May 2018
Hello, all, Jory Harcourt here. You know, sometimes life is weird and we need a reset, so I had to share this with you all because just recently, my husband did. Next month I’ll get back to my questions, because I have some good ones.
Anyway, it was Sunday night, which is “get ready for the new week” day in our house.
It’s chore day, which means that I plan meals for the week, make an all-encompassing master grocery list, balance the checkbook, and make deposits onto the cards my kids, with their weekly allowance for food and other things, carry.
My husband does all the ironing—a holdover from his time in the military—mows the lawn, consults the whiteboard in the kitchen where everyone writes down whatever needs looking at around the house, and my kids clean.
Then we all clean, and then whoever wants to get out of the house the worst goes with me to the store, and by the time we get home, it’s time for dinner.
What’s nice now is that it’s warm enough for Sam to start using his grill again, and driving up into our driveway, parking the car, and seeing him out on the deck with whichever kid stayed with him, smelling whatever is cooking, is one of my favorite things in the world.
This last week, my son went shopping with me and my daughter stayed with her father because they were hanging her barn door in her bathroom.
Hannah decided that she’d prefer it if her door slid open instead of opening out.
Sam agreed, based on space, and it’s been their pet project.
But instead of coming home to happy people, he was talking and accenting it with his long grill tongs and she was leaning on the railing, arms crossed, flushed, trying not to raise her voice.
If it had been her brother, she’d be shrieking, but she was not allowed to yell at either me or Sam if she wanted to not be grounded for eternity.
“It’s not your fault,” she insisted, staring holes in her father. “And you walking around, being miserable, feeling guilty, taking it out on us because we love you is total dog poop, Dad.”
She wanted to say shit. I saw her bite off the word before she said it, but I also saw how fast her tears came and how fast she spun around to face away from him so he couldn’t see her cry. Hands down on the railing, her back trembled as she stood there.
“What did you do to your daughter?” I called over to my husband as Kola and I started unloading the back of the minivan.
He rounded on me, and I got the same tong pointing. “You stay out of this! I told her I didn’t want to talk about it just like I told you yesterday that I didn’t want to talk about it, but no one in this house can leave anything alone!”
“That’s because what you call leaving something alone actually means burying things and repressing things, and if you never talk things out, they fester and rot.”
“Isn’t festering the same as rotting?” my son asked me, ever logical.
“Festering happens first,” I educated him.
He thought about that a second. “Okay.”
It was weird to be looking up at him suddenly, and I was still getting used to the spike that he’d taken recently.
“I don’t repress things!”
Kola tried really hard not to laugh, but it burst out of him and then he choked it back and ending up doubling over in a coughing fit.
“Oh dear God, you’re going to turn to stone right there!” Hannah shrieked through her sobs before bolting into the house.
Holding cat litter, I looked at Sam as Kola tried to pull air into his lungs.
“So you’re saying I’ve been kind of an ass lately.”
I smiled at him as he growled loudly and went charging into the house after his daughter.
He stopped in the kitchen first to get something.
Minutes later, as Kola and I carried in groceries, we could hear them running around upstairs, her shrieking in delight as they did something they hadn’t done in a bit, and he chased her.
When she scurried downstairs, with him hot on her heels, I saw the tongs then and heard the snapping. I would have run too.
An hour and a half later we were all sitting around the table in the backyard, having finished dinner, the cat sitting on the railing of the patio talking to the birds, the dog on the steps surveying his domain, which was huge for a Chihuahua, and Kola, Hannah, and I all looking at Sam, waiting on him to talk.
He’d changed over the years, and whereas he was still the six-four, hard-muscled man I’d lusted after at first sight, now there were laugh lines in the corner of his slate-blue eyes, and some new streaks of silver in his thick chestnut-brown hair that had always held highlights worth a small fortune if they’d come from a bottle instead of nature.
Now, head forward in his palm, waiting, I had the urge to slip around the table and tackle him to the ground.
He was still as mouth-wateringly gorgeous, and the fact that he was irritated was adorable.
“You guys don’t understand,” he sighed. “I lost a kid on my watch.”
“Actually, that woman that other guy hired—she lost the kid,” Kola corrected his father. “I read it in the paper.”
Sam turned to his son. “Everything that happens there is on my watch, son.”
“Then it’s also Mr. Kenwood’s since he’s your boss, right?”
“No,” Sam sighed, sitting up, glancing at me and then back at his son. “He placed his faith in me to oversee the department and––”
“Yeah, but,” Hannah chimed in, “isn’t that what that other guy did when he hired the Cullen lady?”
“Yes, but I should have been overseeing him.”
“But you didn’t get a say in hiring him,” Kola said, and I could tell he was trying to see Sam’s point but having trouble.
“Your father is saying,” I told my kids, “that even though the blame may not have been specifically his, everything there falls under his purview.”
Sam gestured at me, and I got a trace of a smile.
“Isn’t this like Jaws?”
We all turned to look at Hannah.
“Like when Chief Brody told the mayor to close the beaches but he didn’t and then it’s all about that little Kintner boy spilling out all over the dock.”
It was horrible, and I tried really hard not to smile.
“But, Hannah, honey,” Sam said gently. “The difference is that we lost a real kid.”
She reached out to take her father’s hand.
“And I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel bad about that, and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t fix it, ’cause it sounds like putting Miro over there has already done that from what they said on the news but—I don’t think you going over and over it is helping you. ”
“And it’s probably not helping those guys at work,” Kola said, widening his eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’ve been vile here at home,” I told him, picking up the glass of pinot in front of me to take a sip. “And if you’ve been this fun at home with the people you love, I can only imagine what your men have been going through.”
He glanced around the table at each of us. “I lost a kid on my watch, you guys.”
“I think we can debate this some more,” Hannah apprised him, leaning forward, folding her hands together like she’d seen me do a million times.
It was so strange to see my mannerisms on her.
“But I think lots of cops feel that way, Dad, and again, if anyone should be feeling guilt, I suspect it’s the woman you fired. ”
“Maybe you should talk to someone,” Kola said, hand on his father’s shoulder. “Nana says that therapy is very beneficial.”
Sam shot me a look, and I worked hard not to smile, drinking more wine instead, finishing off my third glass since I got home.
“This is why I’m giving more and more serious thought to becoming a superhero.”
I turned to my daughter, and she and Kola began to clear the dinner plates. “I’m sorry?”
“Superhero,” she repeated. “I mean, my plan is to become a productivity consultant, to go to school for public relations, human resources, and environmental education, combine that all together and go to different corporations and help them take care of their people and their customers while at the same time minimizing their carbon footprint and helping the community at large.”
Sam did a slow pan to me. “She’s turning into Aaron Sutter.”
“Yes, well, it turns out there are worse things,” I assured him.
He shook his head and turned back to his daughter. “And now?”
“Now I’m giving serious consideration to adding superhero to that list as well.”
“Oh?” I placated her, pouring myself another glass of wine.
“You think she can’t?” Kola challenged me.
Looking up, I found him scowling and his sister daring me to say a word that wasn’t positive, one of her eyebrows lifted, waiting in silent judgment.
“She’s a black belt in Tae Kwon Do now, and between that and the gymnastics and Uncle Aaron’s tech—you seriously don’t think she could be Batman?”
I looked at Hannah, then back at him and over to Sam, who appeared a bit gobsmacked.
“No,” I agreed, smiling at him. “She could. You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Kola dismissed me, heading inside with dishes. “Now we just have to think of a cool name for you,” he said to his sister, who was beaming at him as she followed behind him. “Like Disruptor or Annihilator.”
“What kind of costume do you think I should have?” Hannah asked as the door closed and the rest of their conversation was cut off.
“You should have told me I was bringing my work home with me and dragging you all down,” Sam murmured from across the table, returning my focus to him.
“You weren’t bringing us down, we were grieving with you,” I assured him. “But you can’t take the whole world on your shoulders, Sam, even your kids know that.”
He got up and walked to the deck railing, leaning over, looking out at the yard as the kids made back-and-forth trips, clearing the table until all that was left was the wine bottle and my glass.
I could hear the water running inside and the clink of the dishwasher being loaded, and still Sam was quiet.
“Would you want your men taking this much responsibility?”
“It’s different.”
He was buried in guilt, and no matter what anyone said, it wouldn’t lessen because he wouldn’t allow it to. But logically he knew, and that guy was in there somewhere. “I suspect when you became a policeman, you were told that you couldn’t save everyone.”
“I was.”
“And in the military as well, right?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
I sighed deeply, and he turned to look at me.
“I’m not saying not to care, you know that, but, love, the moment you became aware of the failings in your office, you fixed them.
And I think that killing yourself over things that you weren’t supposed to be overseeing is an exercise in masochism.
There is actually only so much you can be expected to do. ”
He stood there staring at me.
I smiled back at him. “Maybe cut yourself a little slack.”
“I just—what kills me the most is that no one cares,” he sighed. “I mean, this kid was all alone and he had no one and we failed him.”
“So don’t fail again.”
He scoffed. “That simple?”
“Do your best, baby. That’s all anyone can ask of you.”
He nodded.
“And come home every night and hug your kids and never forget to tell them how special they are and how much you love them.”
He levered off of the railing and walked over to me, taking the seat that Hannah had vacated, and leaned forward, into me, forehead on my shoulder as I slid a hand around the side of his neck.
“We all love you. Keep it in mind.”
“I love you back.”
“Yes, honey, we know.”
That’s it, everyone. Have a good rest of May and I’ll talk to you in June.