Three #3
I took his chin in my hand, lifting his eyes to my face. “You are too young to be watching your brother and sister. There needs to be a grown-up. None of this is on you, you understand?”
He held my gaze.
“Are we gonna have a talk about your drinking? Oh, yes, sir,” I informed him.
“Will there be any more pot? No, there will not. And finally, do you think you’re smarter than me and I will never find what you’ve squirreled away in your room?
Probably you do. And that’s fine. But I swear to you, I will find everything. ”
He sighed deeply, and I let him go.
“There’s no pot in my room,” he husked. “I got rid of it ’cause it makes me sick to smoke it. I can eat it no problem, but the smoking isn’t great.”
I was glad to hear it. Of course I would still look. I had to.
“Where does Shelly live?”
“She lives here, but she’s been staying in Seattle with her mother.”
“Okay,” I murmured as Tatum and Darwin returned with what appeared to be fruit punch and something blue. “What the hell?”
They both laughed at me.
“Everything good was sold out,” Darwin let me know.
“Ohmygod, we gotta get out of here before I die,” I moaned dramatically. “I’m so hungry, I’m getting nauseous.”
They were all smiling at me.
Griff took a deep breath. “I know you’re supposed to protect us from the men who might want to hurt us because of my mom, but will you protect me from other stuff too?”
“Like Chief Wilson?”
He nodded.
“Yes, I will,” I promised him. “And also, the chief of police in Newcastle is all over this and will be sending officers to check up on us. But me, by myself, I will protect you from everything and everybody. I do suspect, though, that with all the people who are gonna be crawling up Wilson’s ass, you’re gonna be the least of his problems.”
Both Tatum and Darwin laughed, because apparently, I was hysterical. Griff, who was older, kindly only smiled.
“What?”
“The ass thing was very descriptive,” Darwin complimented me.
“Thanks,” I said, grinning at him.
“What do you mean, crawling up his ass?” Griff was smiling tentatively.
“Oh, buddy, Chief Wilson is totally screwed.”
“He’s hit some of my friends before too.”
“Did you tell your father?”
He made a face.
“Since Mom left,” Tatum began, “he’s been so busy.”
Griff looked at her, and I noted his mouth was hanging open. Tatum pointed at me, and when his eyes were back on me, I smiled.
“Listen, we’re gonna normalize talkin’ about your mother, all right?”
“We are?”
“We are.”
“How are—what does—what does that mean?”
“That means I want to hear everything about her.”
“Nash knows all about WITSEC, so he can answer all your questions too,” Tatum informed him. “It’s awesome.”
“Really?” He sounded so hopeful.
“Of course,” I promised. Normally, I would have checked with the parents or parent first, but Luke Duchesne was not around, and his kids were falling apart. “And also, what the hell is with that front room? Do you guys ever go in there?”
Three sets of eyes locked on me.
“Has your father said anything about it?”
No one said a word.
“I need to know,” I insisted.
Griff cleared his throat. “When she left, Dad said we could change anything we wanted, but he would prefer if pictures of Mom stayed in our rooms.”
“Make sure I got this straight,” I advised them all. “So your father said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that if you want, you can move things around, but please keep photos of your mother out of his sight line.”
Tatum squinted at me. “Sight line?”
“It means he doesn’t wanna see her.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed.
“Then I don’t get it. He said you guys could make the house how you wanted, but you’ve left it all the same?”
Tatum lifted sad eyes to me. “What if she comes back and doesn’t like what we did?”
I smiled at her. “I think your mother would approve of any changes you all made together, but…love, she’s not coming back.”
“I know,” she said, then wrapped her arms around my waist. I hugged her tight, squeezing a breath out of her, making her sigh.
“Okay, since you have your father’s permission, my vote is that you should mix it up a bit. I think some of the living-room stuff should go into your rooms, and some of your things should come out, and the crap nobody wants like, say, the useless bud vases, those can maybe get sold at a yard sale.”
It was hard to read their faces but they were all staring at me.
“There’s actually one coming up,” Tatum revealed. “A neighborhood one.”
“That’s great,” I told her. “But you all need to listen to me when I say you can all still love your mom. I know your father wants that, and it’s not being disloyal to him to love her.
And you can put up pictures of her in your rooms, though I didn’t see any in Tatum’s room when I was in there earlier. ”
“None of us have any pictures of her up,” Griff said.
“But your father said you could.”
“I didn’t want to upset him.”
“But not having them up made you sad,” I countered.
“Yeah, but if you were here when he was taking them down… He was so mad.”
“He was,” Darwin whispered.
“ At the time ,” I stressed to them. “But that was right after she left, wasn’t it?”
They all nodded.
“Okay,” I said, and took a breath. “It’s different now. You should put pictures of her up in your rooms if you want.”
“They’re all in the attic,” Griff apprised me, his voice barely there.
“Well, we’re gonna get them outta there, because in the common areas, the places you all share, everybody’s feelings have to be taken into consideration, and that includes your father’s,” I explained, noting I had their rapt attention.
“But in your own space, your own rooms, if you want pictures of your mother in there, then that’s your choice and nobody else’s. ”
“Yeah, but—” Griff began.
“Plus, your father already gave you permission,” I reminded them.
“But if Dad comes in, he’ll be upset,” Tatum said sadly.
“First time, maybe. Second time, probably. But by the tenth time, eleventh time, he’s gonna get used to seeing her face again, and it will become normal.”
I knew it was different for Luke. The kids missed their mother—and there were feelings of abandonment wrapped up in there as well, so there was pain and hurt—but it was a whole other deal for their father.
He had his own feelings of anger, betrayal, and loss.
When his wife left him for another man, she’d turned her back not only on him, but on the children they raised together.
He was shouldering that burden all alone and, I was certain, cracking under the pressure.
“I promise you, your father will understand.”
“She didn’t take us with her,” Griff rasped.
“I know,” I whispered.
He quickly wiped away new tears. “I miss her, and I know Dad doesn’t wanna hear it, but I do. She was gentle.”
“Like you,” Tatum told me.
Darwin nodded.
I scoffed. “Oh, you all, you don’t know. I can be loud and rough, so you gotta be ready when that happens, all right?”
“I think if you’re loud for us, then that’s okay,” Darwin insisted.
“Yeah,” Griff agreed. “I think it’s good.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what—I’m about to get really loud very quickly,” I stated, getting up and heading toward the door of the room we were in. Fortunately, the nurse came in at the same time with Griff’s discharge paperwork.
“Oooooh, you’re so lucky,” Tatum informed her.
The nurse didn’t understand the peril her eardrums just escaped, but Darwin dissolved into laughter.
We stopped at a diner the kids liked in Eena, and everyone who saw Griff gushed over him, which I appreciated.
He looked rough, but he was in his clean clothes, and they had scrubbed off a lot of the blood at the hospital.
With his bruised face, black eyes, bandage over the eyebrow, and split lip, it was clear he was hurt.
What he needed was lots of love, and our waitress brought him some crispy bacon and homemade biscuits when she brought out the water and drinks.
And yes, breakfast had been hours ago, but they served it all day, and it was what we all wanted.
Once we ordered, it took me a moment to realize I was under scrutiny.
“What?” I asked the table.
“Could you tell us about WITSEC?” Griff asked me.
I thought a moment. “Okay. First off, it’s not like in the movies at all.”
They all listened closely as I explained about the intake and how they chose where you lived, that you had no say in where they placed you. I then went through how you got a new name, a new life, everything.
“Like all your test scores, how well you do in your classes,” I told Darwin, “that’s all gone in the blink of an eye because those records belong to the old you.”
His mouth dropped open. “But I want to go to Harvard and be a doctor. I’ve been working super hard.”
“I understand that, and maybe…so did your mother.”
He was blinking at me, processing my words.
I turned to Griff. “When I read about you, I found out you’re a really good lacrosse player.
Lots of trophies, captain of the varsity team and everything.
The truth is, if you went with your mother, then the same thing would’ve applied to your feats on the field.
They would simply disappear. So all those colleges that might have given you a scholarship, that couldn’t have happened anymore. ”
“But if I can still play lacrosse, I could be on a new team and?—”
I shook my head. “That’s not how it works. You can’t do anything in your new life that could point to your old one.”
“Why? How could the bad guys know what kind of sports I?—”
“I did. Our tech guy, Owen, he digs up everything, and they would too.”
“So you’re saying when you go into WITSEC, it’s like night and day.”
“That’s right. And think about your father. He would have had to leave the business he’s spent his life building and never work as a landscaper again. He could never again do what he’s best at. Not ever.”
Griff’s brows furrowed. “That would kill him.”