Bad Uncle Too

by Jordan Silver

  22

  All through dinner I kept playing her words through my head trying to figure out what it was that I was missing, but by the time we were ready to leave I still hadn’t come up with an answer.

  I drove with her head on my shoulder and she was curiously quiet. A quick look showed that she was asleep. I guess she’d tired herself out being a pain in my ass.

  She didn’t wake up when we reached home so I carried her in and put her to bed. She must’ve been really beat because she didn’t wake up, not even when I undressed her and pulled the covers up over her.

  I stayed there with her, watching over her, imagining a time when she was no longer here. Trying to imagine what that would feel like.

  She’d been here for a little over six weeks and already I couldn’t imagine her not being here. I couldn’t envision what my days would be like without her here to pester me.

  The damn girl had torn the place apart looking for the keys to the ATV. Now that I suspect that she’s carrying my child the thought of her finding them scares me half to death.

  My child! Funnily enough the thought doesn’t scare me as much as it once did. She’s the first woman in a very long time that I’d taken to bed without protection.

  Maybe subconsciously I’d wanted this to happen, I don’t know. I can’t say that I was thinking along these lines the first time I took her to bed. But how did we get from there to here?

  How did we go from her teasing to me wanting to see her face next to mine for the rest of my life? How had she achieved what so many had failed to do?

  Was it because we were alone here so much; was that it? Just a matter of proximity? Somehow when I look at her face I don’t think so.

  When I think that my child might indeed be growing inside her, I don’t feel panic, or stifled the way I did the one and only time someone had tried to trap me with the lie of pregnancy.

  I feel hope, excited, like a new chapter of my life was beginning. I placed my hand over her flat stomach and my heart jumped in my chest.

  Right now a part of me could be growing inside her. Was it a little boy or a girl like her mother? Heaven help my ass if it is.

  I left my hand there while she slept, letting my mind drift to what could be, and what I needed to do to make it so.

  I got so lost in my thoughts I didn’t even realize that she was awake. I felt the warmth of her hand cover mine and looked at her face to find her staring at me.

  She smiled, I leaned in for a kiss and she pushed me back and bolted. I held her hair back again as she threw up her lunch.

  “Enough of this shit.” I cleaned her up and put her back to bed. “Stay there, I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the damn pharmacy where else?”

  “Oh good, bring me back some peach ice cream.” Little twit. I could swear I heard her laughing on my way out the door. She’s one strange female but I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re all bent in some way or the other.

  It took half an hour to get there and back. She was sitting in the living room in front of the TV when I got back.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay in bed? Were you sick again after I left?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t as bad that time. Did you get my ice cream?”

  “Do this first.” I dropped the pregnancy test next to her on the couch and she looked at it and looked away. “What do I need that for?”

  “Sydney, don’t be a pain in my ass. Go pee on the stick and put me out of my misery.” Could she be normal for one damn second?

  She looked at the box and at the ice cream in my hand. “Ice cream first.”

  “No! And if you don’t get up and do what I told you to I’ll empty it down the sink.”

  Out came the pout and she flounced her ass out of the chair and down the hallway. Of course she locked the door and stayed in there, way longer than was necessary, until I threatened to break it down.

  She opened the door and her face was white as a sheet. “Hey, look at me.” She refused to lift her head and my eyes went to the stick on the sink.

  “So it’s true. Why are you scared now? Isn’t this what you wanted?” She started to shake and I had to pick her up before she fell.

  I sat on the couch with her on my lap and tried to figure out what the hell was going on inside her head now.

  For days I’ve been trying to fit the pieces together and though some didn’t fit and others made no sense, I always came back to one thing.

  Each time I took her, from the first to the last, she’s always begged me to cum inside her. I know now that she’s not the innocent little girl I remembered, so there’s no way she wouldn’t understand the consequences of that.

  In the beginning I thought it was just some sort of sexual thing with her, but now I’m not so sure. So why, if this is what she was after, is she sitting on my lap shaking like a leaf and refusing to look in my face.

  23

  I gave her enough time to compose herself and calm down, but the shit had come full circle. That stick with the pink line had changed everything for both of us.

  It was no matter a question of maybe, and maybe that’s why she’s scared. “Are you afraid of your parents, of what they will say?” I wrapped my arms tighter around her and held her close.

  “Do you think I will let anything happen to you or the baby? Your father and I are friends, and sure I feel a little guilt that he sent you here and I couldn’t control myself.”

  “But that guilt is not enough for me to throw you to the wolves. I want you to put all of your worries aside. From this moment on, you’re mine to protect, both you and the baby.”

  “She still didn’t say anything and I kept rambling, hoping that I’d hit on the right thing, whatever it is she needed to hear to snap out of it.

  “It’s not parents I’m afraid of, it’s…you. I did a very bad thing.” She struggled to be let down but I held onto her. “You can talk just as well from here.”

  She tried burying her head even deeper into my chest and her shoulders started to shake as tears fell from her eyes and soaked through my shirt.

  “What did you do? Tell me, I’m sure it’s not as bad as you’ve built it up to be.” She wiped her damn nose in my shirt and I rolled my eyes over her head and waited for her to settle down and tell me what was bothering her.

  No doubt it’s some minor bullshit that she’s blown out of proportion in her head. “I don’t know where to start.” I squeezed her gently at her words.

  “At the beginning.”

  She sniffled a little, used my shirt as a damn tissue again and got settled against my chest. “I’m listening.”

  “From the time I was a very little girl, my father used to tell me stories of his hero. This man who spent his life fighting for others. He told me of this man being called in all over the world, to save the lives of many who were in danger.”

  “One story he told over and over again was the story of hundreds of children being held hostage in a school, somewhere in Eastern Europe.” My body tensed up at her words.

  “No one knew what to do. There were military factions from all over the world, task force, special Ops, no one could decide how to handle the threatening situation while the world watched.”

  “There were four of them, the terrorists, and they held hundreds inside and millions outside hostage to fear. Everyone feared the worst because there was no clear way to save all the children.”

  “But this man, who was still young even though he’d already served a good few years said that not one of those kids would die on his watch.”

  “He went against everyone, no one thought it could be done. His solution was so simple, I’m sure that today many would see it as the obvious thing to do. But back then no one would even think of it.”

  “My father said that as simple as the solution was, there was still an element of danger to the one who carried it out.”

  “When he could’ve sent someone of lesser rank in to do
it, he chose to do it himself. His colleagues and superiors tried talking him out of it, but he was resolute. My father said he walked into danger with a cocky grin and promised to buy everyone a drink later that day.”

  “There were only a few hours left before the gunmen carried out their threat of killing the children one by one, so time was of the essence.”

  “Dad said he watched his friend walk away knowing that he would never see him again.” As I listened to her words, I relived that day in my head.

  I never let myself think of it too much. Because while others were hailing a hero, I am always aware that it was the day I’d come to understand how truly evil man can be.

  “There was talk back and forth between the terrorists and the military base outside. Lots of threats and demands. Most of the local people were gathered around outside, in danger of being taken up in whatever was about to play out.”

  “This man, this hero studied the layout of the building from the blueprints they had there and knowing where the children were being held, chose his point of attack.”

  “His simple solution was to put everyone asleep, including the children. Because he didn’t plan on leaving them in the building long, he knew there would be no lingering side affects. And he only needed to disorient the enemy enough to get the rest of his team inside to bring the children out.”

  “The trick though, was getting into the building without being noticed and getting close enough for it to work.”

  “The building was old, and though the blueprints showed a few places he could use, there was no guarantee they would hold him, or that the terrorists wouldn’t be alerted.”

  “He knew that if that happened, they would start killing the kids, so he had only one shot at getting it right.”

  “Dad said he didn’t know exactly how he did it, because he never talked about what he did once he was out of sight of the others. But half an hour later people all over the world watched as those children were carried out of that building one by one.”

  “How did you do it uncle Cade?” I was too choked up to answer her at first. My mind was all the way back there, thirteen years ago. That dark, fucked up day.

  I remembered the faces of the people gathered outside the barriers. Poor families who had nothing but the joy of their children.

  Mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, whole families had gathered and I wondered which of them were gonna walk away that day empty handed, without their precious child?

  Was it the woman who sat on the ground with dust on her head as she wailed, or the one who stared sightlessly at the building, hope already gone?

  There were hundreds of them gathered there, each one of them in stark fear of losing their loved one. I couldn’t see another child taken so senselessly.

  That old building was ready to crumble any second, but it was the place where hundreds of kids went to school everyday, because they wanted a chance in the world that was supposed to belong to them.

  24

  I couldn’t carry any gear with me, only that one canister. The crawlspace was treacherous. It was dark and full of decay.

  But the real problem was the traps left there by the enemy. No one knew exactly where they were, but we knew how deadly they were, and that these men had used them before.

  I had to get into the building first, so I scaled the farthest end. We didn’t know if there was anyone in the crowd outside working with the men inside, waiting for instructions to attack at the first sight of rescue.

  Since I was going to be on top of the building for a time, there was a good chance that I would be seen. I found my way in at the far end of the building and crawled my way through.

  There was no light, so I only had the memory of the blueprint to go by. There were times I kept my eyes closed and used my senses to move.

  There were times when the space was so close I didn’t think I’d make it through; and I did encounter a few of the traps that had been left.

  Taking the time to dismantle some of them, just myself, and what amounted to a penlight, had made me sweat.

  Sometimes I still don’t know how I did it that day. How I kept my resolve. Time was running out and I had to stop and defuse bombs, or cut wires that would trigger even more bombs.

  There were four of them in all, or that’s how many I encountered before I made it to where I needed to be to release the gas into the vent.

  Then I had to wait the few seconds it took to work, which felt like hours. I called in my team as soon as the first man dropped.

  Not even allowing myself to look at the children who were scattered all over the floor, their little bodies looking like dolls.

  My team came in and I dropped down into the room as they dragged the terrorists out in cuffs before the rescue teams came in and took the children out.

  I’d kept my word, no one was hurt, not a drop of blood, shed.

  I remember walking back out into the sunshine once the last kid had been taken out of there. I remember the grin when someone called out to me.

  I told her all of this now, all these many years later. “Dad said you came out of the building covered in dusts with your cocky grin in place. You wouldn’t let anyone congratulate you, you said it was a team effort.”

  “You went to the place where they were tending to the kids and walked through until you’d seen every last one of them before leaving to go diffuse some other situation that had cropped up in some other dark corner of the world.”

  “Months later you and your team raised enough money to build a school for those kids. It was because of that story and so many others that you became something bigger in my eyes.”

  “I don’t think dad realized what he was doing when he’d tell me those stories. And then you’d come to the house and you were so handsome, so kind to me. That it just made the dream complete.”

  “I think I was twelve the first time I told my parents that I was going to marry you. That’s about the time you stopped coming to the house, you’d moved here I think.”

  I just looked down at her but she was still not looking at me. “I don’t think they took me seriously then. But each year whenever you’d call dad or he’d call you, the only question I’d asked was if you were married yet.”

  “And each year dad would laugh and say no, that you’d never marry, and I’d remind him that I was going to be the one you married.”

  “I lived in fear of you calling one day to say you’d fallen in love with someone else. I also knew about your reputation with women. And even though dad swore that you’d never settle down, somehow I knew that you would, and that it would be me.”

  Now she looked at me and her eyes were full of tears again. “So why the tears?”

  “Because I didn’t think of what you want. I built this thing up in my head since I was a little girl, but not once did I ever think that you might not want the same thing.”

  25

  "Look at me.” I turned her face towards mine. “You said you heard about my reputation with women. Do you know you’re the first woman I’ve ever shared my seed with?”

  “I’ve never once been careless with a woman when it comes to sex. Never felt the need to share that part of me with another human being. You’re the first, the only.”

  “I didn’t know that that’s why you came here. But trust me, if I didn’t want you too we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “So you fell in love with me because of your father’s stories.”

  “Not only, I also fell in love with you the man. And each time we met it just got worst.”

  “Dad was the hardest nut to crack, mom accepted easier because we talked about it a lot. I never let her forget. I think in the beginning she believed that it would pass.”

  “But as time went by and I never changed my mind, she came to accept that I meant it. Wait here, I’ll show you something.”

  I let her go to go to her room. She came back five minutes later with something hidden behind her back. She stood in front
of me for the longest time not saying anything, just looking down at me as I looked back at her.

  She held out her hand and I finally saw what it was she’d been hiding. It was the picture of me leaving that building that long ago day with a child in my arms. They’re right. That’s one hell of a cocky grin I’m wearing.

  I studied that picture for a long time before looking back at her. “I carried that picture everywhere with me. Dad never knew until I was older, maybe sixteen. I think maybe that’s the reason he stopped inviting you over I’m not sure.”

  “But for the next two years I worked on him. I refused to back down. Mom and I talked him into letting me come here for the summer under false pretenses. He was so afraid that I’d get hurt, that you would treat me just like the others. But in my heart I knew different.”

  “How did you know?” I pulled her back down on my lap and wrapped my arms around her.

  “I don’t know, I just did.”

  “And yet you used to hide from me all the time.”

  ‘That’s because as I got older and understood the feelings in me they scared me a bit. You were so much older, I was always afraid that someone else would come along and take you away from me.”

  I needed a minute or two to process her words. It seemed so fantastical this story of hers. But knowing her crazy ass it was probably true.

  “I’m not a hero baby, I was just doing my duty. There’s nothing heroic about war. Fighting is easy, peace is much harder to achieve.”

  “But that’s just it! You did that without anyone getting hurt, even the terrorists. And to see a need and fill it, what can be more heroic than that?”

  “Okay if you insist that I’m a hero, maybe you’ll remember that shit next time before you throw shit at my head.”

  “Are you still on that? You should get over it already.” Yeah, like she only did it the one time. Fucking nut!

  Epilogue