Chapter 14 #3
“Not you, though,” Myles said, running a hand over the fogged mirror after his shower. “You like what you do, don’t you?”
The lights over the mirror rippled off and back on from one end of the strip to the other and back again.
“Do you think Steven’s right about his house?” he mused. “That she’s unhappy? That he should be worried about leaving her alone?”
He watched the bulbs above the mirror closely.
If they dimmed slightly, he couldn’t decide if he was seeing what he wanted to see, or if they did flicker.
Did he want to believe one house could tell him if another house was sick?
Was that better than the occupant of the other house being the one with the problem?
“I could ask Ozzy.” He would know just by going inside if there was a problem. “I can ask my ex, sure.” He sighed deeply, leaning heavily on the counter to ease weight off his hip.
What would Ozzy say if Myles went to him, asking for help over the very thing that had ultimately been one of the major wedges to drive them apart?
Myles’s mocking of Ozzy’s assertions that some of the city shelters were unsafe, unhappy buildings still made him cringe with how uncaring he’d been. How unwilling he’d been to listen.
Eventually his cruel behavior had been the final wedge. So to go to Ozzy and ask his help for a possibly depressed building now? And for the new—maybe?—guy in Myles’s life. With how little contact he’d had with Ozzy since he’d arrived, it didn’t seem like a fair thing to ask.
Before he’d made up his mind about how he felt about Ozzy, let alone if he could ask for his help, a delicate tap on the door dragged him into the present.
“Uncle My-my? I have to pee.” Shelly’s voice threaded, thin and tired, through the cracks around the bathroom door.
“I’ll be out in one minute, honey.” Quickly, Myles ditched his towel and pulled on his sweats, then opened the door to let her in.
She peeled as she raced for the toilet, and he started running water into the tub for her.
“Will you help me wash my hair?” she asked, voice still a thin quaver.
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“Can I still go to the Y?”
“Let’s get you clean and dressed again, and we’ll see, okay? One thing at a time.”
He didn’t know if he was better off ignoring her tantrum or removing the privilege she’d been so looking forward to and risk setting off another one.
He tried to think what Natalie would have done in such a situation, but his memory of her as a functioning parent was dimmed by time and the haze of his own problems that had clouded him at the time.
Then she’d been more his ailing sister than Shelly’s and Jet’s mother, and now they were here.
When she’d been bathed and stood back on the mat, wrapped in a thick towel, cheeks pink from the warm water and hair dripping, she smiled. It was almost as thin as her voice. “I’m sorry I was bad.”
Myles pulled her into a tight hug. “I know, kiddo.” He stood her back firmly on her feet and met her gaze. “Can you tell me why that happened?”
Her little forehead wrinkled, and the bow of her mouth flexed downward. “It was too big.”
“What was too big?”
“The mad and the sad inside of me was too big, and it grew and grew until it essploded.” She made a kaboom sound and mimed a mushroom cloud expanding over her head.
“Do you know what you were mad or sad about?”
“Mommy,” she said simply, and stared at the fluffy mat where she wiggled her toes through the shag.
“Fair enough. Thinking about your mommy makes me mad and sad sometimes, too.”
“You don’t essplode.”
“I used to. I used to explode and do other things that were very bad for me, and for the people I loved, when my feelings got too big.”
“Is that why you used to be so sick? When you first came to live with us?”
“It is.” God, that hurt his heart. He’d tried so hard not to let his shit affect the kids. But even Shelly had picked up on his crap. What must Jet think about him now being the one in charge of all three of them?
“But you’re better now.”
“I learned how to let the feelings out in better ways, and you can too.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. It’ll take some time to find ways that work, but we will.” It was a big promise. He had no idea how to keep it. Some days, he barely managed not to reach for a bottle himself. How was he going to teach a six-year-old how to deal with feelings that had him so close to backsliding?
“You’re a very good stand-in mommy,” she told him.
He almost fell on his ass out of the crouch he was in. “What?”
“You’re not Mommy, but you’re still pretty good at mommy stuff,” she clarified.
“Oh. Okay.”
“I should get dressed.” This she said with the gentle authority of tiny matron aunt, like he needed the reminder of the order of things, and he chuckled.
“Right. Let’s make that happen.” His hip screamed as he eased out of his crouch to stand. Tenderly, he turned her and prodded her towards the door that opened to let them pass into the main room.
“Thank you, House,” Shelly said, like it was completely normal to do so.
He was never going to learn to keep up with her.