Sleeper

by Katherine Rhodes

  Walking through the door to the stairs, I looked at Fischer, who looked as petrified and determined as I did. “Have you ever actually officially met Sheehan?”

  He shook his head. “No. I know of him, we have acquaintances. That’s it.”

  “Going in blind. Let’s get this over with, and piss off one of the most influential men in Philadelphia.”

  I knocked on the door labeled office at the top of the stairs. A faint voice yelled permission to enter, and I pushed the door open.

  I didn’t know what I expected to find inside but it wasn’t what was there.

  An extremely large man was seated in a chair behind a desk. He looked like he was about to explode—or float away. Despite that, he was good looking, with wavy blond shoulder length hair, and milk chocolate brown eyes.

  “You’re not Weston,” he stated.

  “No, Mister Sheehan, we’re not,” Fischer said. “We need to talk to you about a situation…”

  “My managers deal directly with any and all complaints about food and service.” He picked up a piece of cheese and nibbled on it, oddly delicate for a man of his size.

  I waved him off. “This isn’t about food, or your restaurants. It’s about a woman named Andrea Stavros.”

  His nibbling stopped and he looked at the corner of the room. I hadn’t even realized the accountant was in the room, but whatever look Sheehan gave him, he took it to mean get the hell out, and he did. Quickly.

  “Andrea Stavros,” he grumbled, standing up. “Really. Has that bitch crawled out of her sewer? I told her years ago—”

  “Andrea Stavros is dead,” Fischer said, cutting him off. “She died four years ago, a heroin needle in her neck because the veins in her arm collapsed.”

  The details Haden had given us on the woman’s death had sent a chill up my spine again. It wasn’t a pretty or nice way to go.

  It was quiet in the room after Fischer’s declaration. Sheehan moved to one of the other platters in the room and picked up a piece of honeydew melon, nibbling on that this time.

  He finally broke the silence after he’d eaten the whole slice. “Heroin.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “She left children behind.”

  “Children?” Sheehan was honestly shocked. “There was only the little girl.”

  I held out the picture of Benjamin that had been in the file. He didn’t want to touch it, so I walked forward, holding it so he couldn’t miss the kid in the image.

  Who looked so exactly like him.

  It was as if the picture was a thing alive.

  “What the hell…” He took a step back.

  “His name is Benjamin Matthias Sheehan, and you’re listed as his father on the birth certificate.”

  “I don’t have any kids.”

  Fischer looked between the picture and Sheehan a few times. “Funny. That kid really looks like you. So I’m thinking you didn’t know about this kid, and didn’t care to know.”

  Sheehan’s face switched from disbelief to sheer anger. “She was a fucking fling. Anything that came out of it was on her.”

  Fischer started wandering around the room.

  I stared at him, and slipped the picture of the boy back in the folder. “I was hoping this would be easy, you would say you didn’t know, you didn’t want him, sorry about Andrea.”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “Why do you think we’re here, Mister Sheehan?”

  “To ruin me.”

  “You’re a suspicious bastard,” Fischer said, picking up a piece of pineapple and munching on it.

  “I didn’t get here by being some affable dude,” he sneered.

  “We’re not here to ruin you,” I cut in before the two of them could really get going. “We want to work a deal with you. About the boy. You haven’t officially terminated your parental rights to him.”

  “Where do I sign?”

  “Nowhere, yet,” I answered. “We want to pull him from his foster home and place him with his sister. But the foster parents aren’t agreeable to that. They want to keep her away from him.”

  “Wasn’t she—” He snapped his jaw shut as mine popped open.

  “You knew! You knew about both of the kids!” I roared.

  Slowly, Matthias Sheehan turned bright red.

  Fischer’s anger was all over his face and in his body language. “You knew. And you let her fuck her way to food and shelter?”

  “Not my responsibility.”

  Fischer grabbed the plate of food and threw it across the room. “You have all this food! All this space! And you let that girl sell her body for ramen noodles and hot dogs to keep her brother—your son!—fed and sheltered.” He dumped a chafing tray on the floor, and I watched as the sterno spilled on to the rug.

  If we hadn’t been standing there, I would have let it burn. I grabbed the pitcher of water and put it out, out of sheer self-preservation.

  “They weren’t my problem.” Sheehan walked back, horrified at the mess.

  “You’re disgusting,” Fischer snapped, and flipped another tray of food off the table.

  But at that moment, a look of horrified realization slid over his face and he slammed against the table, tipping trays and glasses. He shook his head violently and ran for the door, yanking it open and darting down the stairs.

  I took a deep breath. First this pig, and then I’d deal with my boyfriend.

  “You knew about Ellie and Ben. And you let that little girl sell herself for money. You are a trash human, Sheehan. What I want you to do is sign that child’s guardianship over to me. Relinquish your parental rights and let me take care of him. Like he deserves.”

  “Send the paperwork by courier,” he snapped. “Don’t come back here. I won’t be threatened by you.”

  “Deal,” I said, heading for the door. “The papers will be here tomorrow. And, Mister Sheehan, if you have any other mistakes walking about in this city, I suggest you find a better way to deal with them than getting their mother’s addicted to heroin.”

  The large man in the corner sucked in a breath, but didn’t say a thing. I walked out the door and shut it with a quiet snick behind me.

  The heroin had been a guess, but since he’d already shown me what kind of man he really was, it was an educated one.

  Sheehan had two things he loved in this life: food and sex. And he didn’t want to deal with anything else ever.

  Fischer

  I grabbed the plate of food and threw it across the room. “You have all this food! All this space! And you let that girl sell her body for ramen noodles and hot dogs to keep her brother—your son!—fed and sheltered.” I grabbed the chafing tray and dumped it on the floor, and I watched as the sterno spilled on to the rug.

  Wren grabbed the pitcher of water and put it out. She was dead calm as she did it—it was marvelous to see.

  “They weren’t my problem.” Sheehan walked back, horrified at the mess.

  “You’re disgusting,” I barked, and tossed another tray of food off the table.

  But in that instant, his answer finally reached my brain.

  They weren’t my problem.

  The same words I used all the time. The ones that had me justifying my cowardice outside the operating room doors. The same reasoning I gave for embracing my sloth about courts, and the legal system. No paperwork, no courts they didn’t work. Why try? It wasn’t really my problem.

  I came off narrowminded. Hateful. Uncaring. Cold, aloof, closed, and inhumane. The ability to say no to life saving procedures to underfunded families made me a monster in my own eyes.

  I was no better than the piece of shit upstairs, who sat on his leather throne, surrounded by all the food he could eat, clothed in custom suits, living in massive penthouses that could hold twenty or thirty Ellies and Bens… And didn’t. He had gone out of his way—as I had so many times—to say it wasn’t his problem. And even if it wasn’t, it didn’t absolve him—me—of our basic responsibility to humanity.

  Even thou
gh he’d tried to abdicate his responsibility to his own flesh and blood, I couldn’t see that he was anymore heinous than I was.

  A soft hand touched the back of my neck and I felt more than saw Wren sit next to me on the curb.

  I’d made it as far as that?

  “Fischer.”

  “Is that me? Is that really what I am in there? Someone who just can’t be bothered with the rest of humanity?”

  “Do you think I would have been even remotely interested in a person who couldn’t give a shit?” Her words were soft. “I don’t even think the piece of shit is a piece of shit inside. He has…demons. We all do. I know what yours are, and I know you aren’t the kind of person you saw in there.”

  “All those kids I could have helped all this time, if I hadn’t been acting like so much of a shitbag.”

  “Well, stop acting like a shitbag and start now. He agreed to sign Benjamin over to me.”

  I chuckled, and smeared away the tears that had gather in my eyes. “Like that wasn’t going to happen?”

  She pursed her lips, and the smile fell a bit. “You know, you were kind of right about him. He’s conceited, and selfish. I’m pretty sure he got Andrea Stavros hooked on heroin to get her out of his life. To be able to walk away from someone with an addiction.”

  I picked at the cement curb. “He’s not one to criticize anyone about addiction.”

  She nodded. “The food in that room… It was obscene how much was in there. He doesn’t even realize his addiction. Being a restauranteur is the worst profession for him.”

  Coughing, I glanced back at the bar. “Sorry about the mini-inferno in there.”

  “Next time you flip a table,” she said, standing up and offering me a hand, “make sure to extinguish the sterno.”

  “What makes you think there’s going to be a next time?” She raised an eyebrow. “Because you were raised in Jersey. We all flip the fucking tables.”

  Ellie stared at the four of us standing in the lobby. “You’re all serious?”

  “Completely,” Miriam said.

  “I had the electrician come in yesterday and run power up there,” Wren answered. “I got you a stupid little fireplace space heater, and we’re going to Ikea, right now, to pick out a bed and furniture.”

  “Hence the U-haul,” I answer, jerking my thumb over my shoulder out the door at the rental van.

  She looked us over again and she looked shaken. “You really did this?”

  Wren held out the temporary guardianship papers, and she took them to inspect. “I sure did. I don’t want you in a group home and somewhere along the line, I crossed from doctor-patient to ‘potential older-sister-type of foster thing’.” I folded my arms. “Which is totally the proper clinical term.”

  Laxmi snorted.

  “What about Benjamin?”

  Wren nodded. “We’re working on that. We found his birth father and there is paperwork involved in getting him out of the foster home.”

  “Can I visit him?”

  “No.” Her answer brokered no argument. “There’s too many complications in that. But, he’s safe, and warm and fed, so you don’t have to worry about that right now. We’ll do what we can to get him to the house.”

  She looked down at the papers in her hand and held them back out. “I’ve never been to Ikea.”

  I snorted. “Oh boy.”

  “Come on, let’s go. We have to be able to at least get the bed set up tonight,” Miriam said. She snagged Laxmi’s hand and headed out the front doors of the hospital.

  Wren and I tucked the young woman between us and headed for the U-haul. I hopped in the driver’s side, and she held the door open for Ellie. The girl looked a little shocked, but climbed in, and Wren right behind her, slamming the door.

  “You…you’re really doing this for me?”

  “Yep,” I said, pulling the van into traffic.

  “Why?”

  “Because we like you?” Wren smiled.

  “What’s the catch?”

  “You have to go to school and be a regular sixteen year old girl,” I answered. “Do homework. Watch TV. Read bad teenage literature.”

  “Get in trouble for breaking curfew. Learn how to drive a car. Get in arguments with your besties.” Wren laughed. “Get your high school diploma. Think about college, or a trade.”

  Her hands covered her face, and her body started shaking. Wren glanced at me across her, and wrapped her arm around Ellie’s shoulders. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

  She was sobbing. “You’re serious?”

  “Elutheria, you’re a very talented young lady with a shitty situation,” Wren said, quietly. “We see that. We see you. And we can help, we want to help. If we put you in the foster system you’d be lost or gone in a few days. I think you trust us, and those papers you saw earlier aren’t foster papers. They’re guardianship papers. They have my name on them as your legal guardian. They’re temporary, but I want to make them permanent. Miriam and I want to give you the room in the attic, and I think this is what you need.”

  She was still sobbing, and I motioned to Wren to ask her if she wanted me to pull over or stop. She motioned me on, and I knew she was just going to let the girl cry it out.

  Finally, as we passed under the Ben Franklin Bridge she started to calm down, and inhaled a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry…”

  “Nope, not allowed. This is all a radical change for you,” I said, patting her leg. “You’re allowed to be as emotional as you like.”

  “I haven’t had anyone, not anyone, give a shit about me since my mom died, and even then she wasn’t all that invested after a while.” Ellie’s voice started to calm down.

  “Well, you now have three nagging aunts and a nagging uncle.” Wren laughed.

  Her hand slapped hard on Wren’s knee. “Ben—”

  “I’m working on it, I’m working on it,” she answered, patting the girl’s hand.

  “No, I mean if you get him, where…”

  “With you, of course,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Like we’d get him back and then him go somewhere else? No, you’ll have to share the attic with him.” I pulled the U-haul off the highway and down onto Delaware Avenue. “When we get him, we’ll come back for his bed and stuff.”

  She was quiet a minute as we chugged down the road toward the massive Swedish furniture store. “I still feel like something is going to go wrong and I’m going to wake up back in his bed.”

  “And that’s perfectly normal,” Wren answered. “It’s going to be a long time before you’re going to be able to rid yourself of that feeling. So don’t deny it, but don’t go hunting for something to confirm it. It’s just a feeling, and you’re safe now.”

  I turned into the parking lot, and Ellie’s mouth dropped open. “For real? It’s this big!?”

  “Ikea is an adventure,” I said, finding a parking spot a distance away from the entrance. “Let’s go explore.”

  I pushed the door open, and we all climbed out. Laxmi and Miriam were climbing out of their car, and Miriam started to power walk to the door. “Come on. I want meatballs.”

  “I thought this was a furniture store?”

  Laxmi raised an eyebrow and grabbed her hand. “Ah, my sweet innocent child. Just wait, just wait.”

  Wren

  The curtains laxmi had picked out were exactly what the space needed. They gave the wide space a definition, and were already helping to keep the little room warm.

  The light bulb strings gave it a soft glow, and the sheers over the windows let in just enough moonlight. There was also a small desk near the window with its own lamp and another on the nightstand by the bed.

  The platform bed was just a few inches off the ground, the ideal height for where Ellie decided to put it. There was a dresser with a mirror, anchored to one of the roof beams, and chest of drawers.

  We bought a few eclectic rugs and put them in different places around the room, covering the rough wood and giving it an even more personal tou
ch.

  We’d spent nearly four hours planning the space with Ellie, and she loved every minute of it. She seemed like such a different person from even just that morning, and I was relieved.

  Finally, at nearly eleven at night, the room was done and we were planning to go shopping the next day to get her more than the jeans and sweatshirt she was wearing. We’d only stopped at Target for the essentials and some pajamas. And some basic art supplies.

  She flopped on to the new mattress, sheets and duvet. She just could not stop smiling, and picked up her head to look at the four of us standing by the stairs.

  “Thank you. Seriously. I will never be able to repay you for this.”

  “Sure you will,” Laxmi said. “Just by getting better. Now, it’s late and I need to sleep.” She poked Miriam in the arm and a second later, Miriam agreed.

  “Right. Sleep. Cough.”

  I rolled my eyes as they headed down the narrow staircase to the first floor. I consider the girl on the bed.

  “All right. You know where the bathroom and the kitchen are. The only boundary we want to set are our bedrooms. Those, like this,” I waved my arm, “are personal space. We’ll let you in if you knock, but don’t barge. We’ll give you the same courtesy as long as everything is on the up and up. Meaning you go to school, you do your best, and don’t get into any fights with the Mean Girls.”

  “Really?” She swore to herself. “I feel like the whole day I’ve just been saying really and questioning everything you’ve done for me.” Tucking her hands between her knees, I saw her as the little lost girl she really was in that moment. “I do love everything.”

  “I know you do.” I smiled. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Feel free to use the kitchen and the living room if you’re up before us. Which you may well be.”

  “Are you going to keep me up?” There was a husky tone in her voice.

  “No, it’s your first time in a bed that doesn’t have chains and handcuffs on it,” Fischer said. “It wears on your nerves and you may have trouble sleeping.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, turning red.

  “Hey, hey.” I grabbed her hands away from the flame red of her cheeks. “Nope. No embarrassment. There are two healthy female adults here, and several others going in and out. It’s a perfectly normal implication you’ve suggested. All I really meant though was that you can turn on the TV or whatever while you’re waiting for us to join the land of the living.”