We're All Broken

by O. L. Gregory

  “You don’t dance anymore?”

  “Would it make sense if I said that I grew out of it?”

  “Yeah, it would.”

  “Sadie really loves it. She’s all into singing, dancing, acting, and I’m… just not.”

  “So, what are you involved in?”

  “Debate, knowledge bowls, and I belong to an amateur cyber sleuthing club through the library.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that. “All free programs, while Sadie gets money spent on her.”

  “Not true. I do a fair amount of traveling with my knowledge bowl team. The money for that comes from Sandy and Jake.”

  “What, in the world, is a knowledge bowl?”

  “More or less, it’s like academically-geared trivia contests. We play on teams. We don’t draw a crowd or anything, but we compete with the other high school teams in the state.”

  He gave her a playful grimace. “My daughter is a nerd.”

  “My father is a computer geek,” I shot back.

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I guess you’ve got me there.”

  “The twins were adopted by their foster family.”

  “Yeah? I wondered if that was the case.”

  “Yeah, they fit right in with all the other kids in the house. And the mother couldn’t handle the idea that they might be separated in the future, so they moved forward with it, too. I talk to them every Sunday. They both seem really happy where they are.”

  “I know that look, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

  “I just, I don’t know… I keep telling them stories about when we were all together, and they just don’t remember. They know I’m their sister, but it’s like I’m not. If I didn’t call them, I feel like they wouldn’t care. They might actually like it if I’d stop reminding them of the fact that they’re adopted. They’re only memory is being taken away from the house. And, on one hand, I should be happy that they don’t remember losing Mom or Grandma, but on the other, I’m just so mad that they don’t remember them at all. I mean, they share DNA with them, Mom and Grandma live on through those two, and they feel no connection whatsoever. It makes it hard for me to want to keep calling them, and yet more stubbornly determined to keep pressing.”

  Roger let the silence settle in around them for a moment. “You’re a good big sister.”

  “I’m the only one holding what’s left of the family together.”

  “That’s why you got in the car.”

  She nodded. “If I don’t connect, then there will be no connection.”

  “Do you talk to Charlotte and Sophie?”

  “Every Sunday. I spend at least a half-hour on the phone with each of them, but I combine the twins on speakerphone.”

  “That’s awesome of you to do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do they know what really happened to me?”

  She shook her head. “If they ever ask me, I’ll tell them. Otherwise, they only need to know that you ‘lost your temper’ again.”

  “Are Charlotte and Sophie okay?”

  Penny looked away. “I can’t really tell, you know? They say they’re fine. They left the group home because the social worker found two in-home placements for them. Charlotte doesn’t talk much, but she loves listening to me talk, so most times I spend closer to an hour with her. And Sophie’s not happy where she is. She keeps talking about waiting for some sort of real parents to show up and adopt her.”

  “So, if they’re not happy, it’s possible they may not be okay.”

  “Or they just miss having a real family.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “No. I see them a couple times a year, but I don’t get to know where they are. It makes me nervous that they’re going to stop answering their phones, or get them taken away and I won’t be able to contact them at all.”

  “What about their schools. Maybe you can get out of them what schools they go to.”

  “But you’re not supposed to—”

  “I’m not going to relax until I know they’re alright. I can be content to let the twins be, because I’ve met those parents at the visitation center, I could see how good a heart that mother had and how loving that father was. I can be at peace with that. And you, for that matter. But, the idea of Charlotte not talking doesn’t sit well with me, at all. I mean, I know kids grow and change, but she was the kid you couldn’t get to shut up.”

  “I think she just doesn’t know how to handle it all.”

  “Then she should be in therapy.”

  “I don’t think it’s that bad. I think she talks just fine with other people. I think I remind her of happier times and she just wants me to keep talking.”

  “Still though, try and find out what schools they’re in, okay?”

  “O…okay. I’ll work on it.”

  “I just want to see them, Penny. If you hadn’t come to the car, I would have left it go with nothing more than maybe a wave. I’m not trying to invade anyone’s life, honey. I just want to lay eyes on them.”

  “For what reason, exactly?”

  “I just want my kids to know that I’m here for them, for all of you. If they stay miserable, I want them to know that when they turn eighteen, they are more than welcome to come home to me. I’ll never turn my back on them.”

  “I can pass that message along. It’ll be less threatening to your freedom if I just tell them I saw you once and we spoke.”

  He sighed. “Someday, when you’re a parent, you’ll understand the importance of actually seeing that your children are okay. Besides, it’ll be safer for my parole if you tell no one. When they turn eighteen, I can get a message to them through my lawyer.”

  “Okay, fine. We should start heading back now. I need to get home before Mom… before Sandy gets home from work.”

  He backed out of the parking spot and shifted into drive. “You can call them Mom and Dad. It actually helps me to know that you’ve accepted them as your new family. I might selfishly want you home with me, but I want you happy and settled more.”

  She looked him over, noting the sincerity in his voice. “They might be my Mom and Dad, but you will always be my Daddy.”

  He glanced at her and winked.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fire’s Not So Bad, If You Keep It Contained

  “Alright, good deal,” Roger said, trying for the third time to get the marketing guy off the phone, as Kelly lightly knocked on his opened, main-level, private office door.

  He waved her in. “Yeah, I think so, too.” He looked at Kelly and used his hand to indicate the guy he was on the phone with was a talker. “Yep, I like it, it all sounds good.”

  Kelly smiled and took a seat in one of the chairs to wait.

  “Oh, I know, I know… Hey, you know what? Someone just walked in waving a laptop at me, I gotta go, man.”

  Kelly silently laughed.

  “Yeah, good talking to you, too. See ya.” Roger hung up the phone before the guy could say anything else.

  “Mitchel?” Kelly asked.

  “You know, there were certain advantages to Max running everything. Dealing with that man was one of them,” he said, pointing to the phone.

  Kelly questioning expression shifted into a quick smile.

  “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to come remind you that I’m leaving early.”

  “Yes. You have a dentist appointment. You do enough work from home on the weekends that I’m not worried about you making the time up, if that has you worried.”

  “No, I know you understand that, you do a fair amount of work on the weekends, too.”

  “Well, it’s uninterrupted time to work on the projects I want to work on.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, we’re on the same page… why are you looking at me like that?”

  She tucked her lips between her teeth and lightly gestured toward his lap.

  He looked down, remembered the project he was still holding, and looked back up at
her a little sheepish.

  “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, I’m just intrigued.”

  He let out a breath. “If I explain it to you, you have to promise not to think it’s stupid.”

  She raised her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, I crochet, too. There’s nothing stupid about it.”

  “Would it make sense, if I said it’s part of my therapy?”

  “Of course, it would! The rhythm is very calming, I’ve said that for years. Did your therapist recommend it?” she asked, rising from the chair and coming around the desk to look more closely at his project.

  He lifted it off his lap and draped it over the desk. “She recommended a hobby, something tangible to do with my hands, to expel energy. I like to pick it up while I make phone calls, if I don’t need to take notes.”

  “I like to crochet when I get stuck for ideas.” She ran her hands along the width, stopping about a quarter of the way back. “What happened here? It looks like you changed hooks sizes or your tension tightened.”

  He cleared his throat, feeling awkward talking about it. “Um, someone else did the first part. That’s where I picked it back up.”

  She straightened. “Your wife,” she stated as fact.

  He nodded.

  “Well, a piece of advice? It won’t lay right with the differences in tension. If you want it done right, frog it back to where you started, go up a hook size, and begin again.”

  “Frog it?”

  “Rip it out.”

  His jaw went slack. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to do all those rows?”

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  He sighed. “Don’t you have to use the same hook size, throughout?”

  “No, you have to use the same tension, throughout. Since that’s not possible, go up a hook size so that your tighter hold on the yarn will equal your stitches coming out the same size as her looser hold.”

  “But… I’ve only crocheted with this one size.”

  “It’ll feel a little weird, at first. But it’ll feel more normal the longer you do it.”

  He shook his head. “How do you know so much about this?”

  “Both of my grandmothers, and my mom, crocheted. I almost feel like I picked it up through osmosis. They all took turns teaching me, and it just sort of clicked in my head. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”

  Roger rocked back in his chair, relaxing for the first time all day. “My wife had an afghan started for each of the kids.”

  She grinned. “And you want to finish them.”

  He nodded. “I’d wanted to have them done for a homecoming gift, but then I snapped and ended up incarcerated. And truthfully, that wouldn’t have been enough time for me. Right now, I’m just hoping to be able to have them done for each of their eighteenth birthdays, when I’m finally allowed to attempt resuming a relationship with them. If nothing else, they’ll have something their mother began making for them, with her own hands.”

  Something soft entered Kelly’s eyes.

  “Oh, don’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t look at me like I’m a good man. I’ve done some very bad things.”

  “Yeah, and you’ve paid a price for them. You’ve given five years and five kids as your penance. In the meantime,” she said and pulled away from the project, “you’ve been doing some very good things, too.” She pulled out her phone and looked at the time. “I gotta go.”

  He nodded and watched her walk away.

  Max waved to her on his way to Roger’s office. When he took in the contemplative look on Roger’s face, he shook his head.

  Roger’s eyes shifted to Max. “What?” he mouthed.

  Max lifted his hands while shaking his head, as if to fend him off. He laid a knowing look on Roger until they heard the basement door shut, indicating that Kelly had gone back down, to leave. “Hey, far be it from me to douse the first flicker of female interest I’ve ever seen from you.”

  Roger drew his eyebrows together. “I’m not interested in her.”

  Max raised his eyebrows and dropped his head down, while still leveling a look on him. “The look on your face when I walked in here was pure male interest.”

  “I learned something new about her that I found interesting.”

  “Yeah, I can see you did,” he said, trying not to chuckle.

  “She’s an employee,” Roger said, as though that would be all that was needed to deny Max’s beliefs.

  “You haven’t spent time with a female that wasn’t either part of a therapy session, or a participant in one, in over six years. Yeah, her working here could make it awkward, but damn, you’re only human. A male human. And your wife has been gone long enough that you shouldn’t feel any guilt for noticing another woman.”

  “She works for me. I haven’t been out long, but it’s been long enough for me to see what they’re now doing to all these guys who hit on girls they work with. I just got done doing one stint, I’m not doing another just because her ass looks good in jeans.”

  Up went Max’s eyebrows again. “I thought you weren’t interested enough to notice?”

  “Shut up.”

  The smirk on Max’s face widened into a smile. “I’m not telling you to harass her.”

  “I’m married.”

  Max’s expression sobered. “No, you’re not. Didn’t you finally accept that during all your therapy?”

  Roger let out a long sigh. “I am not getting involved with another woman for as long as I live. Women complicate things. They get you all hooked in and tied up in knots, and then they die.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve only had one woman die on you. Most of them last quite a bit longer, and Kelly’s younger than you.”

  Roger settled a pointed look on him. “I’ve had two women die on me. And, yes, she is younger, a lot younger. What is she, like, twenty-five?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “And I’m forty. So, there’s that, on top of all the rest.” Roger ran a hand through his hair and rocked back and forth in his desk chair. “What’s her story?”

  Max didn’t even try to hide is renewed smirk. “She was married to a linebacker.”

  “What?” Roger asked, his chair rocking upright to a jolting halt.

  Max nodded. “He’s a big one, too. Stopped by here, once. Long story short, he cheated, a lot, and she divorced him. No kids. She’s dated a little here and there, but nothing that stuck for longer than a couple months.”

  “Like, for the NFL?”

  Max chuckled and got up, reached for Roger’s laptop, and brought up the guy’s stats page. He turned the computer so that it faced Roger.

  Roger leaned forward, taking in the information. “Holy fuck! He’s huge! How did that even work in bed?”

  Max just shook his head. “None of us downstairs has had the balls to ask her. Given that he was cheating, it wasn’t something we thought wise to pry into. We don’t know if it was because he had a natural inclination to wander, if it was because of how often he travelled, or if they had bedroom problems.”

  “He’s like a foot and a half taller than her! And he’s got to have a hundred to a hundred and fifty pounds on her.”

  “Yep, we know, believe me.”

  “Do you think he was too much for her to handle, or that she wasn’t enough for him to handle?”

  “You’ve never seen Kelly really riled about something. She’s plenty for a man to handle, believe me. But she’s fun and smart to work with, does her fair share and then some. She’d be a catch for the right person. We’re thinking the guy just didn’t like spending his nights alone while on the road.”

  “Huh.”

  “So, you are interested.”

  “Intrigued. Can’t I just be intrigued by a colleague, without it being some huge deal? I’m not looking to jump her bones. I’m just realizing that maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to get to know her a little better, as a person.”

  Max contemplated him a moment. “What�
�s interesting is that you don’t really do that, with anybody.”

  “I know about you.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve stuck with you for years. You had to deal with me, I was holding this place together for you. What I’m saying is, you don’t open up to anyone unless you have to.”

  “I’ve been surrounded by professionals and looneys. How close was I supposed to get to any of them?”

  “Okay, what I’m trying to say is that you’re out now. Maybe it’s time you start associating with people again. And what I’ve done is assemble a hell of a team that comes here, four days a week. Maybe you can start with them. I know they’re all younger than you, and you’re their boss, but I’ve run this place in such a way that we’re all friends, we all laugh and carry on, but we also know our places and get the job done.”

  “Are you’re saying they walk on eggshells around me?”

  “It’s a different vibe when you walk in the room. It’s not tense, just quiet. Laugh with us, joke around a little. It’s hard enough for them to adjust to the idea that they now have two people to listen to. Let them know you’re open to the same friendly relationship that you and I share. Be part of the team I’ve built, is what I’m saying. Let them see the guy that I see, the one that I stood by when his life fell apart. They already know your story, and none of them walked out when you came back. Those are good people down there. I made sure they were.”

  “Max, I know. I’ve read every e-mail you’ve sent about them. I don’t want to ruin it. I guess, for one, I’m not used to joking around with many people. And two, I don’t want to say or do anything to wreck the flow of the group you’ve got going. I’ve probably shied away a bit out of trying to protect it from me.”

  “Man, you need to breathe. You’ve been ruled out as being a threat to other people. Start making this your home again. You keep acting like a guest. You do realize that your name is on the deed to this place, right?”

  “What do you want from me, exactly?”

  “Smile. Laugh when we laugh. Crack a joke in a joking tone, so they know it’s okay to laugh in response. I may get your humor, but they haven’t had time to learn. Relax around them, you’re not going to scare them away.”