too.”
“We all have our problems. I also get to help people go home to their families and that’s amazing.” He paused. “So there was some precedent to your arm getting trapped in the former fish tank filter.”
We discussed the new tank he’d bought for the rest of the way home, because it was turning out awesome. I had been in the office yesterday to see Pinar and Regina and to do some work on it, and I was very pleased with everything happening there.
Theo had taken the next day off, which meant that he wanted to work from home the whole time.
He had so much to read, he said, and a lot of paperwork to catch up on.
That was ok because he fell asleep on the couch that I’d cleared off in the living room and had covered with several clean blankets.
I left him there and went into his grandpa’s old library, which was a real mess.
Other parts were also still a mess, but this area was especially bad because old books, leaking water, neglect, and rodents weren’t a good mix at all.
After a while, I heard him calling me. “Grace? Where are you?”
“Definitely don’t come in!” I answered. “You could get sick.”
“If I could get sick, then you could—what’s wrong in there?” He rattled the door handle. “Is this locked?”
“It’s blocked,” I explained. “A lot of boxes and other stuff fell down, but you couldn’t hear it because these walls are great. I don’t really think that they’re going to crumble to pieces like everyone has said.”
He rattled the door again, and then it thudded like he might have rammed it with his shoulder. “How are you going to get out?”
“I’ve been tunneling toward the window,” I explained, and coughed. Despite wearing two masks, maybe some of the Dermatophagoides farinae floating in the air had worked into my lungs.
It was too bad that this was when my sister Nicola showed up.
I hadn’t been checking to see if she’d turned off her location because I hadn’t expected her so soon, and also because I didn’t know where my phone had gone.
With these nice, thick walls that I was now pretty sure weren’t rotting, I hadn’t heard her car in the driveway either.
The piles of garbage might also have muffled the sound.
I did hear her entrance, though. It happened just after Theo tried to ram the door again and again, it didn’t move.
“What’s going on in here?” she asked, her voice raised. “Where is my sister?”
“Nicola, I’m fine,” I tried to tell her, but I was coughing pretty hard again so it was difficult to make her understand. “I’m trapped but I’m fine.”
“Trapped?” she yelled. “I’m coming!”
Then the door broke like it had been hit with a wrecking ball and through the splintered wood, I saw Theo looking stunned and my sister looking very angry.
“Grace! Climb over and get out of there!” she hollered to me, and between the two of them and with me trying my hardest to imitate a goat that had once been dropped at the animal rescue, I exited the library.