Sharpening His Broken Talon (Living Art Book 2)

by River Mitchell

  Yes, I was a thirty-one-year-old man, but I had always wanted a mother. It was the one thing I’d never had and could never make for myself. None of our group had had a family in the traditional sense; it was the something that we all secretly craved no matter how much each of us denied it. So with the lack of the traditional, we created our own version. We each had our role: Fear was the dad or protector. Hayley the motherly big sister. James, Carter, and I were the brothers along with Drake, who’d entered the family later than the rest of us but was no less important.

  And it worked. The six of us had been content with our self-made family; none of us had been looking to add to it. We all had baggage, and trust was not easy for any of us. That all changed, though, when Alfie and the nuggets entered the picture, bringing with them his mom and stepfather, Ben. At around the same time, Hayley had given birth to JJ, and John had come home from a long tour overseas, making our family of six grow to thirteen almost overnight. Not one of us questioned the new additions, feeling just like Fear had, that they were meant to be there.

  “Thanks, Mama,” I said, swooping up my coffee and kissing her on the cheek.

  “Thank you, Sheridan,” Fear, still snuggling a now sleeping JJ, said.

  “Anything for my boys.” She walked over to Hayley and continued, “And girls.” Hayley gave a tired smile then put her head on her arms, which rested on the desk.

  “Why don’t you go home and get some rest, or at the very least go in the back and lay down on the couch and have a nap. We will watch JJ,” Fear offered, which to me sounded like a good offer, but before Hayley could respond, the door opened again and Alfie, Griffin, and Lily walked in.

  Griffin saw me and headed straight toward me, holding out what looked like the coloring homework I had given him only yesterday. He wasn’t half bad for an eight-year-old, a hard worker, that was for sure. He was determined to become the best skin painter in all the world and nothing was going to stop him from achieving that goal.

  “Here, Uncle Tate; I finished your homework. I wanted to give it to you early because I wanna go watch the football match,” Griffin said excitedly.

  “It’s a football game, nugget,” Alfie corrected. Griffin nodded to me and placed his drawings into my hands.

  “Football game,” he repeated as if he was committing the word to memory.

  “What football game?” I asked.

  “Talon brought Tristan by this morning because he wanted to ask if Fear would come and watch his football try-out. He said that his dad and sister would be there and wanted Fear there, too, since he had never seen him play.” He shook his head before he continued. “He was so nervous, and when I told him Fear wasn’t home, he looked gutted.”

  “What time is it?” Fear asked. I knew he was struggling with the fact that not only did he have a father he knew nothing about, he had siblings as well. They all wanted to get to know him but letting people in wasn’t easy for him. It was a miracle that he’d let the nuggets and Alfie in. You only had to watch them together for a second to see they were each other’s perfect half and only together were they whole.

  “He called you Hunter. Why’d he do that?” Lily cut in.

  “I guess he doesn’t know me as Fear yet,” Fear tried to explain.

  “Are you gonna come to the game try’s?” Griffin asked.

  “He invited us all, well, Talon invited us all. I think it has only been them and their dad for a long time and little Tristan, I guess I should say not so little Tristan; he’s the same height as me. He really is your brother, isn’t he?” Alfie rambled on, losing his train of thought.

  “Alfie, you’re rambling,” Mama Sheri said, trying to get Alfie back on track.

  “Right, yeah, sorry. Anyway, what I was trying to say was I think he wants to get to know his big brother and his family and maybe convince them that if he is good enough, they might want to get to know him, too.”

  “I’ll be there; I know that I need to make more of an effort. Dane gave me the space he promised when they first moved here, and what with everything else changing around here, I have let that space grow too big.” He stopped then asked Alfie, “Talon spoke to you?”

  “He wrote it down, but he was the one to ask us all to come along.”

  “Why did he write it down? Talon is the middle son, isn’t he? When I saw him at the party, I thought he was awfully quiet,” Sheridan said, almost as if talking to herself.

  “He doesn’t talk. From what Dane told me, he has a severe stutter. So severe it is sometimes hard to understand him, and because of some problems he had growing up, he retreated and now hardly ever talks. He writes everything down,” Fear explained. Fuck, that must have been rough growing up.

  “I’m in,” Hayley said.

  “Me, too, and I’ll call the guys and see if they are up for it, too. The shop is closed today anyway. May as well show the Parker family a united front. If they want you, Fear, they have to take all the rest of us, too,” I stated, smiling. Because not only was it true, but little Parker was not going to know what hit him come this afternoon. His cheering section just grew by thirteen. And I guessed our thirteen might have just grown again by four.

  “Talon said to text him and let him know. I think it would mean a lot if that text came from you,” Alfie pushed. This was the exact reason that he was perfect for Fear: he was not afraid to push him. Most people were too scared to ask Fear for directions most of the time.

  “Give me the fucking number,” Fear said grumpily, but I could hear the smile he was trying to hide and so could everyone else.

  “Fear, that’s a bad word. Where’s my dollar for the bad word pot? I need me some new shoes.” All of us were stunned by Lily’s comment and were struck silent for a second. Alfie, though, was the first to shake off the shock, and he did it in true Alfie fashion.

  Staring daggers at Sheridan, he warned, “Mother, you are now only allowed supervised visits. Do you hear me? Look what you’ve done,” Alfie whisper-shouted in exasperation. “You created a mini you.” He finished with an arm flourish and pointed to where Lily was now mirroring Sheridan’s body language. Her little hands were on her hips, and she had a scowl on her cute little face, trying to look stern.

  Sheridan was looking down at Lily with so much love and what could only be described as prideful glee. “I know, isn’t it great?”

  “No, Mother, it is not great, not great at all. One of you is enough,” Alfie shouted, outraged. At which point everyone lost the battle at holding back their laughter, and it erupted in a loud chorus of noise that almost made the windows shake. “AAHHHHHH, you people are impossible. I am truly not seeing anything funny. I am doomed. Doomed, I tell you, and if I am, so are all of you.” Then, turning to Fear, he said, “I don’t know why you find this funny. You know my mother now, at the ripe old age of sixty. Can you imagine what she was like as a teenager? With boys sniffing around?” Pointing to his mother, he went on. “She has another 14 years to corrupt her even more, think about that.” Fear stopped laughing immediately, which only caused Hayley and me to lose it even more.

  Sheridan, though, only seemed to zone in on one of the comments Alfie had made. And having gotten to know Alfie pretty well, her outrage was exactly why he had said it. “SIXTY! You little shit. I am not fucking SIXTY. Why I ought to wash your mouth out with soap.”

  “Gamma, you owe me two dollars for your bad words. Now we can get you some color pens, too, Finny,” Lily happily told her brother. Griffin’s eyes lit up, and he smiled in response.

  Yep, I loved my newly extended family. They were bat shit crazy, but we all need a little crazy in our lives to remind us we are alive and we should live for the now, not just go through the motions and watch life pass us by.

  3

  Talon

  I had been at work for two hours, and it was already two hours too long. I hated it here. I hated it here so much. I had only taken the job so that I could help with the bills while we got settled into the new house and stuf
f. Molly hadn’t been able to find a permanent job yet, only finding work through a temp agency. Which meant that her paycheck wasn’t guaranteed, and Dad had some savings but not enough that we could live off of it for months, we needed a little cushion.

  The plan was that Molly and I would get any job we could just to help tide us over until Dad could get the house sorted and Tristan settled in school. He would then start looking for a good steady job, and when he was set, Molly and I could relax a bit and start looking for something better suited to what we wanted. Not that I knew what that was. It was not like I had many options. I couldn’t work retail or food services because I couldn’t speak to customers. The same went for telemarketing or customer service jobs. I wasn’t educated higher than high school level and had no chance of getting a degree and honestly, none of the desire either.

  I wasn’t lazy by any means. I was a hard worker and enjoyed being useful, but as soon as a prospective employer found out that I couldn’t talk, their interest in me waned. It was pure luck that I had found this job. I had gone from business to business with a handwritten note explaining what I wanted and a printed résumé without any luck for days when I walked into the last office on the block on my last attempt of the day; there really was only so much rejection a person could take.

  I handed over my note and résumé to the receptionist, who picked up the phone and called back into the office. Within minutes, I was being escorted back to speak to Mr. Bridgeson, the owner of the company. He was a short, portly man with a kind face who fit his surroundings perfectly. The offices were a little dated but open and inviting. Papers and other odds and ends cluttered his office, giving off what I imagined was the feeling you get when going to a grandparent’s house. Lived in and loved.

  Mr. Bridgeson didn’t seem to mind that I had to write the answers to his questions down and seemed to have endless patience, giving me time and understanding to respond. He must’ve picked up my shock at being given the chance to interview because, without prompting, he explained that his granddaughter had a severe speech impediment. And he hoped that when the time came for her to get a job, her future employers would look past the surface and pay less attention to what she couldn’t do and more to what she could and what she might offer. Turned out the receptionist was his daughter and the mother of the little girl he told me about, so I was thankful to both of them for giving me the opportunity and not slamming the door in my face.

  I left an hour later with a job offer to work in the mailroom of Mr. Bridgeson’s medium-sized insurance company. He told me there were 212 employees working within the building; I would be responsible for getting them their internal and external mail throughout the day. There would only be two mailroom clerks and we were on rotating shifts. One shift was seven o’clock ‘til three and the second was eleven ‘til six o’clock, Monday through Friday.

  My first week went off without a hitch. I was always on time, if not early, and was even told by my supervisor, the office manager, that I was doing an amazing job; he had been given some stellar reports about how prompt and helpful I was.

  That all changed the moment Christopher Bridgeson returned from vacation. It started out small with stupid things like name-calling. His lack of originality only made it worse: thick, dunce, dumb, retard, and my personal favorite—freak. I wasn’t even sure he was aware that I could hear and wasn’t deaf. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was ignorant enough just to assume I was.

  It wasn’t long before things escalated, and his buddies started to join in. The same men that were singing my praises a couple of weeks ago were now joining the destroy Talon bandwagon.

  Tanya, the other mail clerk, told me that as long as she had worked here, he had always been an asshole. Her opinion was that the only reason he was doing it was because it made him feel good to talk down to someone of my size or anyone that others might think better of, knowing that I wouldn’t talk back only seemed to fuel him further. Little man syndrome, she called it, not that he would be considered short, he was average height to me. Tanya was under the impression that in his head, he was ten feet tall and he used his height to look down on all us folk he deemed beneath him. And according to her, I was not the first person he had done this to. He felt as if he was untouchable with his father owning the company. My mailroom predecessor had also been his target for a while. He didn’t take it for long, though, and quit after only a month. Something that was looking more and more like what I was going to be forced to do.

  I think everyone in the office let out a huge sigh of relief when he turned his attention on me and left them alone. I assumed it was one of the reasons why no one spoke up for me; they didn’t want what I was getting to fall on them. The other was he was Mr. Bridgeson’s son, and nobody wanted to make waves or shine a light on them. It didn’t stop Tanya from sticking up for me when she saw it, though. Sadly, it wasn’t often that we were in the same place at the same time, and if we were, it was never for very long. So she missed most of the more vicious attacks. I can only think that none of his targets had reported him before because, like me, they had all wanted to keep their jobs until it got to be too much and they left and never looked back. No one wanted to go up against the boss’s son. It was like I was being dragged back to high school and everyone was too scared to out the bully, and high school for someone like me was not something I wanted to relive. Ever!

  When words started to bore him, or maybe it was because he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted, he upped his game and started to attack me physically. Tripping me over, shoving me into things as I passed him. Pouring coffee all over the mail in the cart and then making a complaint about my clumsiness. None of his little sheep ever touched me; they also never stopped him from doing it. I wasn’t sure if they took pleasure from the pain it obviously caused me, but it didn’t matter, they all stayed silent.

  The keeping my head down and doing my best to ignore it method I had tried to use earlier in life was failing me now; it failed me then, too, but I didn’t really have many options now. I needed the job, and my family needed me to have this job. I was the only one in the house with a steady paycheck; I couldn’t just quit, which only seemed to make everything ten times worse. I felt trapped, lost, and so very alone, a feeling that I had hoped I would never have to feel again. Deep down I knew money wasn’t a worry, Dad had enough set aside for us to be comfortable for a while, but I couldn’t expect him to take care of everything. I needed to step up. Prove that he could count on me, that the whole family could.

  I hated that I was letting this guy take me back to that dark place. I had fought like hell to escape from there twice before. Dad would lose his mind if he knew. I just wished I were stronger—not physically since I knew I could kick his ass with just a flick of my wrist, but mentally. I felt so weak. I allowed almost every negative slur to penetrate and fester until it grew out of control and once it grew, it became my every thought.

  My past was a minefield filled with explosives that could go off and send me spiraling at any moment. If you were to ask my dad where my low self-esteem came from, he would say my mother. Actually, if you asked any of my family, they would all say it came from my mother. She never hit me or caused me any physical harm. She just had her standards, standards I unfortunately could never meet. She would yell and berate me for being lazy, saying things like I didn’t even try to talk properly, or I was putting it all on for attention. Her personal favorite was calling me a little pussy, especially if I cried. I had gotten so frustrated and upset with her mean comments. I hadn’t understood. I hadn’t wanted to be like this. I could never explain that to her, and my tears had only made her worse, so I closed down.

  I never had a problem with trying to talk to start with; it would take me a while, but I would get there eventually. Dad and Molly never rushed me or drew attention to it. They patiently waited and smiled until I finished speaking. But Mom would get so frustrated, snap and yell at me to stop embarrassing her. So my attempt to speak became less
and less and stopped altogether around Mom.

  The day I gave up trying to talk altogether was my tenth birthday. Dad had arranged for Molly and me, along with our best friends, to go and watch a show. I don’t even remember what the show was now. I do remember how excited I was to get to see it. Everything was going great, and we were all having an amazing time.

  Then, in a split second, everything changed and turned into one of the worst days of my life. An announcement asking for all the kids who had a birthday to come up on stage had me excitedly running up the steps with all the other birthday kids. We were each asked our names and ages so everyone could sing us happy birthday. I was only on stage for a couple of minutes when Mom, who had been reading a book and looking at the back of the theater, came storming up onto the stage, yelling that I was to get down and not humiliate her by drawing attention to myself. That I was too damaged for things like this, did I want people to think I was retarded and laugh at my pathetic attempts to speak? That things like this were for boys who tried, not lazy thick ones that couldn’t even talk properly.

  I broke right there in that spot. I remember the way some of the other parents were looking at me with pity. Whether it was because they thought I was a poor little retarded boy or whether it was because of how I was being spoken to, I didn’t know. I also didn’t care. I just wanted to shrink so no one would see me ever again.

  Molly, who was only fourteen at the time, ran up onto the stage, hugged me tight, and led me away. She walked us right past our still screaming mother. Once outside the auditorium, Molly headed to the nearest attendant she could find and asked him to call our dad. He must’ve seen or heard everything because he didn’t even question it, just guided us to an office out of sight and away from where Mom could get to us. I cried the entire time, and Molly held on to me as tight as she could, almost as if she was trying to keep all the pieces of me together.