Four #2
I made a noise. “Not at all. Baking is like science. Cooking is more…experimental.”
“You should bake, then, Dar,” Griff suggested. “I’ll cook. You know I like to.”
He nodded. “Okay, I’ll bake. That’s a plan.” He leaned against me.
I noticed he did that a lot. Bumped into me and then didn’t move.
I liked it and kept putting my arm around him and clutching him to me.
Tatum slipped her hand into mine, like when we were leaving the diner or walking around the grocery store.
She’d stayed by me, let my hand go when I was putting things into the cart, and then retook my hand when we started moving.
Griff had driven the overflowing cart, but he too crowded into my space.
They were all starved for physical touch, and as I was that way myself—demonstrative, possessive, and just a hugger—it worked well.
“What is that?” I gasped. Darwin had pulled a plastic bag out of the refrigerator filled with something in an alarming shade of green and white.
“I think they were tomatoes,” he said, lifting it to eye level to examine.
“That’s disgusting,” I declared. “That needs to be killed with fire.”
“I’m on it!” Tatum announced, and we all laughed.
Weston Kinney, and his associate, Emily Diaz, were both great with Griff and charmed by Darwin and Tatum, who delivered them bottled water and sliced apples with peanut butter.
“I haven’t had this in years,” Emily said, smiling at them. “Thank you so much.”
“This is yummy,” Weston assured them, then addressed me. “Your kids are great.”
“Thank you, but they’re not mine.”
“Oh no?” he asked innocently, and I smiled. “Tell me what precisely a fixer is, Mr. Miller. I might be in the market for one.”
I chuckled. “Call me Nash.”
“Please call me Weston.”
Emily rolled her eyes.
“Thank you, Weston.”
“Of course, Nash.”
I knew flirting when I saw it, though it hardly ever happened.
And he was maybe mid-thirties, much too young for me.
But I was very flattered. I had changed when I got home—didn’t want to meet the lawyers and the detectives in a blood-smeared shirt—and the henley I grabbed was one I normally only wore around the house.
It was a little too tight, and that was probably what had sparked the pretty man’s interest. Usually, slick young lawyers didn’t look twice at me.
But whatever carnal thoughts were in his head went right out the window as soon as the detectives showed up.
He was all business, and I really appreciated that.
There were interruptions, questions where he asked the detectives, Marum and Heald, to clarify a point, while Emily recorded the interview and took notes.
The two detectives, for their part, were extremely professional and seemed genuinely concerned about Griff.
Weston commented on that, pleasantly surprised, and Marum and Heald said Griff was their chief priority.
They also reiterated what their boss had told me, which was that there would be uniformed patrol officers rolling by in the next week.
The house was on their rounds until it was determined who would be taking over from Wilson.
“So it’s certain Chief Wilson will be removed?” Weston asked Marum, the senior of the two.
He scoffed loudly. “Oh yeah.”
On Weston’s way out, he gave me his card. “That’s my cell number.” His gaze locked with mine. “Please call with any questions.”
“I will, thank you so much.”
“Or call without any questions.”
I smiled. He was a very handsome man, and I needed to stop worrying about age. My boss had married a much younger man who, I knew, would never leave him. I had to start taking more things on faith.
“Just call,” he said, taking hold of my bicep. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
His smile was really something.
Once I closed the door behind them, the lawyers the last ones out, when I turned to the kids, they were all staring at me, arms crossed.
“Yes?”
“What was that?” Griff asked me.
“That was a gorgeous lawyer asking me out.”
“Are you gay?” Darwin wanted to know.
“I’m bi. Not that it’s any of your business, but I also don’t care if you know or not. I like men and women.”
They remained silent.
“Does that bother you?”
“No,” Griff said. “Benny is gay and I don’t care.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Teddy thinks he might be gay but hasn’t told his mom,” Darwin added.
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I said simply, “Well, when he’s ready, I’m sure he will share that with her.”
“Isn’t gay or bi about who you sleep with?” Tatum inquired.
“Yes and no. It's also about who you love romantically and how you identify.”
She seemed to consider it for a moment, then said, “Okay. Now what about the cheese?”
“The cheese?”
“Yeah. I read that if you scrape off the mold, you can eat old cheese.”
“No.” I was adamant. “Unless we move to the South of France, there will be no cheese scraping.” Something occurred to me then. “Why are you—what is that?”
She cackled, holding with salad tongs a piece of…what had to have been a wedge of cheddar, I was guessing. The glint in her eyes was terrifying.
“No,” I said, using my serious master sergeant voice.
Her laughter was a bit unhinged but adorable. When she ran at me, I had no choice but to move. No way was I going to stay still and let her touch me with something that was clearly covered in very robustly growing mold.
“Nash, did you see the Star Trek Voyager episode where spores from moldy cheese infected the gel packs on the ship and endangered everyone?” Darwin asked, as though we were having a normal conversation instead of him watching as I stopped and changed directions, trying to evade Tatum.
“No,” I answered him, not ready to explain yet that sci-fi anything gave me hives. “Tatum, stop running and go throw that away right now.”
Only person ever who was not at all intimidated by my scary voice. Instead, she continued to chase me around the kitchen table with the cheese, laughing maniacally. I commanded her to stop again, to no avail. I knew better. I shouldn’t have run from the start. You always had to stand your ground.
“Griff,” I called over to him. “Tell your sister?—”
“Ohmygod, what is that?” He sounded horrified. “Why is it green? And oozy?”
Darwin started laughing as Tatum giggled loudly and bolted forward.
“Tatum, throw it away before I ground you!”
She didn’t believe me, and Griff enjoyed seeing me give her an order and then run. Hard to sound authoritarian or serious in the middle of scampering away.
It took hours to right the kitchen, even without the cheese fiasco.
We all took turns except Griff, who needed to take it easy.
He stayed with us, though, rather than being alone upstairs, lying on the couch while we went through everything.
There were so many jars and cans and plastic containers that when we were done, I had Darwin get a laundry basket so we didn’t have to make as many trips out to the recycling bin.
Thankfully, they came on Monday, as we had no more room.
Next, we put the things no one wanted onto the empty shelves above the phone ledge.
There had to be a donation center in town, and what they didn’t need could go to the neighborhood yard sale.
By the time I was making spaghetti, having told everyone that they would need to start helping me the following day, I was liking how the living room was shaping up.
There were awards on the shelves now, both sports and academic, artwork, some lovely crystal towers that had probably belonged to their mother, lanterns, a weird green elephant, a raku pitcher, what looked like a prehistoric-horse sculpture, and some Day of the Dead ceramic animals. I liked the rabbit best of all.
Griff came through the kitchen with an enormous wreath in his arms, with Darwin following him with another of a similar size.
They were both done in festive fall colors, each beautiful, but I preferred the wine reds of the one they hung on the inside of the front door compared to the more orangey one that went outside.
All kinds of things came out of storage.
They had watched their mother decorate for years, so they all knew where everything went.
When Griff brought Tatum an enormous Rubbermaid box and asked her to do the kitchen, she cried and hurled herself into his arms. He hugged her back and whispered into her hair that they would never miss another holiday.
She nodded a lot, and because I’d bought a box of tissues for the kitchen, I had her blow her nose until the tank was empty. I got a hug after that.
They simply needed permission, and bam , instant warmth, instant decorations, instant stark, sterile home gone, cozy happiness unlocked. I was in awe. All that restraint because they’d been worried about each other and their father.
“You have to talk to each other all the time,” I stressed once we were all sitting at the dinner table.
No one said a word.
“People,” I grumbled.
“Sorry,” Darwin said breathlessly. “I will. Talk, I mean. I won’t not say what I want anymore. I promise.”
“Good,” I said, taking a sip of my water and then glancing at Griff and Tatum, and then back to Darwin, noticing he was staring at me again. “What’s going on?”
Griff cleared his throat. “We haven’t been at the table at the same time since before Mom left.”
“Oh. Okay.” I looked at each one. “Is it all right?”
“Yes,” Tatum said, voice soft and thready. “I like the music too.”
I was old-school, so my iPod got hooked up. I had no idea how to stream anything, but it worked well with the pricey audio equipment in the living room.
“I don’t hate this,” Darwin assured me, “but I haven’t made my mind up completely.”
“I’m sure John Coltrane appreciates that,” I told him.