“Mike, I don’t have time right now, I’m on my way home.”
“Oh, how’s Callie doing?”
“She’s great.”
“How old is she now?”
“Six.”
“Wow, so big. And you—”
I cut him off. “Yep, I’m big, too.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to ask how you were.”
It was weird that he would ask me that now of all days when Deputy Sadie Lazar—no. It was only because of the situation. Plus, I was a doctor, so I felt sorry for her having to stand out in the heat. “I’m fine,” I answered.
Ugh. He was giving me the slow nod and that always meant he was psychoanalyzing me.
“Why don’t you come see me?”
“How about I don’t and we say I did?”
“Ryan, you and I both know that our mind being in perfect health is just as important as any other part of the body.”
“My mind is fine. In fact, it reminds me every day that I’ve lost my wife and I have a little girl to raise, alone.”
“Your situation is different. Not every person has to work where they’ve lost their spouse or continue facing the same situation over and over. Every day you see the exact same scenario that you did the morning Deirdre died.”
“You don’t have to remind me, I know what I see.”
“Come see me, please, at least we can catch up.”
Mike walked off and I didn’t bother to clock out. The drive to my house was short, only five minutes, and then I was pulling into the driveway of my two-story colonial. Inside smelled of oregano, but it was quiet, so I went to look for my daughter, who I found sitting in front of the television, ignoring everything around her—including me. I thought girls stayed close to their daddy, but not Callie. The novelty of her dad wore off fast.
“Turn that off and wash your hands, let’s eat,” I ordered and then moved into the kitchen.
“Dadddd, wait, her brothers are bears.”
“You’ve seen Brave a hundred times. Come on.” I waved her toward me before turning to the woman standing at the stove. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, have a seat. I made lasagna.”
“You’re a lifesaver. How was your day, everything with Callie go smooth?”
“My day was fine. Callie is Callie, struggled to get homework done but then a burst of energy to watch television. I swear that girl is going to need glasses if she continues staring at that boob tube.” I smiled at my mother’s antiquated terms.
Before I sat, I washed my hands and grabbed a Coke from the fridge. “Callie, turn the television off and get in here now.” When the movie still hadn’t been turned off after three seconds, I yelled again. “Callie, now or no television for a week!”
Her huff of displeasure preceded the stomp of her feet as she marched to the bathroom to wash up and then continued stomping into the kitchen.
“Hello, sunshine, how was your day? Tell me what you did at school.”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. I couldn’t do anything because I was in a dress.”
“Then don’t wear dresses,” I replied, as if that should solve that.
“Young ladies wear dresses to school,” my mother cut in. I wasn’t going to argue because, what did I know about what girls wore? Hell, I wasn’t even sure of when the last time I bought clothes for myself was, let alone bought them for my daughter.
“Well, Nana knows these things.”
Callie let out another grumble, and I swore to god she was six going on thirteen. I dreaded the day her hormones went into full swing.
“You had to have done something at school. Even if it was stare at a wall, tell me about it.”
“We worked on our quadrant math,” she mumbled around a mouthful of lasagna.
“That’s horrid.” I shook my head, math today was harder than college calculus. I will never grasp splitting numbers into quadrants and then going square by square just to come up with a simple number.
“Do you have homework?”
“Nana already helped me.”
Thank you, I mouthed to my mother, who gave me a gentle smile in return. Getting more than a few words from my daughter was like pulling teeth.
We finally finished our dinner, and I grabbed my mom’s dirty plate from her. “Mom, why don’t you go on to your house, Callie and I will clean up the kitchen, won’t we, Callie?” I gave my daughter a subtle wink. She knew what this meant.
“Yes.” It was the first time in a while that I saw true excitement in her eyes.
“What are you two up to?”
“Nothing. Promise.” I crossed my heart.
“Nope, nothing, Nana.”
“Very well.” My mom stood, gave us both a goodbye hug, and headed out. It wasn’t as if she had far to go. When Deirdre and I found out she was pregnant, we moved here because the pool house out back had already been converted into an in-law suite. With both of us being doctors, we knew we’d be working crazy hours and would need the help.
Callie peered around the kitchen corner. “She’s gone.” She ran to the television and changed the channel from Apple TV to Apple Radio. God, kids today knew how to work every gadget, gizmo, and app there was.
The sounds of George Thorogood vibrated through the house. Callie slid back into the kitchen, and while I cleaned up, she pulled out sundae cups, ice cream, and a variety of different toppings so she could make dessert while we both sang “Bad to the Bone.”
“Bbbbaaaaddd,” we sang in unison and then laughed.
Once the kitchen was clean and sundaes were made, we moved into the living room and piled onto the couch.
“What do you want to watch tonight?”
“Does it have to be Disney?”
“No. It can be whatever you want. What did you have in mind?”
“G.I. Jane.”
Okay, call me a bad dad, but she liked the movie and knew she couldn’t cuss, so I wasn’t overly worried about the rating. It was about a woman who proved to people that she could do whatever she set her mind to—like being a Navy Seal. I wanted my daughter to feel like this, I didn’t care what she wanted to do, nothing would stand in her way if I could help it.
“Sounds good.” I pulled the coffee table forward so her little feet could reach it and she could stretch out just like me.
3
Sadie
“You need to sign in.” I glanced up at Lizzy and glared. Really? I’d been volunteering at Kidz Klub for three years. That was longer than she’d been the director here, but Lizzy still tapped one gnawed fingernail on the counter as she waited for me to add my name on the list.
“Nervous habit?” I pointed to her fingers.
“I do it when I’m thinking.” More like when she was being conniving, but what did I care? I was here for the kids, not some miserable bitch. When Lizzy was first hired as the director, I liked her because she truly did love the kids. What she didn’t love was when she felt that the kids loved someone else more.
I headed down the hall and into the great room where many of the children hung out. The Kidz Klub was one of those places that many people had no clue even existed and would never grasp the importance of its purpose, but for those who did, this place was a godsend. I knew how they felt, I’d been them. Kidz Klub was devoted to elementary-age children who had lost one or both parents.
People say that you don’t remember things from when you’re little and that you only remember what people tell you. But I remember as if it were yesterday. I patted my chest, I didn’t have many memories of my mom, but I remember that night my dad came and told me that my mom had passed.
“Miss Sadie . . .” Evelyn, an eight-year-old girl, came running toward me. “We’re having a father-daughter dance at school.”
“You are? Have you asked someone to be your dad for the day?” I asked Evelyn.
“I’m thinking about asking Mr. Sam. I haven’t asked him before.”
“I think Mr. Sam will like t
hat a lot. If he can fit it in his schedule, I’m sure that he’ll be there. What else do you have going on?” I took a chair and turned it around so that I was straddling it when I sat.
“Hey, everyone,” Lizzy interrupted my time with the kids. “You know what I have?”
“What?” They bounced like Mexican jumping beans.
“I have that new movie you all have been asking me for,” Lizzy waved it in the air. “Let’s go to the auditorium, and I’ll put it on.”
“Can we watch it after Miss Sadie leaves?” Evelyn asked.
“If you want to stay with Miss Sadie, you can, but you’ll miss the movie. It’s up to you.”
I debated for a brief moment between my TASER or pepper spray . . . hmmmm, which one should I use on the twatwaffle? She could have let them watch that movie anytime but nooo, she waited until I was here.
One of the kids called my name, and I dropped my annoyance. “I’ll stay with Miss Sadie, I’ve already seen that movie.”
“Why don’t you all come sit with me?” I waved over the group of girls who I always spent time with. “How has this week been?” I asked Charlotte, she was a tender soul.
“I can go into the auditorium with you if you want, I don’t mind. We can watch it together,” I offered.
“No. I’d rather talk with you.” Charlotte held on to my hand, and she and I waited for the others to follow Lizzy out.
“Okay, Charlotte, what would you like to talk about? Boys?”
“Yuck, no.”
“Yeah, boys are yucky,” I agreed with her, but images of gorgeous blue eyes appeared in my mind.
“My daddy has a girlfriend.”
“That’s wonderful, have you met her?”
Charlotte nodded. “I don’t like her.” This was a common issue. A lot of kids hated someone new assuming the position of their other parent. Especially if it was still relatively fresh or if they were older and had vibrant memories of their missing parent.
“Why not? Your daddy likes her, and he wouldn’t like someone mean, would he?” I asked, trying to pull Charlotte around to see the truth.
“He doesn’t see her being mean.”
“You see her being mean?” Charlotte nodded. “How is she mean?”
“When Daddy leaves, sometimes Patricia will watch me, she looks in the drawers and goes through things in Daddy’s closet. She even took some of Mommy’s things and put them in her purse.”
“Did you tell your daddy?”
Charlotte shook her head. “Patricia will get mad if I do.”
“Okay, let me see what I can do, okay?” Charlotte nodded.
“Besides Patricia, how is everything else? How is school?”
“Good.”
“Does your teacher still have a wart on her nose?” Charlotte giggled, I loved that sound. “No, she doesn’t have a wart. She has squinty eyes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think that she needs glasses, she squints when she looks out at the classroom, like she can’t tell who is talking. Sometimes she mixes us up and it’s funny.”
For the next hour, Charlotte and I talked and laughed and I let her win a few rounds of Jenga, but then my alarm went off and I had to leave.
As I headed out, I paused when my name was called. “Sadie.” I turned to face Lizzy. “Are you still planning to come back next week?”
Why did she make this sound like a chore? “How long have I been coming here?” Lizzy didn’t answer. “You have no clue, do you? That’s probably because I’ve been coming longer than you have been running it. Lizzy, the kids love you, you know that, right? I’m like a toy that they only get to play with once a week, but you are their favorite toy they get every day.” I hoped that she caught on to my analogy, it wasn’t often that I was eloquent, but when I was, I was downright poetic. Frost, Emerson, and Dickinson could learn a thing or two from me. I smiled at my own silliness.
“Oh, and by the way, will you have Charlotte’s counselor call me?”
“No, you are a volunteer.”
“I’m also a deputy, which you seem to always forget. So, I’ll ask you again, will you have Charlotte’s counselor call me?” I didn’t wait for her to answer because I knew I didn’t have to. She would pass my request along. Still, as I strode out, I made a mental note to try to find out who it was if I didn’t hear from anyone in the next day or so. I didn’t want to blow things out of proportion because sometimes things weren’t as they appeared, but at the same time, her worries were important and needed to be addressed.
Thanks to Orlando traffic and people who became idiots when they spied a sheriff’s vehicle and overcompensated by driving under the fucking speed limit, it took me forty-five minutes to get to Bridget’s.
I knocked on the door and then walked right in. “Hey, about time,” Bridget said as she held out a bottle of beer to me.
Every Wednesday, me and the girls gathered for our all-things-unladylike night. Sure, that wasn’t the intentional name, but it ended up being called that since we spent most of the night cussing, drinking, and sharing our dirty senses of humor.
We brought all of this together in Bridget’s apartment, god help her neighbors. It was always her place since Bridget was Irish—really, really Irish, and her mother came over every Wednesday with containers full of food and stocked Bridget’s refrigerator. Plus, she also cleaned Bridget’s apartment for her. I tried this once with Margaret, my stepmom, and she laughed at me. Every now and then she still laughs, saying, “Remember that time you asked me to come cook and clean for you? Bwwahahaha.”
My friend Kat was Greek, we were hoping that she would have more luck, maybe it was a European cultural thing. But it didn’t work for her either. Her mom tied it to typical Greek-mom thinking, telling her, “You can come to me, I’ll feed you and I’ll send you home with some leftovers. But, you need to keep a clean house, how else are you going to catch a husband?”
“Sorry, I was running a few minutes late, was up at Kidz Klub.” I plopped down onto the sofa.
“No clue why you still volunteer there. That clitcake stresses you out,” Harley, the tad bit most outspoken of us, pronounced.
I coughed as my swig of beer went down the wrong pipe from laughing. “How the hell do you come up with this shit?”
“It’s a gift.” Harley winked.
“Don’t, the clit is sacred—hell, men have been searching for it for years. Do not defile it by using it as a reference to that woman,” Kat reprimanded.
I’d stopped drinking because I was laughing so hard I was wasting Yuengling and spewing it was alcohol abuse. “So, what are we doing tonight?”
“We’re waiting for Piper to get here and then Cards Against Humanity.” Bridget pulled out a deck of black cards.
I was already smiling.
“Are you girls ready to eat?” Mrs. McGuire called from the kitchen.
Bridget’s front door opened and in walked Piper. “Woman, your stomach hears food and you appear. Ma just said dinner was ready.” Bridget handed a beer to Piper.
“Perfect timing then.”
Of the five of us, Piper was the only one on motors with me. Kat and Harley drove squad cars, although they were both hoping to interview for positions on motors, and Bridget was in dispatch.
“We’re coming, Ma,” Bridget hollered, and we all followed, Bridget carrying the card game with her.
“I made shepherd’s pie for you all tonight.”
We had all just taken our seats when the front door flew open again. “What’s for dinner?” Aiden, one of Bridget’s brothers, asked as he walked into her apartment without knocking.
“Nothing for you. It’s Wednesday, which means it’s my night. Go home, Ma cooks for you on Mondays.” Bridget jumped up and ran to block the kitchen doorway.
I glanced to Harley, whose eyes were alight with something already stirring in her mind. She and Aiden had this long-standing challenge of who could make the other one blush first. Unfortunately, neither one was
the blushing sort, so we were all subjected to their fucked-up foreplay.
“Come now, Bridget, I made enough for all of ya, your brother can have some, too.” But before Colleen finished, the front door opened again and Callum, Bridget’s oldest brother, walked in.
“No. No, no, no. Go home, both of you. Ma will be at your house on Friday. Tonight is girls’ night. Go.”
“Stop being a little shit,” Callum said as he moved into the kitchen and gave his mom a peck on the cheek. “Hey, Ma, you look lovely.”
“Well played,” I whispered. “Ouch.” I grabbed my side where Bridget jabbed me.
“Fine, Ma, just fix them paper plates and they can take them to go.”
“I’m on the motorcycle.” Aiden glanced at his motors uniform.
Callum, on the other hand, was a detective and was in a button-down shirt and tie. Their father retired from the sheriff’s department, and Bridget was the only one not a deputy, but her job was equally as important, she was a dispatch operator.
“Fine, eat fast—” Bridget’s words were cut off by her front door opening yet again.
“How many times do I have to tell you to lock this fucking door?” Patrick McGuire boomed.
“Patrick,” Colleen reprimanded.
“Da, there’s no use since these two buffoons come over without calling first, I’d constantly be answering the door, have a ringing bell in me head, or no peace and quiet. Now, you tell me, look around the room. There’s you, both me asshat brothers, Piper, Sadie, Harley, and Kat, all of whom are armed. Really, what kind of idiot would bother me?”
The Irish drama was only going to escalate if I didn’t intervene, so I stepped forward and caught Bridget’s attention. “Why don’t we all fix a plate and then all of us can play Cards Against Humanity?”
Bridget groaned, but everyone else cheered on the idea. With a plate in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, we each made our way to the living room and took a seat around the coffee table.
“Our typical rules?” Piper asked.
“Sure,” Harley agreed.
Book'em Sadie (Iron Badges #1) Page 3
