Chapter Five #2
Alarm bells ring in my head. Abort. Abort.
How could I have made such a stupid mistake?
Knox is a previous client of mine, and his wife, Aubrey Stewart, is Becca’s boss.
If I’m not careful, my ruse is going to blow up in my face.
I try to casually play it off. “Small world. But that’s enough about my boring life.
Tell me about your life. I know about your business, but you have quite a few siblings, right? What was that like growing up?”
“It was loud and chaotic, with lots of love woven in. It still is when we all get together.”
I know how much he loves his family, but heck if my heart doesn’t soak up hearing it from him.
“I don’t know how much you learned about my family when you were reading up on me,” he says, “but both of my parents are wildlife biologists. When they had us, they didn’t want to give up traveling and doing the fieldwork they loved or be away from us for extended periods of time.
That’s why my mother leaned into her love of photography, which allowed her to take care of us, so we could all travel with my father on his assignments.
We’ve always had a home base in Ridgeport, Mass, but we grew up as nomads, following my father around the world.
We lived in remote villages for months at a time in shacks and tents and huts, exploring rainforests and jungles and learning about wildlife and different cultures. ”
“I read about you traveling as a family, but I didn’t realize your mom changed the direction of her career when she had children.
” His mother’s devotion scrapes an old wound in me.
She loved her family enough to change everything to keep them together, while mine not only walked away from us, but she couldn’t even stay in the same zip code.
“I love that your parents stayed true to their hearts and found a way to keep your family together. It must have been an incredible experience to travel the world like that.”
“It was, for the most part. My older sister, Victory, and I were always trying to corral our younger brothers, but we did our fair share of running wild with them. We swung from vines and climbed trees. We used sticks as swords, and as close as I was to Vic, I was still a boy, so I’d scheme with my brothers and find ways to annoy her or scare her with spiders or snakes. ”
“Snakes?” I can’t hide my shock.
“Snakes, lizards, whatever we could. But you don’t know my sister. She was never a girly-girl, and she’d get us back twice as bad. We had a lot of fun. Someone was always falling into a river or a mud pit, and our parents went to great lengths to teach us to respect nature and the world around us.”
“Nothing says respect nature like scaring your sister with a snake,” I say with a smile.
“That was part of growing up. They let us be kids, but they also did everything they could to keep up with each of our interests, which couldn’t have been easy since we’re all so different.”
“What do you mean by keep up with?”
“We were homeschooled when we traveled, and my parents are big on following your passions and growing your strengths. They brought in experts to teach us. Coaches for Clay, professors and investors for me. But as we got older, Victory wanted a normal life, I wanted better access to education and opportunities, and Clay wanted to play football, so we lobbied to move back to Ridgeport for good, and we won.”
“Your parents sound amazing, and I bet you led the charge for negotiations, didn’t you?”
“I might’ve written up a negotiation strategy, complete with pros and cons for every member of the family and a projection of how it would impact our lives moving forward.”
I laugh. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“Nope. I told you I was a dork.” He picks up a piece of bread and breaks it in two, handing me half.
As I reach for it, he traps my fingers beneath his and says, “No more changing the subject. I want to know more about you. What was your life like growing up? Is it just you and Taylor, or do you have other brothers or sisters? Did your family travel at all?”
“I—we—have a sister, Becca, but our childhood wasn’t anything like yours.
” I’m acutely aware of his thumb brushing over my hand.
When he lets go, I want to drop the bread and get his hand back.
But I don’t dare. I tear off a piece of the bread and eat it.
“We didn’t travel, but we used to go on camping trips. ”
“Did you enjoy them?”
“Collapsing tents, mosquito bites, hot dogs over an open fire, and if you drop yours in the dirt, there’s the old five-second rule.
Top that off with a father who insists duct tape can fix anything, including your shorts when you snag them on a boulder during a hike and tear the seam open.
What’s not to like? And let’s not forget the off-key singing to my father playing guitar. ”
“Gotta love camping. Your dad sounds like a character. Was he right? Could duct tape fix anything?”
“Sometimes. Other times it’s a guaranteed ER visit.”
“Great,” he says sarcastically as we finish our bread. “Are you and your father close?”
“Yes. Probably closer than he’d like sometimes.”
“Why do you say that?” he asks gently, leaning in like he doesn’t want to miss my answer.
I hesitate. I haven’t shared this with anyone other than Becca, and after years of keeping my personal and private lives completely separate, I have no idea why I’ve admitted as much as I have to Seth of all people.
But I know in my heart I can trust him, and the way he’s looking at me, like he really cares, brings more of the truth.
“I was cursed with a reckless father and the compulsion to save him from himself.” I smile to soften the weight of my words.
“Becca says most women have a weakness for men, purses, or shoes, and my greatest weakness is keeping my dad alive. But he’s my whole world.
” I shrug and reach for my glass, but Seth intercepts my hand.
He keeps hold of it as he moves the plates from between us with his other hand and shifts closer to me. “I disagree with Becca. That’s not a weakness. That’s love.”
I can do little more than look at him as those words take hold. I never knew feeling understood held so much power.
“What kind of reckless is he?” Seth asks, his thumb soothingly stroking my hand.
“It might be easier to list how he’s not reckless. Ready?” I pause for a long moment. “Okay, did you get all that. That was the list.”
He smiles compassionately. “It’s okay. You don’t have to share if you’d rather not.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to share. He is so smart, but he really is that reckless, and his need to do things without thinking them through infiltrates every aspect of his life.
He once handed his paycheck to a guy we met while taking a walk by a lake.
This stranger was fishing for his dinner, and my dad signed over his check.
I’ll never forget the way that man tried to give it back, and you know what my father did?
He said, Don’t be stupid. Take the damn thing, and then he ushered us off to our car.
We didn’t have a lot of money, so I asked him what we’d do about paying the bills and buying groceries without his paycheck, and he said he’d figure it out later. Guess who figured it out?”
“You?”
I gaze out at the water, the sounds of the sea mixing with the music pulsing behind us, and say, “Yeah.” When I turn back to Seth, my breath catches at the way he’s looking at me. It feels intensely protective as I say, “I was fourteen.”
His jaw tightens. “No fourteen-year-old should have to worry about getting food on the table. But it sounds like your father’s heart was in the right place.”
“It definitely was. He’s generous to a fault. He’ll take care of strangers, but he won’t take care of himself. He thinks he can survive on pure grit.”
“I know a lot of men like that.”
“Sure, but my father has MS, and he never slows down, which can lead to wearing himself out and flare-ups. MS is tricky, and it’s different for everyone.
There’s pain, fatigue, numbness, and my father never complains, which makes it hard to know how he’s really doing.
That’s actually the reason I became a VA, so I could be there for him. ”
“Is that why you said you’re closer than he likes sometimes?”
“Yes. He’d never admit it, but he needs looking after.
He’ll stop taking his meds, not because he forgets, but because he’s as defiant as the day is long, and getting him to go to the doctor is always a battle of wills.
Right before I came here, he cut himself on a gutter that I had arranged for someone to repair, and I found him wrapping the gash with a rag and duct tape. He ended up needing stitches.”
“Jesus. He sounds hardcore.”
“That’s nothing. A few hours after we got home from the hospital, he went to a mosh pit.”
Seth shakes his head. “I don’t know much about MS, but it sounds like he’s got more energy than me. Do Taylor and Becca help take care of him?”
I’m about to respond when I remember that I use a Delaware address for my business, which means Seth believes Taylor lives in Delaware.
“Taylor lives in Delaware, and I’m in Port Hudson.
Becca helps when she can, but she’s so busy, and she has a lot of my father in her.
She thinks we should let him live however he wants to, and suffer the consequences of his actions.
She’s the one who took him to the mosh pit. ”
“They sound like a dangerous combination.”
“They can be, but at the same time, Becca is the one who pushed me to come on this trip. She’s keeping an eye on him this weekend, making sure he takes his meds, looking after his stitches, so she does help, and she promised she wouldn’t let him do anything crazy.”
“What about your mom?” he asks carefully. “Is she in the picture?”