Building a Family

by M. K. Stelmack

  “You want me to talk to her?” Seth said.

  That wouldn’t work. Seth and Connie were now on talking terms, but he bet the language was loud, fast and frustrated. “No. I just wanted to keep you in the loop, especially with Alexi and the kids.”

  Which was to say that Ariel might be a bad influence around the kids, so heads-up. Seth caught on. “Do you think the kid’s using?”

  “Her mother was, but I’m not sure about Ariel,” he admitted. “Truth is, I don’t know much about her. I don’t have any reason to distrust her, or trust her.” Ben stabbed the sawhorse with the chisel. “I get that her mom’s just died. I get that she’s alone in the world. Believe me, I understand that. But she’s been rude to both me and Connie, and Connie doesn’t deserve it.”

  Seth made a disgusted noise. He did that regularly whenever the conversation turned to his sister. “You think the kid’s got to go?”

  Leave it to Seth to be blunt. “Connie’s bound and determined to keep Ariel. I have an idea how to help them both.”

  “No way,” Seth said. “You don’t want me to get involved, fine. By the same token, you need to stay out of it, too.”

  “You should’ve told me that when I was twelve.”

  “You wouldn’t have listened then, either. Ben, when will you learn?”

  Ben had to laugh. “Believe it or not, Connie asked me the same thing.”

  “Then take her advice.”

  He was. He was going to do what Connie had asked of him twenty-five years ago. Keep a lookout at all times, in all directions, so she stayed safe.

  * * *

  THE WITCHY SHRIEK of the coffee bean grinder woke Connie. She flung herself into the hallway, the bare boards cold and barbarous on her toes. She stumbled like a drunk in an earthquake to the kitchen and grasped a kitchen counter.

  Ariel, dressed in yesterday’s clothes and, from her crossed arms, in yesterday’s attitude, stood over the appliance. Its shrieks had deepened to a guttural howl as semiground coffee and untouched beans rattled around and around and around.

  “It doesn’t work,” Connie croaked out. She cleared her throat and repeated it louder.

  “It works. It hasn’t finished.”

  “No. It’ll just—” Forget it, she was not competing with a coffee grinder at—she read the microwave clock and adjusted for the time change she’d not accounted for when it happened back in November—8:07. She threw herself across the island and killed the grinder’s power switch. The howls receded to whimpers, to the ricocheting of a single bean, to silence.

  Ariel took up her own aggravated howl. “It wasn’t finished.” She switched on the grinder but Connie yanked out the plug and held on to it.

  “It is finished. Trust me. It starts off fine but the ground coffee gets under the blades, then they stick and half the beans never get done.”

  “Put in less.”

  “It can only handle enough beans for one cup of coffee. It takes forever to make a pot. I use that.” She pointed to My Maker, then opened the freezer drawer and took out the only thing in it, an economy-sized Tim Horton’s tin can of ground coffee. “And this.”

  Connie slid it across the island at Ariel. “I’m going back to bed.” She took two steps when her flickering consciousness registered the coffee table in the living room. She spun back to Ariel.

  “The box on the coffee table. The ring box. You moved it.”

  Ariel had the coffee can in a headlock and was prying open the frozen lid with her chewed nails. She kept her head bent to the task as she answered. “There was no do-not-disturb sign on it, so yeah, I saw it.”

  “Saw it? You opened the box? You saw the ring?”

  The plastic lid gave away, releasing the sweet smell of coffee. Ariel eyed the coffeemaker. “How does this work?”

  “You need to—never mind.” Connie got to work on My Maker. Her mother had often made coffee while arguing with Connie, frantic as she now was for a cup of patience. “You looked at the ring?”

  With no coffee grinder to glare at, Ariel targeted Connie. “Yes, I looked at the ring, okay? What’s the big deal?”

  “Did you touch it?” Connie was struck by a horrible thought, and she crumpled the coffee filter. “Did you put it on?”

  Ariel seemed equally horrified. “No! That would make me engaged to Ben. That’s sick.”

  Relieved, Connie tapped the filter into place. “Don’t think it quite works that way. How do you know it’s Ben’s?”

  “Who else? Are you dating two guys?”

  Connie lifted the coffee can out of Ariel’s arms. “No. I’m not even dating Ben.”

  “But it’s his ring?” Confusion outweighed belligerence in Ariel’s voice.

  Connie mouthed the count of teaspoons as she scooped in the ground coffee, digging out an extra heaping one just because.

  She could tell Ariel the box was none of her business, except it was the proverbial white elephant in the house, and Connie detested white elephants.

  “Look,” she said, gushing water from the kitchen tap into the pot. “Ben gave it to me on Valentine’s Day. I told him I wasn’t going to accept it, but he refuses to take it back and I refuse to marry him, so there it sits.”

  “Why won’t you marry him?”

  Because of the list. Shoot, the list! Connie halted the water and muttered the five names under her breath. “Timing’s not right,” she said, resuming the flow from the tap.

  “It’s been five years! What kind of perfect timing are you looking for?”

  Connie poured the water into My Maker, and flipped on the switch. It gurgled and sighed. “Now we wait.”

  “Hopefully not as long as Ben with the ring.”

  Connie had never felt more awake at this hour of the morning. “It’s not my fault he won’t accept the ring back.”

  “Then sell it. You could get, like, thousands for it.”

  My Maker released a single brown drop into the mostly clean pot. Connie rattled through the dirty dishes in the sink for two mostly clean mugs. “Why do you say that?” she said, aiming for casual as she rinsed off one black and one pink cup.

  “Have you seen it?” Ariel asked. Her back to Ariel, Connie shook her head, realizing too late that Ariel’s question had been rhetorical, that she assumed Connie had opened the box.

  Ariel headed into the living room. “You have got to see it. It will change your life.”

  “No!” Connie ran after her. “No, leave it alone. Ariel. Leave it alone.” But Ariel had snatched up the box and was opening it, whipping to face Connie as she did. Connie clamped her hands over her eyes. “No, close the box. Do you hear me? I’m not opening my eyes until you close the box.”

  “Because you know that if you see the ring, you will put it on, right? Right?”

  Connie’s fingers were pressed so hard against her eyeballs pricks of light moved like roving constellations inside her eyelids. “Yes, yes! Okay? Just put it down!”

  “Look at it, just once.”

  “No. Put it down.”

  “Once. That’s all I ask.”

  “No. It’s mine. Put it down.”

  “Once.”

  “No.”

  Back and forth they went, coffee burping into the pot.

  “Okay, fine, then,” Ariel said. “I will put it down.”

  “You did?” Connie eased the pressure off her eyes and then squeezed them again when she realized what Ariel had failed to mention. “Did you close the lid?”

  “No.”

  Connie heard Ariel’s boots stride across the living room and back into the kitchen. “Ariel? Wait.” Connie shuffled after her, still self-blinded because she couldn’t be sure that the little sneak didn’t have the ring, ready to flash it the second Connie opened her eyes.

  “Let’s make a deal. You close the box up and
I’ll—” think, think “—I’ll let you have a birthday party next month. A sweet sixteen one.”

  “I don’t want a party. I don’t know anybody.”

  “You know me and Ben and Seth, and I could introduce you to his fiancée and their kids.”

  “That would be so dumb, and not fun.”

  “All right, then,” Connie said. “Close the box or else I will throw you a party tomorrow.”

  She heard Ariel’s boots return to the living room and then the sound of the box snapping shut. Connie removed her hands just as Ariel reappeared in the kitchen, box free. She proceeded to pour herself, and only herself, coffee into the black mug.

  Ariel extracted her phone from her back pocket. “For the record,” she said. “You should put on the ring.” She tucked in her earbuds. “You’re not getting any younger.” She waved a hand at the general state of the place as she left for her room. “Or richer.”

  * * *

  BEN CRACKED OPEN Connie’s front door late that afternoon to hear her and Ariel going at it in the kitchen.

  “I’m not going to school.”

  “You’re going to school.”

  Ben shook off his jacket, hung it on the coat rack and then sat on the bottom step to take off his boots.

  “Besides, I’m not in grade ten.”

  “You’re nearly sixteen, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I missed a bunch of school, so I’m taking grade nine courses—but I’m not sitting in a grade nine class so they can all stare at me.”

  “You’re not giving up on school, so you can end up working a dead-end job and trying to upgrade in between shifts. School’s important. You’re smart, so you’re going. That’s final, and that’s the law.”

  Laces loosened on one boot, Ben started on the other.

  “Anyway, what else are you going to do? Lie on the couch with those things stuck in your ears all day?”

  “I’ll get a job. So I can have cream in my coffee.”

  “I can afford cream. I just need to go to the store and get some.”

  “How? You don’t have a car. You don’t have a car, floors, cream—”

  “Enough,” Ben said, loud enough for both females to hear. He pulled off his boots and set them by the door.

  Connie appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ben. I didn’t hear you come in.” She looked...frayed. Her hair was long and wild with bobby pins jutting out like landed stick insects. As he climbed the stairs, her eyes tracked him, her pupils dilated black pools. The reason for her stress appeared behind Connie at the kitchen entrance, dressed in black and scowling.

  “Your auntie Connie is right,” Ben said. “You’re going to school.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  It was the same line Connie had used on her mother. Her mother and Seth had argued with her amid slamming doors and shaking fixtures. Connie hadn’t dropped out because he’d asked her not to, but she had downgraded her subjects so that she could pass with no effort.

  He tossed aside Ariel’s quilt on the love seat and sat square in the middle, setting his socked feet on the coffee table. He tried to ignore the pale blue ring box in the corner.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I can’t make you go. Instead, I’ll give you a free lesson from the school of reality.”

  Ariel leaned against the wall that backed the kitchen. “Yeah, yeah, school of hard knocks. Been there. Still there.”

  Ben didn’t doubt that, but he went in a different direction. “Yesterday you insisted that Connie take care of you. If you want that, then you can’t get your back up if she actually tries.”

  “She’s got bigger problems than worrying about me and school.”

  “You mean money?”

  “I don’t—” Connie began.

  “Yes,” Ariel said.

  This was his moment. Ben’s hands reflexively tightened on the soft back of the love seat. He’d hoped to do this without Ariel present, but it might work out better this way. “I have a solution to the money problem.”

  Both females waited with deeply suspicious expressions. “I propose to buy the house. Immediately. At market price.”

  “No!” from Connie.

  “Good idea,” said Ariel.

  “It’s not for sale,” Connie objected.

  “I thought your first question would be ‘Why?’”

  “I don’t need to know that since I’m not selling.”

  “You’re planning on flipping the place, anyway.”

  “Not to you. It’s going to be part of the terms of sale. I will insist on knowing the seller’s name.”

  “Take the money,” Ariel said. “Your problems will be solved.”

  “My problems, not his.” Connie jabbed a finger at Ben.

  Ben folded his hands behind his head to make it appear as if the outcome didn’t matter to him. “I can fix the place up and recover my investment and profit. You can stay through the renovations. You can even pay rent if you want. We both win.” He fully intended to have that ring on her finger by the time he finished and a new house for her wedding gift.

  “This house is my mess. I want to fix it myself.”

  Typical Connie. As big a hole as she’d ever dug for herself, she’d never called upon anyone to fill it for her. When Seth had taken the fall for her, it had nearly destroyed her. It had destroyed their relationship, that was for sure.

  Connie swept her arm about the place. “I mean, look at this house. I get a house—a house!—and I wreck it.”

  “You’re not wrecking it. You’re renovating it.”

  “No, I wrecked it because I couldn’t afford to renovate it.”

  “Then let me do it. Tell me, if anyone else made you this deal, would you take it?”

  She gave him that consternated look, like an ornery cat. “Yes. Unless it was Seth. But he hates renovating, so he never would offer.”

  “So you admit you owe me something, yet once again refuse to give it.”

  Her frown deepened. “That’s because you don’t know what’s good for you.”

  “And the one who self-destructs knows better?”

  Ariel was still leaning against the wall, her booted ankles crossed, eyes and ears tracking the conversation. He must be holding his own if she wasn’t interfering.

  Connie glared. “I don’t want you taking on something that has blown up in my face. Why would it be any different for you?”

  There was no beating around the bush on this, so out he came with it. “Because I’ve got the cash.”

  Her face paled, her shoulders sagged and she hung there, as if suspended by a thin thread.

  “Connie—”

  She flipped up her hand. “No. You’re right.” She cranked her head to Ariel. “I’m being selfish.” And to Ben. “Fine. I’ll sell to you.”

  He aimed for lightness to shake her from her slump. “Good, because I’ve just put my house up for sale. I might need a place to crash.”

  His words had the exact opposite effect. Connie’s eyes widened in horror. “You’ve lived there practically all your life. Your workshop is there. Your dad gave that house to you. It’s paid off. It’s your home.”

  She was right, except for the last part. “This—” he pointed to the stripped floor, then at her “—with you, is my home. Has been for the past quarter century.”

  She looked ready to bolt—or faint dead away.

  Ben didn’t want to leave it there, but he didn’t want Ariel part of a conversation that had become personal. Leaving Connie time to recover, he focused on Ariel. “You just saw the roof over your head being sold out from under you. You want to keep it over you, then you’ll do what Auntie Connie and I tell you to do. I make the rules, you choose if you wish to live with them or leave them. Understood?”

  A look of triumph flashed across Ariel
’s face. Not at all what he’d expected. Had she manipulated Connie and him into giving her what she wanted? She pushed herself off the wall and pulled out her phone. “I guess I’ll call the school counselor.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Connie’s shoulders were still slumped, her head bent so her uncombed hair hid her face.

  “Connie—”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I understand. I guess I got my lesson in reality, too.”

  She’d read the situation wrong, except had she? She had bungled the house, yes, and she didn’t have the resources for Ariel. But a cold hard fact was that he would fix those problems.

  What he couldn’t fix, as he watched her retreat down the hallway to her room, was her conviction that she was a hopeless loser.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THREE WEEKS LATER, no money had changed hands, no papers had been signed, which suited Connie just fine. She’d told Ben nothing would happen with her house until his house sold. She didn’t want him leveraging his house on top of juggling renovation costs. Lack of true ownership hadn’t stopped him from turning the house into a construction zone, however.

  He’d moved in his saws and sawhorses, grinders and power drills, working with an electrician one day and a plumber the next. Dust from the drywall and floor sanding hung in the air, so she kept her bedroom door shut at all times, a towel blocking the crack at the bottom. Ariel had relocated downstairs to a couch bed borrowed from Dizzy. Ben had thrown up plastic sheeting stapled to studs around Ariel’s bed to form a kind of bedroom. Ariel said it was a cage; Connie was reminded of a fish bowl; Ben called it good enough.

  She didn’t know where he got his energy from. He still picked her up at 2:00 a.m., and was at the house by nine thirty. He worked there until late afternoon when he drove her to work. She suspected that he had an evening nap. Knowing for sure would mean asking him, and she tried to avoid talking to him. It was too easy, too fun, too confusing, too...too much.

  Avoidance was why she was at the town library now, studying for her nursing certificate. Actually, she was avoiding studying. Everything distracted her—the comings and goings of patrons, the chatter of the librarians, the flashing screens of the computer users, the nearby vending machine. She’d tried all sorts of mind games, from timings to short walks to reading breaks. Nothing worked.