February 2021 #2
“I have to live my truth,” Micah told his parents, stating his case from his heart, with deeply soulful imagery.
“Your spirit needs to go and do what with the great mother?” Chris questioned his son before I made my apologies and got off the phone.
“Your brother says to stop trying to ruin his marriage by getting him in trouble for stuff he didn’t even do,” Sam ordered as he walked into the house, standing in the laundry room and stripping out of the jeans and sweater he’d gone out in and changing into sweats and a long-sleeve T-shirt after first washing his hands.
Harper and Kola were with him, and I heard them both stripping and changing before the water was turned on in the sink.
“I didn’t do anything,” I retorted defensively. “I was just asking his wife if she still loved him or not.”
Sam came walking into the kitchen then, squinting at me as he put assorted items down on the counter he’d picked up from whatever hardware store he’d visited. “Why are you asking Aja if she still loves Dane? What the hell kinda question is that?”
I shook my head before I strode into the living room and flopped down on the couch, turning on the Roku and then Netflix.
“I’m talking to you,” Sam declared, standing over me, looming, looking even bigger from where I sat.
“I…it doesn’t matter.”
He squatted down beside the couch, one hand on the overstuffed arm, the other on my thigh. “Is this about Jake’s folks?”
“You knew?”
“He told me and Kola and Harper in the car earlier.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yeah, he’s takin’ it hard, but I told him at least he didn’t have to worry about having to leave Chicago. He was thinking his sister would take him in, but she’s about to have a baby.”
I smiled up at my husband. “You told him he could move in with us?”
“Of course. We have a perfectly good guest room. I did tell him that he can’t tear down any walls unless he clears it with me first.”
I nodded. “Good thinking.”
He sighed heavily. “From what he says, his folks have been unhappy for a long time.”
“Yeah. That’s what Linda told me.”
“He said he comes over here to see us because it helps.”
“Us?” I teased him. “Gimme a break. He came over first to see Kola, and now, of course, Hannah. She has totally eclipsed her brother in his heart.”
“Which is all true,” Sam agreed, “but it’s us too. We make him feel safe.”
“Safe?”
“Kids need to know things aren’t going to change,” Sam explained, lifting up so he could take a seat beside me before he draped his arm over my shoulder and tugged me close. “Even older kids—kids who aren’t quite yet twenty—need security in their lives.”
“You’re saying we equal shelter for Jake.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
I was thinking about that later when the temperature outside started feeling like we were about to go through another ice age, and Hannah still wasn’t home.
“Where is she?” I asked my husband, getting tense.
“According to her phone, she’s in Hyde Park.”
I could feel my face scrunching up. “Why?”
“I have no idea, but I’m gonna—oh, never mind, look who it is,” he announced before he answered. “Where are you?” he growled, asking the question and waiting for the answer. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Speaker, please,” I instructed my husband.
“You’ve got us both,” Sam told his daughter.
“Okay,” Hannah began, sounding like her phone was on speaker as well. “This is not anything at all to worry about. I will be home”––she sucked in her breath––“shortly.”
“What’re you doing?” Sam questioned her.
“Just picking something up,” she replied far too cheerfully.
“Oh my God, you are so your pa’s daughter.”
“Pardon me?” I hope I sounded as affronted as I was going for.
“That’s a gross mischaracterization of the situation I find myself in currently.”
Sam’s growl was loud. “And what precise situation is that?”
She cleared her throat. “You mean right this second?”
He glared at me. “This is your fault.”
“You don’t even know what she’s doing.”
“Yes,” Sam snapped at his second child, “what are you doing at this exact second?”
She coughed softly. “At the moment, I’m walking across a beam in a warehouse.”
“Hannah!” Sam yelled.
Long-suffering sigh from her.
“Why are you on a beam?”
“Well, the door was locked but not the window, as most people believe that if an escape seems unlikely, it won’t happen.”
“Ohmygod, Hannah, what’s going on?” he bellowed.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she soothed him, “nobody’s shooting at me.”
“What?” he roared, and really, it was lucky she didn’t have the phone near her ear.
“Ooooh, you’re lucky this thing has a sound filter or that would have melted my brain,” she said, chuckling. “Wow, was that loud.”
I wasn’t sure what it was she’d gotten herself into, but I suspected that since my daughter and I were so similar—our brains worked the same way—and she was bantering with her father at the moment, that she was not in mortal danger. If she had been, she certainly would have shared that with Sam.
“Seriously,” she chided him, but gently, “the volume is not helping my balance.”
Gritting his teeth, Sam turned to me. “This is your fault,” he accused me again.
“I don’t know that post hoc ergo propter hoc actually pertains in this situation,” Hannah, like the good egg she was, defended me. “Simply because Pa has, in the past, been in a few troubling situations himself doesn’t mean my current predicament was caused by him.”
Sam was going to explode, but I spoke up before he could. “And what is that, exactly?”
“I wanted my first Valentine’s Day with Jake to be special, so I was getting glitter hearts to go in the resin so when I made him his ridiculous, over-the-top keychain with our names on it, it would be extra-special shmoopie.”
“But…” Sam prodded her, texting as he listened to his daughter.
“But there was a situation at the front of the store where there were some people who didn’t want to have to put on a mask to go in,” she explained slowly, her voice remaining low and steady. “You know, that whole argument about a state mandate not being a law and––”
“Moving on,” he groused, putting his phone down on the coffee table.
“Anyway, there were a lot of doors open because of deliveries, and I had to walk around a ton of boxes, and, as you know, at times my sense of direction can be a bit off.”
“Yes,” I agreed. She got it from me.
“I tripped over a pipe across the bottom of a doorway—not a good place for a pipe in the first place, if you ask me—and even though I caught myself, I ended up in a back room with a couple guys, a lot of women, and tables covered in purses.”
“Purses?” I repeated, glancing at my husband. “Not drugs or…something?”
“I know, right? I mean, handbags? Who cares?”
“But instead of turning around and walking out,” Sam began, the irritation in his tone just boiling on the surface, “you looked at them, didn’t you?”
“I wanted to see what kind they were,” she replied innocently.
It all suddenly made sense. “And you saw they were knockoffs and warned the other women, didn’t you?”
“I mean, they were really good but not quite it, you know?”
Sam groaned loudly.
“I was trying to be helpful,” she explained.
“And the women who were there started talking and texting, and then what?”
“I would have excused myself and left, but when I went back out the door, there was another guy in the alley I hadn’t seen before. And he had a gun.”
“So they held you at gunpoint, and then?” I saw the sliver of dread cross his face. His girl near an armed criminal would make him crazy.
“Then he grabbed my arm and marched me next door to a warehouse, put me in an office, said he’d be back to deal with me in this really over-the-top Disney-villain voice, and left.”
“Jesus, Hannah,” Sam rasped.
“I know. I should have taken the gun away from him, but he wasn’t right next to me, so I could grab him, and he was much bigger than me.”
“No, it’s better that you didn’t grapple with him.”
“That’s what I thought. And honestly,” she continued, sounding put out, “at the moment, the only thing I’m upset about is my iPhone 12 Pro Max, because I just got it for Christmas, and it was so very pretty.”
“We’ll replace it,” Sam groused at her, “and—wait, if the phone is dead, how are you talking to me? And more importantly, how did I see your location on mine?”
“Oh, that’s because I’m using the thing Uncle Aaron made me.”
“What?”
“Uncle Aaron made me this earpiece that looks like a supercute rose pin, but the middle pops out, and I put it in my ear. It’s hooked up to the Sutter satellite—you know, the one in space—and it sends my location to you and Pa and Uncle Aaron and George so you guys can always find me.”
I was silent. So was Sam.
“Guys?” She was checking on us.
“You’re kidding,” Sam muttered to his daughter.
“No. I took it off and put it in my ear and told it to call you.”
He took a breath. “Let me understand this. Aaron Sutter has you wearing a pin that turns into an earpiece you can use as a phone and a GPS?”
“Well, technically George makes me wear it, but yes. Uncle Aaron made it for me.”
“And he insisted you wear this.”
“Again, George insisted when he gave it to me and said if I didn’t wear it every time I left the house after that incident on my birthday, he’d never forgive me, and he wouldn’t be my friend or my bodyguard anymore.”
“And that worked?”
“Obviously. I mean, it’s George. I must know what he’s doing. Steering that man through the pitfalls of his current relationship is exhausting.”
“What pitfalls?” I asked before I thought about it.
“Okay, listen, here’s what he thought would be good to do for Valentine’s Day,” she began, and I could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “He thought––”
“No, no, no,” Sam snapped, pointing at me. “The two of you are going to give me a goddamn heart attack!”
I met his gaze. “You realize that without Aaron Sutter having these things made for your child she––”
“I know,” he growled at me.
“You have to take back all the things you’ve ever said about him.”
He grunted.
“He’s amazing.”
“Yes,” he barely got out.