Ten Thousand Hours

by Ren Benton

  Getting back to work Monday was a relief. Her first three brides of the day left without placing orders, but at least her pending financial devastation kept her mind off Griff.

  She checked her phone between post-lunch brides. There was a missed call from Blake’s Cell but no message.

  If there was an emergency, he would leave a message. The phone probably dialed itself while knocking around in his backpack.

  School wouldn’t let out for another hour. She shouldn’t call to check on him when he was in class and risk getting his phone confiscated by the teacher.

  But Blake had pored over the instruction manual. He knew how to lock the keypad to prevent accidental dialing. He knew turning off the phone was the best way to preserve the battery and avoid attracting the attention of Holly and school staff. Above all, he wanted to prove he could handle the responsibility.

  He wouldn’t make a mistake.

  She dialed his number. Someone answered but didn’t say anything. Her heart galloped in warning. “What’s up, kiddo?”

  There was a lengthy pause, followed by Blake’s stony voice. “Mom’s gone.”

  “What do you mean she’s gone?”

  His deep, quivering inhalation released a torrent of words. “She hasn’t been here for three days and we’re out of food and diapers and I have a little money hidden but can’t leave the littles to go to the store and I can’t take them all with me and I don’t know what to do anymore.” He finished on a sob.

  Dammit, Holly. “I’ll be right there. It will be okay.”

  He returned to stone. “Whatever.”

  She grabbed her bag and headed to Rita’s office to inform her she’d be leaving early. On the way, she spotted Katie in the hall, looking at loose ends. “Did you have a no-show?”

  “Fourth this month. Who needs to eat, right?”

  “Do you want my two-thirty?”

  “Sure. Everything okay?”

  Everything was not okay. This would never be okay. This was so far beyond okay, the memory of okay couldn’t be found.

  “Family emergency. Let’s clear the switch with Rita so I can go get my kids.”

  The Bag of Infinite Holding held a couple of diapers, so one problem was resolved shortly after her arrival at Holly’s house.

  When Blake said out of food, he didn’t mean out of food we want to eat. The refrigerator was bare except for beer and condiments. There were two bottles of vodka in the freezer but no food, even of the junk variety. The cupboard contained only cornstarch and steak salt.

  She dug in her purse for snacks. “What have you been eating for three days?”

  Her search yielded a little bag of Cheerios for Cole, a pouch of Goldfish for Heather and Lily to share, and a cranberry-nut-quinoa bar Blake was desperate enough to cram in his mouth, around which he mumbled, “Cereal.”

  Damn you, Holly. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  “She said you were busy with your new boyfriend. She said I was in charge and it was my responsibility to take care of my family.”

  A responsibility Holly, a thirty-two-year-old adult, couldn’t handle but had no qualms foisting onto a child, lying to him so he felt there was no one to tell his mother was a neglectful monster.

  The thin fiber of feeling Ivy had stubbornly maintained for her sibling snapped. This was unforgivable. There would be no going back from this.

  “First, I always have time for you.” She gingerly touched his chin and tried not to flinch when those hostile eyes shifted toward her. “Nothing and no one will ever be more of a priority to me than the four of you. Always, no matter what anyone tells you.”

  He didn’t believe her, and she knew, in that moment, she was capable of violence. If Holly waltzed through the door, she would physically attack her for the damage done to this sweet boy who tried so hard to compensate for lousy parenting and no longer trusted anyone to simply love him.

  A deep breath pushed her rage down, out of her throat, so it didn’t hit the wrong target. “Second, you did an amazing job taking care of your brother and sisters, but that is not an appropriate job for a ten-year-old. Your only job is school.”

  He looked at his feet. “I skipped school. I wouldn’t have been able to pick up the littles after. I didn’t answer the phone when the office called.”

  He stayed home not because it was too difficult for him to get four kids ready and to school but because he’d lose his siblings when an authorized adult failed to pick them up at the end of the day.

  Because his mother told him no authorized adult could be relied upon and did everything in her power to prove it.

  “I’ll talk to the school tomorrow and make sure you’re not penalized for missing a day. It will be okay.”

  It tasted like a lie, but they were both doing the best they could under the circumstances — tough faces and optimistic lies.

  “Everybody get your clothes, toys, books, anything you want to keep. You’re coming home with me.”

  Wardrobe collection was easy. There had been no detergent for weeks, so all their clothes were in laundry baskets. Heather and Lily set up opposing factions of stuffed animals on top of the laundry mountains in the back of the van.

  Blake sat in the doorway, using his legs to block Cole’s attempts to escape the house.

  Ivy sat beside him. “Where’s your stuff, bud?”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  That might change with his mood, but she wasn’t going to force anything on him at the moment. Everything he would need in the immediate future was already at her house. “If you think of anything, we can come back for it later.”

  “I don’t want to come back here.” His back hunched. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He withdrew further into himself. “I hope she never comes back. And I’m not sorry.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to be. You have every right to be angry. I’m furious myself.” She put her arms around the rigid ball of misery beside her and hugged him tight. What she would not let him feel was alone and unloved. “I will take care of Lily, Heather, and Cole, and I will take care of you. This is the last time something like this happens to you. I promise.”

  “She makes promises all the time.”

  Once again, she followed in Holly’s footsteps and had to rebuild on the wasteland she left behind.

  But this would be the last time.

  She took the kids home, fed them, called her parents, and then called Roger. “I know you’re mad at me, but I need your professional advice or a referral to another lawyer.”

  “I’m not mad at you if you’re in trouble. Tell me what happened.”

  She spilled the whole story as she knew it. He listened in silence.

  When she ran out of words, he said, “Here’s what’s going to happen. First, you’re going to call Children and Family Services and report everything you just told me.” He recited the number. “Answer their questions the best you can and give them my number. Because the kids aren’t in immediate danger and child welfare workers are hellishly overworked, they’re unlikely to pay you a visit tonight. I want to be there when they come.”

  She thought she’d need a lawyer to get custody, not to talk to the authorities. She took the phone into the pantry and closed the door. “Why? They’re not going to take the kids, are they?”

  “You’re set up to care for them and you’re willing, so the probability is they’ll be left in your custody throughout the investigation and subsequent legal proceedings. But there is a possibility, however slight, that the kids could be removed, which we will fight and which the presence of your attorney will make clear, but you need to be aware of the worst-case scenario.”

  She rubbed her sternum in a vain attempt to ease the piercing pain behind it. Silly her, thinking the scenario had already reached maximum worst.

  “Ivy, there will be criminal charges for this.”

  “Good,” she snarled. “And don’t lecture me on the virtues of com
passion.”

  “The lecture was going to skew the other way, sweetheart. You can’t afford to make one more excuse for Holly. No sugarcoating the facts to make her look less bad. You’re the best advocate those kids have. Protecting your sister is not in their best interest.”

  “I got that message loud and clear today. She’s on her own.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  No, and that was probably best for Holly’s health. “There’s no answer on her cell. Mom and Dad haven’t heard from her. I don’t know any of her friends to call.” She rubbed the back of her neck, where tension had formed tight knots. “Should I report her missing? A guy beat her up last week. Something might have happened to her.”

  “Maybe, but she also has a history of taking off unannounced for days or weeks at a time and coming back like everything’s just peachy, so it’s too soon to jump to that conclusion.”

  She wouldn’t think anything was unusual about Holly’s disappearance if not for the way she’d left the kids — the way she had calculated leaving them alone, setting Blake up not to tell anyone she’d gone. Ivy didn’t want to believe she’d left them to fend for themselves and not intended to come back for days, not because she thought Holly incapable of such neglect but because the reasoning behind it was too twisted to fathom.

  The only reason she wouldn’t leave them with Ivy, as she had as recently as Thursday, would be to punish Ivy for her role in her date that night ending in the back of a squad car.

  “You focus on the kids. I’ll have someone check the hospitals and morgues.” At her sharp intake of breath, Roger said, “Sorry. Ives, I’m a hundred percent sure that’s not her explanation for abandoning her kids this time, either, but we have to check. I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”

  “Sooner if you find out anything.”

  “I will. Stay strong.”

  She didn’t feel strong. She felt overwhelmed, and there was so much more to be done.

  “Do you want me to call Jen and ask her to keep you company?”

  It was sweet of him to consider it, but there was only one person Ivy could think of who wouldn’t add to her stress in a crisis situation, and she had thoughtfully freed him from involvement in her crises. “No, but thank you. You’re a good man, Roger.”

  “Remember that when you hear the way I describe your sister to a judge.”

  As Ivy answered the child welfare worker’s questions over the phone, choking over description of transgressions dredged from the murky depths of memory, she admitted to herself it would be best if Roger handled as much of the talking as possible.

  Anything he said would be kinder than what she felt for the mother who treated her children as no more than disposable tools.

  14

  “This is a surprise.”

  “Is it?” Griff dipped his head to kiss the cheek his mother offered. “It must have been your evil twin who called to report a loose ‘door thingy.’”

  “Well, as long as you’re here, you might as well look at it and stay for lunch.” Sharon seized his chin and turned his head to the side. “What happened to your face?”

  A jaundiced-looking blotch marked the spot where Holly’s blow had faded. “I took a knock to the jaw a few days ago. Nothing serious.”

  She waved both hands. “Don’t tell me about another one of your accidents if you ever want me to let you out of my sight again.”

  “Now, let’s talk about this.” He followed her through the house. “I’ll move back home. You can cook for me because I can’t be trusted with knives and fire. You can do my laundry so I don’t fall into the washing machine and drown. For safety, I really shouldn’t even be allowed out of bed...”

  She turned and swatted him in the ribs. “Try that on your girl and see if you have better luck getting your underwear washed.”

  He clutched his ribs as if mortally wounded, though the pain at the mention of his girl was higher and deeper. He hadn’t seen Ivy in nine days, and every one seemed emptier than the last. “Okay, okay. Let me fix something to earn my lunch.”

  The strike plate on the door separating the garage from the mud room was loose. Rather than tighten the standard half-inch screws put in when the house was built, he twisted them all the way out with his fingers.

  His mother clasped her hands. “Oh, is it serious?”

  She obviously hadn’t thought so when she unscrewed them as an excuse to get him here. “I don’t repair things halfway. I’ll get my drill and some four-inch screws that will go through the trim and king studs.”

  “Is all that really necessary?”

  Power tools in his hands had always made her nervous, as if she expected him to lose a limb using a drill. “You know in the movies when the bad guy kicks the door open? He’d be kicking a pair of four-inch screws until the end credits.”

  “We have a security system.”

  “Better to keep criminals out than to beep at them once they’re inside.”

  He retrieved a drill and a can of assorted screws from the trunk of his car, which he’d loaded in anticipation of fixing an unknown door thingy. He’d come prepared for any eventuality. Ivy would be proud.

  Ivy’s strike plates probably had half-inch screws, too.

  Great. Now he’d have nightmares about bad guys kicking her doors open.

  His mother hovered while he reattached the plate. He reinforced the front door while he was at it. There were three sets of French doors leading to the patio, which he left alone. There was no point drilling into the meeting stiles when an intruder could kick through the glass instead.

  He didn’t mention that to his mother. The security system could take over there.

  “Anything else loose, crooked, or falling down?”

  “This isn’t a hovel, Griffin.”

  “And as we all know, expensive things don’t suffer from age and wear.”

  She fluffed her hair. “That’s certainly true in my case.”

  His damaged heart swelled painfully with affection. “I like you, lady.”

  “That may be the best thing a mother can hear from her child.”

  “So I’m your favorite, right?”

  “Of course. I’m lying to your brother when I tell him the same thing because you know what a whiner he is.”

  “If your children compared notes, would I learn that I’m also a whiner?”

  “You’ll have to speak to Dan civilly for two minutes to find out.”

  He couldn’t remember ever having a civil conversation that lengthy with his brother. Even when they were kids, Dan was the enemy of fun, and he’d only gotten more uptight with age. “Then I guess your secret is safe.”

  “I don’t know why you two can’t get along.” She didn’t pursue the mystery, though, suggesting she had at long last given up finding a resolution. “Come to the kitchen. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  Griff trailed behind her, keeping an eye out for cracks in the drywall, evidence of water damage, any project he could work on to make himself useful.

  The problem with Dan was that it was impossible to get along with someone who disapproved of everything he did. To be fair, he had done a lot of things to earn that disapproval, but he’d been sober for ten years, grinding at the family business for six, and dedicated to not fucking up his nephew for the kid’s entire life to date, so it would be nice if Big Brother would get off his back, even if no credit for effort was forthcoming.

  While his mother set up her panini press, Griff poured each of them a glass of lemonade. She beamed at him when he placed one on the counter beside her. “Thank you, sweet boy.”

  He’d given her so much grief, and it took so little to make her happy. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “What for?”

  “Being a punk for the past three and a half decades.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. What brought this on?”

  He was the Holly in his family, holding the people who loved him hostage with his behavior. “Nothing I did wa
s with the intent of hurting you. I shouldn’t have been so selfish.”

  “You worried us, but you were never hurtful.” She laid a tender hand along his bruised jaw. “Is that why you came back to work with your father — restitution for the time you spent rebelling?”

  It wasn’t that he’d been rebelling. He simply wasn’t as good, at the core, as he was expected to be. His big rebellion had been enjoying his life. No one got hurt because he was a disappointment.

  When he got hurt as a result of all the things that made him a disappointment, his family had been kind enough to undisown him and prop him up while he recovered from the mauling Faye had given him. The least he could do to repay their kindness was enjoy life a little less. “It was past time to grow up.”

  “Growing up isn’t synonymous with doing something you hate.”

  “I don’t hate it.” He said it to appease her, but it felt like the truth. He liked figuring out the clients. He liked turning the chore of paperwork over to businesslike people when he was done with his part. He liked being able to look down the hall and see his dad alive. Being cooped up in an office and strangled by a tie might not be his dream job, but it wasn’t like it caused him misery.

  “You were searching for your peace, as we all must.” Buttered bread sizzled as she crushed it between the hot plates. “The painful part has been watching how hard yours has been to find. It’s no easier seeing you fidget with the metaphorical noose around your neck. Do you think your mother can’t tell you’re unhappy?”

  Until recently, he’d have described his condition as restless, at worst, with the need to fill all twenty-four hours in every day by any means necessary.

  Then he met Ivy, and all the filler was in the way of more worthwhile uses of his time.

  And then he lost Ivy, and nothing he shoveled into the void lessened the emptiness.

  Nothing replaced her.

  He swirled the ice cubes in his glass. “Happiness is harder than it looks.”