Four #3
I passed the pasta bowl around, the sauce, and then made everyone take a serving of salad. I was surprised they did it without complaint. Apparently, Caesar was all right. There was crusty garlic bread too that they all liked. I was pleased they were all eating so well.
“Nash?” Griff said.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Are you not drinking wine because you think I’m an alcoholic?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly, because that was the only way it could be between us.
He nodded. “I’m not, though. I promise I can stop. I’ve never drunk any of Dad’s bourbon or Mom’s wine because both of those are disgusting.”
“Well, tomorrow while you’re cleaning your room, I will be getting rid of all the wine. And so you know, while you were crashed on the couch, I went through your room.”
“Okay.”
“And after checking the toilet?—”
“That’s dis?—”
“The back, dummy, not the bowl.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised.
“Yeah, he didn’t think you were making jailhouse hooch,” Tatum chimed in, and we all turned to her.
“What? That’s how you make booze in prison. In your toilet.”
“Seriously, what is she watching?” I asked Griff.
He started laughing.
“But I also examined all your hanging rods, and nothing.”
“People hide stuff inside there?”
“Yep. In light fixtures, in the ceiling, which, you don’t have tiles in your room, so that wasn’t an option. But I looked in your drawers, under your drawers, everywhere. And you’re right, there’s nothing there.”
“I told you, but I get why you had to see for yourself.”
“We’re not friends, you get that, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I am your guardian. I will take care of you. That’s my job, and I like it.”
“You do?” Tatum asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“You said you would never leave what’s yours,” she confirmed.
“That’s right.”
“So you would never do what Mom did?” Griff asked me.
“I would have made you guys go with me, and maybe that would have been a mistake. And maybe because your mom trusted your dad, she didn’t worry as much.”
All three sets of eyes locked on my face.
“That’s what I think.”
“She was going to have a baby,” Tatum said softly. “It means we’ll have a half brother or sister we’ll never know.”
Darwin turned his head away and wiped at his eyes.
“I haven’t been a great big brother, but I’m gonna change, and I would be careful with a baby,” Griff promised as his eyes filled.
So much grief and pain. “I know you would be, and I know you’re a good brother,” I assured him.
He winced. “How do you know?” His voice broke as he sniffled.
“Because today, both Darwin and Tatum wanted to come with me to pick you up at the police station. And yes, they had to because I don’t know who I can trust in this town, but before I said they had to, they both insisted on accompanying me.
They wouldn’t have cared if you weren’t a good guy to begin with. ”
His eyes went to Tatum first, then at Darwin, who were both crying. “I’ll be great from now on, you’ll see.”
They nodded.
Griff’s attention was suddenly focused on me. “And you can drink wine, okay?”
“We’ll figure it out, all right?”
“All right.”
“Dar,” I yelled.
He jolted in his seat. “What?”
“We need tissues, man!”
His laughter as he scrambled to get them made me smile.
“Do you guys have bikes?”
“Yeah,” Tatum affirmed.
“We should ride after dinner. It’s good for the digestion.”
“That’s great and all,” Darwin said, blowing his nose again, “but I wanna eat more first, because your spaghetti is really good.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Why did you throw the noodle at the wall?” Tatum wanted to know.
“Yeah, I wanna know that too,” Griff apprised me as the doorbell rang.
Everyone started to get up.
“No,” I said quickly. “I answer the door until further notice.”
Checking the peephole, I saw a woman there with a young girl—her daughter, given their resemblance.
“C’mere, Griff.”
He reached me quickly, and when I had him look out the peephole, he said, “That’s Christine Wilson, the chief’s daughter, with her mom.”
Of course it was. Taking a breath, having him step behind me, I opened the door.
“Luke, I—oh. You’re not Luke.”
“No, ma’am,” I said gently. “How may I help you?”
“Who are you?”
“Ma’am,” I rumbled, “how may I help you ?”
“I—we’re here to ask Griffin if he—ohmygod,” she gasped, seeing his face. “Sweetheart, did Gerald do that to you?”
Griff turned to me instead of responding, and I was proud of him.
“Ma’am,” I began, “we’re not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigation, so if that’s what you’re here for, we?—”
“I lied, Griff, and I’m so sorry,” Christine barely managed to get out, hands over her face as she dissolved into tears.
I looked at her mother. “What did she lie about to her father, the chief of police?”
“She lied about who talked her into throwing the party at our house, and who was climbing out of her bedroom window at one in the morning when we got home.”
Christine sank to her knees on the porch, and her mother had her arms crossed tight, hugging herself, shivering in the chilly thirty-seven-degree breeze.
This was why being a fixer was never dull.
Because along with the main event—protection, life-coaching, sober companion, and so on—there were regular life events that had to be dealt with.
I was there to protect this family from a potentially nonexistent threat, but at the same time, through no fault of his own, Griff had a target put on his back by one of his classmates.
She gave up Griff to her father because, I suspected, she’d be in much bigger trouble over whoever she’d actually had in her room.
“I’m sorry your home was trashed,” I told her. “And I’m sorry your husband made the decisions he made based on lies, but as you can see, Griff was badly hurt, and at this point, as I said, we cannot discuss an ongoing investigation.”
“You’ve always been so nice to me, Griff,” Christine continued to sob. “I’m so sorry.”
There were squealing tires then, and an Eena police cruiser pulled up in front of the house, followed closely by a sedan.
One man got out of the cruiser—had to be the chief—and three got out of the other car.
I did what was second nature and assessed all four men quickly, determining who was the greatest threat, to make certain I took that one out first. I wasn’t as worried once they were out of the cars.
I had height and muscle on all of them, but there were still four of them and one of me.
Surprisingly, the anger and volume that came from the chief were not directed at me.
“You stupid little slut! I’m gonna beat your ass!”
“No, Gere,” his wife pleaded. “Please don’t hurt her.”
“Stay out of this, Lori, or you’re fuckin’ next!” he roared, charging up the pathway.
Of course a man who beat a defenseless sixteen-year-old boy would also hit his wife and daughter. “Griff, take Christine and her mother inside,” I ordered, striding forward and shoving Lori behind me.
“Come on,” Griff barked, and in moments, I heard the deadbolt lock.
“You’re Nash, aren’t you?” Wilson thundered. “Well, you need to get the fuck outta my way or?—”
“You’re not welcome here, and I’m warning you not to come any closer.”
But he didn’t listen. They never listened.
Originally, I was going to tussle with them in the front yard, which raised the odds on me getting hurt as well as leaving the front door unprotected, so I quickly scratched that idea.
The concern then became, where best to make my stand.
What amazed me was that they made it easy for me when they all started up the steps to the porch.
Between the stairs and the railing, they basically walked through a funnel to reach me.
What that meant was that when Chief Wilson threw a punch at me, and I blocked it and then hit him, hard, with my right, his momentum hurled him backward into the others.
It was like bowling, and when Wilson slammed into his buddies, the motion sent them all down the stairs together.
Now, there were not a lot of stairs, only six in total, but still, to fly through the air and land on your back on the flagstones had to hurt.
The fact that there was lots of moaning and whining told me the fight was over.
Seconds later, a Newcastle PD cruiser rolled up, and the first thing one of the officers said as he got out of the car was, “Are you kidding me?”
I waved from the porch, and the officers both waved back. When I sat down on the top step—there would be questions for me—I heard the deadbolt unlock, and Griff joined me, taking a seat beside me.
“Good job getting them inside like I asked you and locking the door.”
“I didn’t want to lock you outside, but I figured you would want me to.”
“You figured right,” I praised him, putting my arm around his shoulders.
He leaned hard. “One punch, and that was it.”
“Yeah, but you saw why, didn’t you?”
“They didn’t spread out. They came up the steps bunched up. That was dumb.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Still. One punch. That was pretty good.”
“Violence should not impress you,” I stated flatly.
“Does your hand hurt?” He ignored my comment.
“Just a bit,” I said, flexing it and making a fist before relaxing. “I’ll be fine.”
“Tatum is making Christine and her mom some chamomile tea to calm their nerves.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“She learned that from our mom. She made a lot of tea. She used to have so much, but Dad threw it out first thing after she left.”
“It probably hurt him to see it around,” I offered.
“Yeah,” he said, and his head bumped my shoulder. “But it smelled really good, especially the Earl Grey with lavender.”
“Do you remember where she got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe let’s go get some tomorrow, if you’re not too sore after I help you clean your room and get organized.”
“It’s not as bad as you thought it was gonna be, is it?”
I shook my head in response.
“Listen, Nash—always remember that Darwin’s a narc, and he makes everything sound worse than it is. It’s like his superpower.”
I chuckled.
“I’m not a narc,” Darwin muttered, at which point we both realized, when we turned around to look, that he was standing at the now open front door.
“Oh you totally are,” Griff snapped at him.
Ignoring his brother, he closed the door behind him and then padded across the porch in his socks to take a seat on the other side of me. He leaned as well.
“You all right?” I asked him.
“You weren’t going to let them come in, were you?"
“No, I was not.”
“I knew it,” Darwin said with a sigh. “When the officers go, can we watch a movie?”
“You wanna watch a movie?” Griff sounded surprised.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You always wanna study.”
“Yeah, but tomorrow’s not a school day, so we can stay up later.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “What movie?”
“I was going to say the Jaws one you were talking about, but I looked it up, and a dog dies in it. Tatum can’t watch it. And I don’t really like it when animals die either. I’m fine with people dying, as long as it’s not a main character.”
“That’s not terrible or anything,” I muttered.
“But don’t let Tatum talk you into any crime documentaries. She’s too young to be watching those anyway. She’s gonna have bad dreams. She’s just a kid.”
“I appreciate the advice, Dar,” I said, and he nodded smugly as we all sat there together and waited for the trash to be removed from the front yard.