She swallowed. “And after you got burned, you lost your brother?”
I nodded again. “I moved around a lot once I was in the system and it was pretty bad. Jared got lucky to be placed with the Samotnys. Despite everything, I do know that, because they loved him like he was their own son. That’s why I reached out to her today, because she spared him from so much.”
“But they kept you two apart. Right? That was what you said before, that they were horrible people who had separated you from your brother. How can you forgive that?”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ll never forgive either one of them for what they put me through, or what they did to Jared by pretending that his real mother and father had never existed. But I know I’m not doing the right thing for him by badmouthing Jill and Richie, not allowing him to see them. I can’t let how pissed off I am at them take away the love that they can give him, because I think he needs as much love as he can get. I’m not going to give him back to them, but I am going to let them see him. Sometimes. With limitations and supervision, because I don’t trust them.”
“That’s…”
“Dumb? Is this a dumb thing to do?” I asked her anxiously.
“No,” Amy told me. “I think this is what you do when you love someone. You do what’s best for them, even when it sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what you were doing with my ring,” she continued.
“No,” I disagreed. “Not entirely. I wish I could excuse it away and say that it was me being some kind of Robin Hood, but it was more than that. I’m so sorry, but it was.”
She was biting her lip, looking at the conference table.
“Amy, I know I don’t deserve anything from you, but I wanted to ask why you didn’t tell your husband. I saw him yesterday and he didn’t know, and Connor hasn’t dumped me yet today, so I’m assuming you still haven’t said anything.”
“No, I haven’t.” She stared hard at the table. “I didn’t say it yesterday because I was so ashamed of myself, that I let this happen again. I had trusted another person who shit all over me.”
“I’m sorry.” I wiped under my eyes with a tissue. “I’m so sorry.”
“And then, I started to think about what you had said, about how desperate and scared you were. And I didn’t even know all this other stuff,” she told me, gesturing expansively with her arms to encompass what I’d told her today.
“Amy—”
“I’m not going to tell him. I’m giving you a second chance.”
“What?” I asked. I couldn’t have heard her correctly.
“Steve,” she explained. “I’m not going to tell him. The story that he knows, that I lost the ring and then found it, that’s also the truth. And the rest doesn’t matter.”
“No.” Wait, what was I saying? “No. The rest does matter, because I had it. It wasn’t just lost in the bathroom.”
She nodded. “I know. And it’s not like I’m going to let my guard down with you now, and it’s not like we’re going to go back to being friends. You broke my trust and you took something really important to me, not to mention valuable. Taking my ring was probably a felony.”
My stomach flipped. “Please, please don’t tell the police. I’m begging you, for Jared. If he loses me, too—”
“No, I’m not. I’m not going to tell anyone, not Steve, not the police. Not Connor.”
I stared at her. “Really? Are you serious? I thought you didn’t keep things from Steve.”
“I don’t tell him things that would hurt him for no reason.” She studied me for a moment. “I also don’t want to needlessly hurt someone else. This is something that you and I can fix, without pulling anyone else into it. Because I can also understand how when you love someone a lot, you could do stupid things, terrible things. If I had to steal for my son, I would. I would do anything for him, and I can see that you love your brother the same way.” She wiped her eyes. “Baby hormones, but also, your story was really sad. It was heartbreaking.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you sad. I wasn’t manipulating you,” I said quickly.
“That was what made it worse,” she told me, and wiped once more, and cleared her throat. “We should get back to work.”
Yes, because I was going to work my ass off, every day. I would come in on holidays, I would stay late. I would do anything, everything, so that Amy would trust me again. I didn’t deserve this second chance, but I was going to make it worth it for her. She would never have a better assistant, and maybe, someday far off in the future, she might want to be my friend again. Maybe, and I was going to hold out hope.
I did go up to Connor’s office for lunch, feeling shaky but better. He was so busy that he could barely stop to eat, but I got him to have a few bites of salad and sandwich in between typing and talking to someone on the phone. Before I left, I leaned down to give him a kiss as he sat in his desk chair. “Take the truck home after work,” he told me. I dabbed at a bit of ranch dressing on his mouth and he kissed my fingers, too. “I’ll get a car but I’m going to be late.”
“Ok. I’ll keep dinner warm for you,” I told him. “You have more ranch on your chin.” I wiped it off and kept my hands on his cheeks. “Connor, you’re wonderful.”
He put his hands over mine. “Are you laughing at me because I have salad dressing all over my face?”
“No, I mean it. I don’t think there’s anybody better, not in this whole world, and I wanted to tell you. You should know that, just in case…in case anything happens.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” He stood up from his chair and grabbed my arms. “Lia, are you?”
“No! I’m just telling you the truth. I’m so lucky to be with you.” I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, wondering how long I would have him.
He got a huge smile and I got to admire his dimple, the one I had fallen for seven years ago. “I’m lucky to be with you, too.” He kissed me gently. “Lia,” he said softly, and kissed me not so gently.
“You have a glass wall,” I murmured against his mouth.
“I don’t care.” Connor wrapped me up in his arms and I forgot about the glass.
A few hours later I was bouncing in the truck over to our house before picking up Jared. He had been texting me that a guy in his class wanted to try lacrosse too, and maybe he could come over on the weekend? I said it sounded great. Everything felt a little better, after what had happened with Amy. It wasn’t just that she was keeping to herself the real story of what I had done with her ring. I also felt a sense of relief, in a way, that she had heard all my secrets. It felt better to have said them aloud, like they weren’t as poisonous with some sunlight on them.
Next, I would have to worry about—was that a front door? I yanked the wheel over to the curb and hopped out of the truck. Yeah, this could work as a replacement for the one the fake plumber stole, and it could be awesome. I felt myself smiling as I stumbled with the big, heavy door, angling it and then sliding it into the bed of the truck. Things might be working out, better than I had hoped. I drove the rest of the way to my house, still smiling.
I lost a little of that smile when I stopped at the curb and saw the construction. Well, it was going to look worse before it looked better, I reminded myself. The windows were still boarded up because Connor was insisting that we were not going to replace the glass again, we were going to put in everything new. And the yard, which I had worked hard to make presentable, was now a terrible mut pit, rutted with tire tracks and full of equipment. I could already see a complaint note from the neighbors, tacked up to the plywood covering the entrance.
But that was all ok, I told myself. I yelled at a rat lounging in the yard to scram and I mounted the porch steps. I didn’t even read the nasty note before crumpling it up in my hand. Sure, the house looked like a scary Siberian prison or an industrial waste zone, but it was going to turn out beautifully. Connor and I were going to make this place great.
I got myself inside and looked aroun
d. It really was hard to see progress but I knew what we were paying—what Connor was paying—so I convinced myself that something good was happening. Yeah, this was going to be great, I told myself, but I shivered. It felt like a cold wind was blowing in from the kitchen. I stepped carefully toward the back of the house to check on it. Connor had told me not to walk around much because now the floor was even more destabilized due to the foundation work, but I needed to see.
And God damn it! The plywood was down off the window, which probably meant that after the guys left for the day and before I had arrived, someone had gotten in. I shook my head and started to nail it back up, pounding angrily. In between hammer blows, I heard the floor creak. The whole house made noises in general, but this sounded different. I turned with the hammer in my hand, ready to tell whoever it was to get the hell out, but there was no one there.
Upstairs? Maybe someone was hiding, making himself at home in what would be Jared’s room, and no way was I good with that. I walked as quietly as I could and carefully mounted the steps, hammer still ready.
There wasn’t anyone in the bedrooms, in the closet, in the bathroom. But looking at the broken bathtub in there made me stop for a second and think. At Connor’s apartment, we had two bathrooms, one for us and one for Jared. It was pretty amazing and I wondered if Connor would want to have a master bath-ish place to use in this house. I wanted him here, with us, I realized. I wanted to be with him always and I thought about how to accomplish this. One way might be to let him make the house what he wanted, so it felt like his home, too. So he would never want to leave, no matter what.
I walked to the bigger bedroom again to consider building out over the back porch, expanding. It would be a boatload of money but as of today, I was going to still work for Amy, which meant that I was still making more than I ever had. I took another step toward the window and heard that creaking sound again, loud in the quiet of the house.
“Hello? If someone’s in here, you better get the hell out. I just called the cops and my private security guys and they will not be happy about having to remove you,” I yelled, making my voice deep. No one answered. I listened, and a strange crack sounded downstairs.
Balls! If someone was now breaking stuff in my house…I held up the hammer, ready to tell them face to face to get the hell out. I had confronted people before, and usually they were just cold and hungry, and took off when I said they had to. A few times it had gotten a little hairy, a little scary, when someone was strung-out or just mean and insisted on staying. “I’m serious,” I yelled as I started down the steps. “You have to go. Get—”
The stairs swayed when I was about a third of the way down and for a moment, I froze. I heard the crack again, so loud it sounded like the gunshots in my uncle’s former parking lot, and I turned to run back up to the second floor. Then everything seemed to disintegrate under my feet; I had been standing on solid wood, but suddenly, it was just dust and air and a horrendous noise and I hit something hard, my legs crumpling under me.
When I opened my eyes, everything seemed dark, and weirdly hazy. “What happened?” I asked, because there seemed to be stuff all over me, and my mouth was full of a terrible taste, and my leg hurt…oh, it hurt so much that the next sound out of my mouth was a moan. I stopped trying to move and instead tried to clear my mind to figure out where I was.
In our house, I thought—I was in our house, and I had been upstairs, and then…I wasn’t sure what had happened next. Oh, right, I had been on the stairs, and walking down, and there had been a noise and that strange sensation of being airborne. I was on the first floor, and it was darker, so time must have passed. And the hazy, strange quality in the air was dust and dirt, and so was the taste in my mouth.
It took me a while, but I finally came to realize that the stairs had given out. They hadn’t been safe, just like Connor had said. In spite of the pain in my leg, and in spite of the fact that I seemed to keep dozing off and waking up, I was proud that he had been right about that. What a smart guy. I decided I better call someone for help, and in between nodding off, I got my hand into my back pocket and took out my phone.
But I couldn’t seem to bring it around to my face so I could see it because of all the stuff pressing on me. What was it again? Oh, right, the stairs. I was in a pile of rubble that had been the stairs, but I thought that Connor could fix them. I gave a yank with my arm, which jolted my body and hurt my leg so much that I had to close my eyes. When I woke up, it was even darker. But my phone was now in front of me, and I got it unlocked, and hit at the buttons until it was dialing someone, the first person on my call list.
“Hello?”
“I fell,” I said, and my voice sounded wispy and indistinct so I tried harder. “I fell at my house and got hurt. Can you help me? I’m pretty hurt, I think.”
“Lia? Is this for real?” Jill Samotny asked doubtfully.
“Can you help me?” I asked again. “I need,” I started to explain, but then sighed, because I needed to close my eyes, and I did.
Chapter 14
We went over a bump and I winced a little, but tried not to let Jared see because he was already so worried. This car was very smooth, much smoother than the truck, but the roads weren’t great and I felt every single pothole. My brother was turned around and hanging over the passenger seat, watching me as I lay stretched out in the back. The cast on my left leg rested on a pile of pillows that Connor had brought to the hospital for me.
“You ok, Lia?” Jared asked when he saw my expression.
“I’m great.” I was feeling pretty good, for someone who just fell half a story. It still hurt, and I was a little woozy, because I had gotten some pain medication that had hit me pretty hard. “How are you, J? Are you ok?”
“I’m fine.” He kept staring at me. “You’re really dirty. You have stuff all over your face and in your hair.”
“It’s a big mess at the house,” I answered. “Connor, can you fix the stairs?”
“Yes, don’t worry about the stairs,” he said. He was extremely upset that I had been on them, that I had fallen. I didn’t really remember doing it, but apparently, I had dialed up Jill Samotny, the last person I had called that day before going over to the house. She had come and found me, dug me out a little, called 911, and had stayed with me. That part I remembered, because I had found it so odd that I would be in the middle of a pile of debris with Jill, who hadn’t cared at all about my well-being in the past. But she had come up big for me today.
She had also called Connor when I kept asking her to, and contacted Jared’s after-school program to let him know that he would be getting a late pick-up. Connor had shown up at the hospital in a total panic, and it made me concerned that he would have bad dreams tonight.
“I’ll stay up with you,” I announced. I realized that statement hadn’t made much sense contextually, but I was too tired to explain what I meant. It seemed that falling through a flight of stairs made you exhausted. “I’m itchy. I want to take a shower.”
“A bath,” Connor said. “I’ll help you, sweetheart.”
“Thank you. I love you so much, Connor.”
Jared’s eyes got big. “You do?” he asked me. “You love him?”
“I love him,” I agreed. “I love you too, Jared. I was thinking about when you were tiny and how funny you were. You had eyes like a bush baby. Is that right?” I was asking if I had gotten the name right of that little squirrel-creature with the big eyes, but I got tired again and didn’t explain it.
Jared looked over at Connor. “She’s out of it,” he said.
Connor glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Lia, we’re almost home.”
“Jill came to get me. Isn’t that weird?” I commented. “After all that’s happened, she came when I needed help. It was because I had called her earlier, to say that I didn’t want to fight and that they could see Jared sometimes. Would you like that, J? You got to see her today, right?”
Connor had told me that Jill stayed
with him in the waiting room for the hours that it took to x-ray and set the bone in my lower leg.
“I liked seeing her,” my brother agreed. “It was nice. I’m glad she helped you and you guys aren’t so mad at each other.”
“I’m glad too, because I want the best for you. I don’t think I’m doing that all the time but I’m really trying. I wish I could do it as well as Jill so that you’d want to stay with me.” I felt like I was saying too much, but it was hard to know. There was a little disconnect going on between my mind and my mouth.
“Lia, why don’t you try to rest now?” Connor suggested.
“No, I can’t rest, because when I close my eyes, I get dizzy. I hope it stops before we go to work tomorrow.”
“You can take the day off.”
“No, no!” I said. “I have to be there! Amy has to see that I’m serious about this!”
“Ok, ok, don’t get upset. We don’t have to decide at this moment.”
I had a great idea. “Maybe I’ll just rest a little now,” I suggested.
“That’s a good plan,” Connor said. “You should do that.” Despite the bumps in the road and the dust-induced itchiness, I was pretty cozy in the back seat. He had left me at the hospital to pick up Jared, then gone home for his car and filled it with things to make me comfortable, like the pillows, blankets, and his favorite t-shirt that I also loved and was currently wearing, because my clothes had gotten so dirty and torn in the fall. I was also wearing his shorts, because they were easy to get on over the new cast on my leg. I looked a little odd, but I didn’t seem to mind.
“I think a good plan for me would be to rest,” I told them, and I slept the rest of the way home.
Connor helped me take off his favorite t-shirt and shorts when we got there, after carrying me up from the car. “Jared’s making dinner for us,” he said, and also helped me lower myself into the warm bathwater. “Do you feel like eating?”
The medication from the hospital was wearing off, making me less loopy, but also achy in most of my body from the fall. The pain in my leg was getting bad, too, and the prescription that we had gotten hadn’t yet kicked in. “Maybe later,” I said. Maybe never.
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