by Julia Kent
“Ugh.”
“The only thing defective about my children is their father,” she whispers. “He's still in prison and–”
Her turn to clap her hand over her mouth.
Just like that, the tables turn.
“It's okay, Carol. I know. My own father is in prison.”
“I know you know. It's just, you know... your dad–I forget. You never talk about him. I shouldn't have made that crack. And your dad is in for reasons that are really different than Todd’s. Todd was a master at fraud.”
“Leo killed people. Drunk driving,” I say, hearing a robotic tone in my voice. Talking about him hurts. A lot. Having a father in prison is hard, but being rejected when I tried to see him or have contact has been even harder.
“I'm sorry.”
I touch her hand and squeeze. “It's fine. And if Jeffrey ever needs someone to talk to, he can come to me.”
“Why would he–oh.” A long, painful sigh comes out of her as she closes her eyes and winces. “Thank you. My dad is so not the same type–the kind of guy who–” Carol cuts herself off by taking a very long drink from her wine. “I'll shut up now.”
“Jason is the exact opposite of Leo and Todd,” I summarize. “He's been more of a father to me than my own.”
She nods. “Same for Jeffrey and Tyler. My dad is the überdad.”
“You ever wonder if it's too much for him?”
Her expression tells me that idea has never occurred to her.
“Too much?”
“Being a father figure to so many people who aren't his children. It's a big responsibility. Plus he does those workshops at the Maker Center for the after-school program, and he teaches Sunday school. Jeffrey said something about Boy Scouts, too?”
Carol laughs. “He can't seem to help himself. Now he's chaperoning the Boy Scout camp weekends for Jeffrey's troop.”
“Is Tyler in Boy Scouts?”
“Cub Scouts. Yes.” A shadow passes across her face. “But it's not going well.”
“Why not?”
Leaning in, she taps the bottom of her wine glass on the scarred wooden table top. “Because Tyler is weird.”
“Little boys are weird.”
“But Tyler's weirder than the other little boys, and his peers don't know what to do with him. So they either bully him or ignore him. Dad's stepping in to take Tyler, but I think it's hard.”
“Hard?”
“Dad's a softy. He loves Tyler deeply. And he just wants him to fit in. You can't make a kid fit in, you know?”
“Aren't there other kids with special needs in the troop?”
She shakes her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Maybe move to a troop where there are some? Or one with leaders who–”
Her turn to squeeze my hand. “You're trying to fix this. It's not your job.”
“I know. It's just–”
Her palm goes to my belly, our friendship the only permission she needs to touch my babies.
“Your sons have a loving father. A wonderful grandmother. Aunties and uncles who have resources and families and an extended network of people who will help you and Andrew, to make sure they thrive. No matter what.”
Tears fill my eyes.
“My sons have my parents. They have Shannon and Amy. And they have you.”
I'm openly crying now.
“We're all part of a big village that works to help each other. But that doesn't mean it's easy, or that we don't get stupid ideas in our heads that make life harder than it has to be.”
She hugs me, bending her body in that awkward move friends now do to avoid my baby bump.
“I'm scared,” I whisper in her ear.
“About having a child with special needs?”
“No. It's actually, well–if it happens, it happens. But I'm not scared about it. I'm scared I won't be good enough. There's no test you can take ahead of time that tells you if you’ll be a good parent.”
“Hah. No kidding.”
“So how do you do it?”
“One hour at a time.”
“That is one of the worst things you can say to a planner.”
“I know. But it's the truth.”
I sigh. “There's a lot of truth to this whole having children thing.”
Tyler comes running into the backyard, completely naked.
“I need my bathing suit!” he shouts, turning around.
Carol lights up. “Would you look at that!”
I can't help but laugh. “He's a streaker, huh?”
A blank stare is her first reaction, then a grin. “Oh. That.” She waves me off. “I've gotten so used to him having zero self-consciousness. I wasn't talking about that. I meant what he said!”
“What did he say?”
“Correct pronoun use! He said I instead of you!” She fist bumps me.
We take our victories where we can find them.
And as Tyler comes back out into the backyard in his swimsuit and turns on the sprinkler, tossing LEGO blocks into the spray, I realize parenting is nothing but small victories, stacked up on top of each other, one at a time, leading you along a line on a map you didn't draw and only see part of at any given time. Which is so freaking unfair for a strategic thinker.
But I didn't make this world.
I'm just helping populate it.
12
Andrew
“Will you be on your phone the entire time we're eating?” Declan asks as he stabs his salad with his fork like he's a caveman killing a wild boar.
“Only if you're going to use that tone.” I finish my text and set the phone down to my right. “Happy?”
“No.”
We spend the next five minutes eating, my baked haddock perfectly seasoned with green shallots and tarragon, the mushroom risotto pure perfection, but the side of Cranky Declan is leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
“Why,” I finally ask after finishing my meal, turning to my pint glass to clear out the taste, “are you being such a dick?”
“I'm the dick? I am?”
“I was answering texts from Gina. You do the same with Dave.”
“Not during social time with family.”
The snort comes out involuntarily. “Social time? Since when is a meal with me social time? It's always about business.”
“It was always about business. I don't do that anymore.”
If my throat could scoff in seven different languages, it would, but I'm left with just one sound to make.
It appears to work.
His shoulders drop, the tension releasing as he reaches for his full pint glass, the deep lager leaving a line of foam on his lip before he licks it off. Declan would look terrible with a moustache.
Most guys do.
“You'll see. Once you have kids, it all changes.”
“Of course it does. But you still run the company. That doesn't go away just because you have a child.”
“No. But it's different.”
“Dad said you'd say that.”
“James McCormick is the last role model you should take for how to be a father. Especially on the topic of being a workaholic.”
Defending our father wasn't what I expected to be doing at this dinner with Declan, but it's what rises up immediately.
I tamp it down.
“He definitely wasn't around as much as he should have been.”
“That's like saying the pope is a little bit Catholic.”
Can't help but chuckle a little. He's right.
Plus the beer's kicking in after a good meal.
“You're a great dad to Ellie. I'll do my best for these boys who are coming. I think, in his own weird way, Dad did his best.” I hold up a palm to stop Declan before the protest even begins. “I'm not saying it was good enough. I'm saying the man has limits, just like all of us, and he did his best.”
“Did he?”
“Within his limits, yes. And I know that's hard to accept.”
“You sound like a
therapist.”
I hold up my empty beer glass. “Here's my PhD.”
The server takes the gesture as a sign to come over, pluck it out of my hand, and go directly to the bar for a refill. Instantly, my mind calculates, using a formula involving time, distance, vehicle, conversation topic, and safety.
I don't stop her.
“I can crash at your place if I have to, right?”
“Sure. Why?”
The server delivers another dark lager and I point. “That.”
“As long as you don't pass out on my sofa and ogle my naked wife when she shows up in heels and a trenchcoat, yes.”
“That happened once, Declan. Only once! And first of all, I didn't ogle her. Second, she wasn't your wife yet.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “As if that's germane to the topic?”
“Fine. I'll have a driver take me home.”
“Or you can walk to your condo. It's not far.”
“Amanda wants me home every night in Weston, unless we're together in the city. It's one of those marriage things.”
He grins and leans forward. “I know all about those.”
“And now we have baby things. Babies,” I correct.
“Like what?”
“The books.”
Rare sympathy floods his face. “Right. The books. Did you have Gina summarize them for you?”
“Amanda's too smart.” My glare tells him the truth: Shannon tipped her off, which means my brother ruined my plan. “We sit at home on the sofa and listen to the audiobook form together. You ever hear a verbal description of a c-section? I’ve learned everything about fascial tearing and uterine blood flow that I’ve spent my entire life trying not to know.”
He sighs. “I'm going to have to go through this all over again.”
“Again?”
“We're trying for another.”
I laugh. Can't help it. “I'm having two at once and you're trying to catch up?”
A sour look is all I get back.
“It really isn't a competition. If we only ever had Ellie, I'd be the happiest man in the world.”
“If the only child I could ever have was Ellie, so would I.”
Hard blinking, a sign he's surprised, makes me realize how important my words are. This is Declan's version of emoting. When he's not stone faced, he's irritatingly condescending or jocularly sarcastic, so getting a better range of emotions is a nice change.
Then again, maybe I'm not giving the guy enough credit. Shannon has definitely softened him.
And Ellie has turned him into melted butter.
“Thanks. Those babies are lucky, too.”
“Are they?”
We both gulp a lot of beer, then sit in silence, holding back the inevitable carbonated sounds that want to replace words from our mouths. This restaurant isn't top of the line, but it's pleasant, and right now, pleasant counts for a lot.
“Did Dad talk to you about the trust? About inheritance?”
Ah. That's what this meal is about.
“Yes.”
“Is he being a jerk about Ellie?”
“Ellie?”
“She's the wrong gender, in his eyes.”
“Oh, Dec. God. No. Don't worry about it. If he does the wrong thing, I'll make it right.”
“It's not about the money, Andrew. We have more than enough. And he can't change Mom's trust, so there's that.”
“He tried, with Terry.”
Declan lets out a nasty sound. “Sure did.” Concerned green eyes meet mine. “What kind of pressure is he putting on you to turn your children into little James McCormick Perfection Bots?”
I let out a curse.
“He did,” Declan says, banging the table with one fist. “I knew it.”
“You, too?”
“His big thing was that Ellie wasn't a boy, but yes. He tried.”
“What'd you say to him?”
“I told him to go to hell and stormed off.” Anger has a way of settling in comfortably on Declan's face, as if his features were made for it. “You?”
“Something like that.”
“He's a piece of work.”
“Will we be?”
“What?” Declan covers the top of his beer as the server comes by. My own glass is enough, and I'll have to call José or one of my other drivers soon.
“A piece of work to our kids. Mom was our shield against Dad. Are Amanda and Shannon going to have to act as shields for us because we put too much pressure on our kids to be clones of us?”
“Why would I want my kids to be clones of me?”
“Dad has a point.”
“Oh, geez, Andrew. Come on.”
“Bear with me. He has a point. I didn't say he's right.”
“That's some heavy-duty parsing you're engaging in, bro.”
“He worked his ass off to build Anterdec. We're all where we are because of him. Even Terry benefits from Mom's family trust. We've never had to build anything from scratch.”
Dec starts to argue, but I stop him. “You bought Grind It Fresh! with money from Mom and Dad. I bought the gyms that way, too.”
Damn.
“Gyms?”
I stare at the beer and blame it. “Never mind.”
“Gyms?” he presses.
“Fine. I'll tell you. But you have to keep it a secret.”
He pretends to zip his lips. The gesture looks so stupid on him.
“I need more than that.”
“Like what? Pinkie swear? Blood rites?” He perks up. “The Turdmobile! You can have the–”
“A basic promise is enough.”
“No, no, no. Taking the Turdmobile off my hands is the ultimate in helping me keep a secret.”
“I thought your assistant, Dave, took it?”
“He gave it back. Said the miles-per-gallon wasn't good enough, and he couldn't convert the engine to run on old french-fry grease, so we're stuck with it again.”
“I don't want it.”
“Fine. Tell me about the gyms.”
“How did we get from Dad wanting to use us and our kids to secure his legacy to the Turdmobile?”
“The gyms, Andrew. What kind did you buy?”
Once the words are out, I can't put them back in.
Finally, he gets it. Dec isn't stupid, but he's a wee bit slow on the uptake tonight.
“Old Jorg sold to you?”
The way he says you makes me bristle, even through the beer.
“He did. Sixteen gyms. Mine,” I growl, like some beast dude in a werewolf film.
“Sixteen.” He says it like he's comparing.
“Size doesn't matter,” I blurt out, instantly regretting my words.
Slinging back a skeptical sound like I threw at him earlier, he eyes me, suddenly serious. “You bought old Jorg's gym chain?”
“I did.”
“Does Dad know?”
“Hell, no.”
“Good. Don't want him mucking it up.”
“What do you mean?”
“He'll try to take control. The old guy loves to rest on his laurels with Anterdec, but if he knows you have something new, he'll jump in.”
“Why would he?”
“Duh. Control. Trust me. I know from experience.”
“He tried to control Grind It Fresh!?”
“He's a coffee expert, Andrew. Didn't you know?”
“Ugh.”
We sit in silence, finishing off the beers.
“Why does he make everything more difficult?”
“Because he is who he is and makes the world bend around him.”
“I'm that way, too,” I mutter.
Dec shakes his head. “Not even close. You're good, I'll admit. Strong, and smart at reading people. But he's an asshole to the core, and we're not.”
“I'm not,” I correct him.
That earns me a laugh.
“We inherited more than enough asshole from Dad's genetic code, but it's muted by Mom's kindness. Terry got a little more o
f that than we did.”
“Imagine what Dad would be like if Mom were alive.”
He rears back slightly.
“You've thought about it. Right?” I press.
“Sure. They'd be celebrating...” he pauses to calculate, “...wow, forty years together. He'd be the same guy, only more...” Dec fumbles for words.
“Human?”
“Right.”
“What ifs,” I say with a sigh.
“Too many what ifs.”
“I wonder what kind of men we'd be today if Mom had lived,” I confess, the beer making me more emotional than usual. Letting my guard down around my brother is hard.
Especially about feelings.
“We'd have a filter,” he says simply, my signal not to pry or press further.
Line touched.
But not crossed.
“She was our filter. And when she died, we didn't just lose our mom. We lost our filter. Dad lost his buffer.”
“Grace tried.”
“Oh, sure. And she was great. But she wasn't Mom. No one else in the world was Mom.”
“No. No one else was. She was one of a kind. I wish Ellie could meet her namesake. Mom would adore her.”
“And my boys. They'll never know the great Elena Montgomery McCormick.”
“She never got to be a grandmother. Marie and Pam get that, but not Mom.”
Oh, no.
No, no, no.
The back of my throat is tightening because I'm tired, right?
Not because of–
Are Declan's eyes shining?
“You're not... crying, are you?” I ask, needing to toss the accusation out first, before he throws it at me.
“What? No! Bug off, Andrew.” Dec clears his throat. “If anyone's crying, it's you.”
“Nice deflection.”
“You didn't deny it.” He pauses. “You know what? Mom would hate this conversation. She'd tell us we sounded just like our father at his worst, and that we were better gentlemen.”
Dec's words cut me to the core.
Because he's right.
“If Mom were here, we wouldn't be crying,” I point out.
“I'm not crying. You're crying.”
“You're proving Mom right.”
His laugh is a little hoarse. His fingers twitch to wipe the obvious water from his eyes, but he's too stubborn to do it. Can't blame him.
So am I.
“Can we agree that it's a damned shame our mother didn't get to meet her grandkids?”
