Elijah #4
“I said it better not be stupid,” she repeated with a sigh, and I listened as she murmured to someone in the background.
I wasn’t surprised when a masculine voice muttered something back that I couldn’t understand.
She’d been with Kayden for almost a year, and while he seemed kind of an odd choice, silly and lighthearted to her serious and responsible, it had been a good match so far.
Her voice returned, stronger and filled with irritation. “So?”
“Oh, just letting you know you’re going to see another hit,” I told her, knowing she, more than our parents, kept an eye on the family claims and costs, including insurance.
“What is it this time?”
“Mmm, sledding down handrails.”
“Of course,” she said, and although there was a hilarious amount of annoyance in her voice, I could sense faint amusement too.
Not that I would ever point that out to her.
She was the one who was supposed to be in control, the one who wasn’t supposed to give in to the wild and whimsy parts of life.
To let her know that others understood she needed the levity was a surefire way to get her back up and set her off. “And you were?—?”
“The one who got him the help he obviously needs,” I responded, because admitting I hadn’t actually stopped him would result in the conversation going off the rails.
She was a good woman, but she was hard. You learned when and how to pick your battles when it came to the most responsible of our siblings.
“If that were true, he would have seen a shrink years ago,” she said with a sigh. “What are we looking at?”
“Other than a traumatized and what I think is a slightly turned-on doctor?”
“God, he found another homo?”
“Moira! Language!” I proclaimed in mock horror that was paper-thin.
“Eli.”
I snorted. “I don’t know about this one, but he was definitely taken off guard.”
“That’s...very Milo.”
“Isn’t it just?”
“Facts. Details. The lot. Quickly.”
“An exam and scans. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Jesus, what’s broken?”
“Maybe his arm, I’m betting the leg is a sprain or just bad bruising.”
“And not one lesson will be learned.”
“If he learned, he wouldn’t be Milo.”
“I’m aware. It really makes me worry about Mom.”
I blinked, trying to trace that one to its source and then snorting as it occurred to me. “His dad came along after yours, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, just goes to show that maybe she was feeling a little crazy. Losing someone close to you will do that.”
“You weren’t that bad,” she insisted, which was sweet of her, a total lie, but a sweet one all the same.
“It’s a miracle my dad didn’t have me locked up,” I snorted, turning as I heard Milo laugh, the note telling me he had made the poor doctor squirm again.
“Marcus wouldn’t lock you up,” she said with a snort.
Looking back, I wouldn’t have blamed my dad if he had.
I was young when my mother died in a car crash, picking me up from preschool.
I remembered next to nothing, just the world going into a spin, becoming noisy, and I remembered tasting snot as I cried hysterically.
After that, I had apparently become a terror that had driven my already grieving father near hysterical as his once normally calm, if slightly mischievous, child screamed, hit, threw things, and bit.
He had only just managed to get me to a reasonable level through a lot of hell and therapy when he met Marty and fell in love all over again.
Which brought a whole resurgence of horrible behavior on my part.
I was still young, and I didn’t remember much other than that I was furious he was trying to replace my mom, and I didn’t want to have brothers or sisters.
As an adult, I wouldn’t have blamed Matilda if she’d taken one look at my near-panicked father and his terror of a son and decided nope, that wasn’t for her; she had enough on her plate with her kids, a hotel to run, and grief of her own.
That wasn’t Marty’s style, though, and she had seen me for what I was, not a little terror waiting to grow into a monster, but a kid with too much pain and no way to put it anywhere productive.
Her kindness had been the first thing I remembered clearly; her patience came a close second.
But it hadn’t been her that got through to me, but the little blond kid who couldn’t sit still and always irritated the shit out of me.
It was also the first clear memory I remembered having.
“Go away!” I shrieked, but there was no real heat to it. I was angry, but I didn’t know why. I was tired too, like I had been drained of everything but the anger.
The kid didn’t go away, though; he hung out in the doorway with a weird look.
All he did was talk and talk and talk, and I just wanted him to shut up and go away—him and his whole family.
My dad and I were fine; we didn’t need anyone else.
I didn’t need a new mom, and I definitely didn’t need brothers or a sister.
“You’re crying,” he said finally, wrinkling his nose.
With a scream, I picked up a book and hurled it at him. It hit the wall three feet from him with a hard thunk, and dropped to the ground. He stared at it for a moment before picking it up, setting it down on the table, and sitting in the chair next to it.
“So,” he said, looking at me like he hadn’t met me before. Like I hadn’t hit him, screamed at him, and even once, bitten him. “Why are you sad?”
“I’m not!” I snarled, looking for something else to throw so he would go away. If I missed, I would just have to get up and hit him with something else.
“You look sad.”
“No!”
“You do.”
“Go away!”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not!”
“No...my mom says it’s okay to be sad sometimes,” he said, his eyes still wide as he looked at me curiously. “She says sometimes people don’t know how to be sad, so they get mad. And that it’s okay to be mad when you’re sad. But you shouldn’t hurt people who like you.”
“You don’t like me,” I snapped. It was what I wanted, of course, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hate it. “No one likes me.”
“I don’t know. You’re kinda mean,” he said thoughtfully, cocking his head. “But maybe it’s just ’cause you’re sad.”
“I don’t wanna be sad,” I said miserably, looking down at my hands and feeling my eyes sting. “Or mad.”
“Okay,” he said, and I looked up to see him shrug. “Wanna have fun instead?”
“I don’t like you,” I said, even though I didn’t have a reason not to like him. He never stopped talking and didn’t like to sit still, but...I just...didn’t want to like him.
“That’s okay,” he said brightly. “But it just rained.”
“So?” I asked belligerently.
“Sooooo, there’s this girl who works here, who hates frogs. Screams every time she sees them. If we can find one from the courtyard, I bet she’d scream and run,” he said, eyes getting bigger as he rattled on with his plan. “And then we can cannonball in the pool.”
“We can’t go in the pool,” I said with a frown.
He rolled his eyes. “We’re not allowed.”
“Yeah.”
“I know where they keep the key.”
The idea stirred something inside me, and I looked up slowly, cautious as the first thread of hope worked its way through me. “You do?”
“Yeah.” He grinned widely, practically vibrating now I was doing something other than screaming or trying to hurt him. “Mom says I can’t go unless I have an adult or Moira with me ’cause she’s old enough.”
“So is Mason,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but Mason is fun,” he said with a laugh, kicking his feet as if he had to move even when sitting. “Mom says he’s too much fun. Which is stupid.”
It did sound kind of stupid. How could you have too much fun?
“So...wanna?” he asked, eyes lit up with an eagerness that made me want to smile and jump into whatever kooky idea he had.
“Sure,” I said slowly, finding it nice to have something other than tired anger flowing through me.
That day had ended with Milo almost breaking his nose on the bottom of the pool and sending the poor front desk worker into a crying fit.
It was the first time I’d seen Marty get mad, as she scolded Milo and set him to work with housekeeping for the next week.
She hadn’t been mad about his nose, but the fact that he had been cruel to the poor woman whose only ‘crime’ was being scared of slimy creatures.
I too had been put to work, but I hadn’t cried when I realized that I had upset the girl, that had been Milo.
He was facing down the realization that his harmless ideas might actually hurt someone’s feelings, something Milo still tried to avoid.
Me though? I was too caught up in how much fun I’d been having with Milo, what it had been like to laugh with someone, and not to feel the hurt and anger that made me lash out.
I had hung my head quietly when Marty had chewed me out, knowing what I had done was wrong and I’d hurt someone badly, but too caught up in the idea that fun could still exist, and that someone would.
..scold me. Everyone had treated me like a wounded animal for so long, to have someone, a mother figure no less, turn around and give me hell for bad behavior that was normal had been a blessing I was too young to understand.
Still, it had soothed something inside me that continued to heal from that day forward.
“And you’ll make sure?”
I blinked at Moira’s voice and tried to recall what she’d been saying before I’d checked out of the conversation without meaning to, and winced. “What?”
“I swear,” she said, fondness masquerading as irritation. “We can’t get Milo to focus on something unless it’s interesting, and we can’t get you to focus when you drift off into your own thoughts.”
I snorted. “Would it make you feel any better if I said I was lost in memory?”
“If you were Milo, I’d be afraid to ask. With you, I’m less worried.”
“Just got lost thinking about how much I started out hating the idea of having a new family, and now years later I can’t imagine having anything but you guys.”
“You mean Milo.”
“I mean all of you.”