Chapter 11 #2
I sat next to him and put my hands on his shoulders to turn his body so that I could look into his eyes.
That was what Nicola had always done to me when she wanted to see if I was telling the truth.
“Do you actually have the money to pay for your cabin? All the construction and all the new problems that Keon finds?”
He didn’t blink, shift, or blush. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m absolutely sure about that. I also have enough for us to take a short vacation in Florida. You don’t have to worry. I’m careful with my spending.”
“The old underwear,” I remembered. He still hadn’t replaced that, even if he could afford it.
“We don’t need to discuss my underwear. Have you been thinking that I can’t pay? Is that why you’re so concerned about all the extra renovation costs?”
“That’s one thing that concerns me,” I answered. “The other is that you have enough going on, so you don’t need to hear that we were very lucky that the windows didn’t implode inward from the pressure of the sinking second story, because that the glass could have cut us to ribbons.”
“Holy hell, cut to ribbons? Did Keon tell you that?”
“We’re fine,” I reassured him. “We’re not cut at all, and we also didn’t go through the floor and end up on the concrete in the basement which isn’t reinforced at all.”
“I shouldn’t have let you stay in that place,” he said, shaking his head.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You sure did. Any one of your siblings—”
“No, I’m not going to do that, not ever again.
” I also wasn’t going to move in with my dad, although his new fiancée had been urging me to.
She’d said that she’d heard I was living with someone temporarily but maybe I needed something more permanent, and they would love to have me.
I blamed Sophie for all of that and was no longer speaking to her, but she hadn’t appeared to notice yet and had invited us to dinner on Saturday.
“It seems like you’ve always taken care of yourself,” Theo said. “It wasn’t in the way that your sisters liked or in the way I might have chosen for you either, but you were doing it.”
“I was doing it,” I echoed. I had been, but sometimes in a way that I hadn’t liked either.
“I’m sure that you would have figured out a path forward even if I hadn’t offered you room and board, which does not have anything to do with lumber. I would bet that you could also find your way to Florida, if you wanted.”
I nodded, but I also knew that he wouldn’t have liked the methods I might have used and neither would my siblings.
“Are you done with work?” I bet that if we walked to look out of the windows in the exam rooms, we would have seen that it was very dark.
Pinar and Regina had been gone for a long, long time, but Theo had been making more calls and answering emails and texts when I had come in.
His idea about limiting his contact with patients wasn’t going so well.
“I could…” He also glanced back toward the exam rooms where his clean office was located.
Regina had gotten in there and together, they had whipped it into shape.
“Yes, I’m done. That was my fake New Year’s resolution, right?
I’m going to leave my work at work. Mostly, or at least partially,” he amended.
So we left. He was still thinking about taking a trip, to the point that when we got to the rental house, we both looked up destinations and he was also on a website to buy tickets.
I was extremely excited, because it had been a while since I’d gone in a plane and that trip had been to Fairbanks in February, which was not a dream destination at that time of year.
“I know that Brenna made herself some cute summer clothes fairly recently,” I mused as I looked at pictures of beaches on my phone.
She had probably taken them with her to Anguilla but maybe I would look around.
“Do you have a bathing suit? I bet you tan.” I thought of him in that bathing suit, too.
He was extremely careful about privacy, but he’d have to take off more at the beach.
But Theo wasn’t really listening. I glanced over and saw him staring at his phone, and frowning at it. “What?” he asked. “Did you say something?”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s probably nothing,” he told me. “I’m going to go make a quick call.”
There was a problem with my sister Juliet, and I was sure of that from how he hadn’t met my eyes.
I got up to find out, thinking that either I’d be able to hear by putting my ear at the crack at the bottom of the door or by climbing on a garbage can outside his window…
that was always risky since those cans were more likely to tip than you would have thought.
Given that February in Detroit also wasn’t exactly balmy, it was unlikely he’d have the window open. So the door—
And then I had another thought. This was just like his communication with any other patient and Pinar had drilled into me all the laws about privacy and also the morality surrounding people’s medical issues.
I wanted to know what was wrong with my sister or possibly her husband, but I wasn’t going to eavesdrop.
I sat myself back down and crossed my legs three times so that I wouldn’t be able to get up no matter how much I actually wanted to.
I closed the pictures of the Florida beaches, too, and I checked my sibling group chat.
There was nothing there so I texted Dion and asked him if anything was happening in one of the discussions to which I hadn’t been invited.
“No. What’s wrong?” he demanded, but I told him that he’d have to wait because I wasn’t sure. He had to wait and so did I.
Finally, Theo came back in. He started to speak, but then stopped and stared at me. “How did you get yourself into that position?” he asked. “Are you stuck?”
I was able to free myself this time, without any help. “You don’t have to tell me but I really want to know what’s happening.”
“I’m going to head over to your sister’s house in Grosse Pointe,” he answered. “I don’t—”
“Is it the baby? Please say that JuJu’s ok.”
“It’s Beckett,” he said. “I know that I keep promising that I’m going to cut down on my hours—”
“Go,” I told him, and I got up on legs that were shaky, but not entirely due to the pose I’d assumed to prevent myself from listening to his conversation.
“Go on, go!” I took his hand and started to pull him, but he did want to stop to get a coat and his keys, as well as some doctor tool-like instruments that he had at home.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said as he stepped down from the doorway. He turned to look at me, but I was peering out into the road where all those crazy drivers had nearly caused accidents today. I thought I could see ice glinting and there was definitely snow packed around.
“Be very careful,” I ordered. “There’s no need to race with these conditions.” And then I jerked a little with surprise. I had sounded just like my big sister Nicola! Where had that come from?
“I will,” he promised. “Keep thinking about Florida.”
I nodded, but I didn’t do that when I closed the door behind him.
I remembered to lock it and then I watched his car pull away at a very safe speed, which made sense because he was such a smart person that he was always careful behind the wheel.
Then I did look at my phone, but not to keep researching a vacation.
I was texting Dion to have him check the secret forums again for information about Juliet and her husband, but then he sent me a message instead.
Actually, it went to everyone in our sibling group.
“Shit’s hitting the fan over here. SOS, SOS, ASAP!”
Patrick and Addie immediately answered, asking how they could help but also saying that they couldn’t go over to our mother’s house.
Addie’s husband was out of town, probably on a spy mission, so she couldn’t leave her kids, and Patrick couldn’t bring his daughter to Sophie’s house across the street because one of her twins was sick.
Then Sophie chimed in to say that yes, her son was ill and had just thrown up on her.
She felt ill as well (probably due to the puke landing on her face), and she also asked if this urgent situation had something to do with our father’s new fiancée.
Juliet didn’t respond, Brenna was out of the country, and when Nicola didn’t answer either, Addie tracked her and saw that she was at work.
She couldn’t leave the emergency department even if things were going bad with our mom.
“Somebody come here!” Dion begged on my screen.
“I will. I’m on my way,” I quickly typed.
No one responded to that but I could imagine what they were thinking: what is Grace going to do now?
The answer was that I wasn’t exactly sure, but I felt a need to step in and help Dion.
So I got into my green car and hoped that the fluid leak that I hadn’t been able to stop wouldn’t make the road even more slippery for me, and I set off for my mom’s house.
It wasn’t that far away but I also went as slowly and carefully as Theo drove and it took me much, much longer than any of my previous trips there, even when I’d come from Saginaw.
I knew things were bad when I arrived because Dion was standing outside on the lawn, and according to my car the temperature was fifty-three.
You always had to subtract about thirty-six degrees to make that correct, so it was actually pretty cold out.
He spotted my car quickly due to its color and gestured at me to hurry.
“Mom is losing it!” he said as I got out.
I skidded my way up the driveway because I had forgotten shoes and was wearing the slippers that had belonged to Theo’s grandpa, and those things were named correctly. They were terrible on ice. “What happened?” I asked.