Chapter 14 #2
He wanted a drink. He hadn’t felt the urge this viscerally in a long time, and it was barely ten in the morning.
Today was going to suck, and he still had to bring Shelly to the Y, then talk to the lawyer.
He certainly wasn’t telling Jet about this until he had that talk and found out exactly what Priory wanted.
Across the table, Jet’s leg began to bounce. A moment later, he was rubbing his palms over his thighs and biting his lower lip. Finally, he growled and leaned over the table. “What is it?”
Carefully, Myles folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“I thought all the legal stuff was done.”
“It is.”
“So that’s just a notice, or what?”
“Something like that. Finish your breakfast. We’re bringing Shelly to the Y today, and I don’t want her to be late for her first class. Did you decide if there was anything you wanted to join?”
“Uncle Myles—”
“Don’t worry about it, Jet.”
“But—”
“Jet, please. Let it go.”
Jet pressed his back against the hard slats of his chair, but for the moment, didn’t say anything else.
Myles should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Picking up on the tension, Shelly stood up on her chair, fork in one hand, knife in the other. “Uncle My-my, I want ’cakes.” She used her shrillest, loudest tones to voice her demand for the pancakes she had once refused to eat.
Heads turned.
The dining room lights flickered alarmingly before settling into a more soothing glow. Myles glanced around, but if anyone else noticed the lights, they didn’t show it, their attention focused on him and Shelly.
“Shelly, sit down.” Fearing she might fall, Myles took her arm, reaching to lift her into his lap.
Just as his fingers circled her bicep, she shrieked and went limp, flopping so he had to lunge to keep her head from impacting the tabletop.
Jet lunged too, across the table, knocking over juice and coffee cups and flipping his own unfinished plate upside down, spraying coffee, juice, eggs and home fries across both Myles and Shelly.
Jet got his hand between Shelly’s forehead and the table just in time.
Myles scooped her up, standing as he did, lifting her, still screaming, into his arms. “Tidy this up,” Myles whispered to Jet. “I’ll take her upstairs.”
Jet scowled but nodded, and Myles carried Shelly, still flipping out, through the dining room and up the stairs.
The door to their room, which he distinctly remembered locking when they’d left, swung open at his approach, and the main overhead lights came on. As soon as they were through, the door closed behind them.
Telling the house thanks for the assist didn’t even feel weird as Myles carried his now-sobbing niece across the room to sit her on the couch in the main area.
Crouching in front of her, hip complaining at the sharp and unrelenting descent into the crunched posture, he laid a gentle hand on each of her biceps. He breathed deep to push aside his discomforts before speaking. “Shelly, take a breath, baby.”
She gulped and hiccupped and sobbed harder. Little face red and tears tracking through the egg yolk splattered across one cheek, she gasped and gasped, like she couldn’t get any air.
“Shelly. Sweetie, you have to calm down.”
“I wa— I wa— Mommy!” She wailed and wailed.
Myles was sure the whole house could hear her.
All he could do was gather her up and sit her on his lap, both arms around her while she sobbed, alternately limp in his arms, then thumping little fists against his chest or shoulder, wiggling and squirming to get away before collapsing into new waves of rage and crying.
She’d barely wept herself out when Jet came barrelling into the room, brandishing the lawyer’s letter. Because of course in the rush to get Shelly away from the other diners, Myles had completely forgotten about that dilemma and had left the paper behind.
“Nothing for me to worry about?” he shouted.
“Jet!”
Shelly jerked in his arms and started crying again.
“When you even going to tell me?” Jet threw the letter at Myles. It fluttered a few feet to land, bent and wrinkled, on the floor between them.
“Can we please talk about that later?”
“Or not at all. Why would I even want to know anyway?” He crossed his arms, chin out, eyes blazing.
Shelly whimpered.
“Jet—”
“Forget it.” Spinning on one foot, Jet stormed from the room, swinging the door shut with all the aggression of a pissed-off teenager.
Myles braced for the loud bang, but at the last minute, the door shuddered to an abrupt stop, then gently clicked shut.
Out in the hall, Jet gave an inarticulate shout, and then his footsteps pounded away down the stairs.
Myles let out a sigh and hugged Shelly tighter.
Not for the first time since Natalie’s funeral, he longed for the support group he’d left behind in Calgary.
No, he hadn’t been particularly close with any of them, but at least they understood the addiction animal.
The only one here who might understand what this felt like was Ozzy, and Myles wasn’t up to seeking him out.
In his arms, Shelly’s small body sagged. She hiccupped and snuggled closer. “Mommy?” But she didn’t look up, as though she knew she wouldn’t see the person she wanted—the person she needed—holding her.
Myles stroked her hair and settled back into the cushions, closing his eyes against the pain in his hip and the greater pain in his heart.
Bathing and changing could wait. He forced away the shudder accompanying that thought and focused on the priority.
The YMCA wasn’t going anywhere, and Jet, for all his anger, wasn’t either.
Right now, Shelly needed him more. At least Jet understood his own anger.
That was something a six-year-old couldn’t get her mind around, and Myles had to be there to make sure she felt safe anyway.
He rested against the back of the couch, closing his eyes and trying not to catalogue all the ways this whole situation sucked.
He felt her scrap, tooth and nail, against sleep until it finally dragged her under.
Laying her on her bed, he made a mental note to apologize later to Lucky about the extra washing the breakfast scattered over her clothing and the bedding would cause. He took a moment to watch her sleep, peaceful now, and sweet-looking. If only that could last.
“Not her fault,” he told the room, or more likely, his own brain.
It took him a few minutes to gather some clean clothes for himself. Then the lights dimmed behind him as he went into the bathroom for a fast shower and change.
Was it weird that he assumed the house would alert him if Shelly woke?
A long-ago memory came to him of Ozzy trying to explain why he felt uncomfortable in a lot of shelters.
His insistence that the buildings were unhappy hadn’t made a lot of sense at the time.
Myles had assumed he meant the men in them created an air of discontent, but no.
He was beginning to understand Ozzy had literally meant the buildings themselves had been troubled.
Some felt so unsafe Ozzy had refused to step foot inside.