“And still she left me.”
Lori grabbed her own head in a fit of frustration. “She’s broken, Tiger! Broken like none of us have seen before and believe me, we thought we’d seen it all! You didn’t see her this weekend. You were home with the family. Kira and I were texting, Megan too. If it helps, your baby sis threatened to beat the shit out of her.”
Shaking her head at Megan’s newly formed protectiveness she finally broke into a weak smile, but couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“I can’t begin to know how you’re feeling but Kira seems to think you still care. Do you? Would you take her back?”
At that, the tears began to fall and she sat frozen, feeling numb and broken.
“She spent Friday in her old room, Aunt Georgina’s old room,” Lori explained. “You might remember the fact that you two have all the furniture from that room in your condo. The kids have been using it as an exercise room. She wouldn’t even consider anywhere else or let us move any crap out. We ended up dragging a couch in from the TV room. That’s how she’s sleeping, on a fucking couch after breaking her fucking hip! Then on Saturday, after we managed to get her meds in and her bandages changed, she wanted to walk the dog on her goddamn crutches! We helped her out to the patio but she and that dog, who’s just as banged up, crutched it to the fire pit, and wouldn’t come back. They stayed out there all day sitting on that old bench. I had to take them both blankets. She’s not eating, and she’s spending every minute she can just…just staring at the lake and yesterday…”
“Nice try, Lori, but it rained all day yesterday, and there’s no way she—”
“WE COULDN’T GET HER IN! She sat there in the fucking freezing rain all the goddamned day! Lou had to order the boys put up the old gazebo room around her. All we could do was keep her supplied with dry blankets. Even then her only concern was for the dog.” She trailed off, looking away, distressed.
“What…” Tyler cleared her throat. “What do you think she’s doing?” Upset as she was, the last thing she wanted was for Georgie to hurt herself. She had seen her retreat before, but in the past it was always about her feelings being hurt and it never lasted longer than a few minutes. Usually that was all the time she needed to push her ego aside and ask the kinds of questions that went beyond herself in an effort to understand the situation. She would always tell her team to remove themselves from the equation first. Using that practice on herself, she knew succeeding in the process required a change in perspective.
It was more than her work policy, Tyler had learned, it was her saving grace. Georgie worried that any empathy she held had been permanently injured when the main rotor blade made contact with her flight helmet. To compensate, she had made a practice of examining the point of view of all parties in any situation, especially when she was upset. As a couple it had made learning all of those personal push-button issues much less volatile. She could still be a brat sometimes, but usually it was the other way around. How many times had Georgie caught her pacing, head down and arms crossed, wallowing in her own self-pity? She never pushed, but she wouldn’t let Tyler push her away either. Reassuring and patient, she had promised to always be there. “She promised…Why? What is she doing?” she asked, drying her eyes and wiping her reddened nose.
Lori took Tyler’s hand and waited to be sure she had every inch of her attention. “I think she’s trying to die.”
Tyler tried to pull away, but Lori wouldn’t let her.
“She knows she can heal from broken bones. God knows she’s broken more than the rest of us kids combined but that heart attack. I…it’s just too much like Uncle Dan. Then that asshole doctor goes and tells her she might have more of that shrapnel crap and another bump could dislodge one and kill her in seconds. What the fuck! Why not just hand her a gun and tell her to pull the trigger?”
“That’s not—”
“No?” Lori dropped her hand, stood and paced to the window. When she finally turned back Tyler could see the tears in her eyes. “We have to do something. If we don’t…Tyler please. You’re the only one with a hope in hell of breaking through to her.”
“What about Henry?” Even with her own pain clawing through every inch of her, there was no way not to feel Lori’s anguish too. “He’s always gotten through to her,” she said, wiping at nose.
Lori shook her head, and said quietly, “He cried last night. I haven’t seen that since…since my mom died.” She sat down again but this time in the chair across from Tyler. “I didn’t even know I remembered the funeral but seeing him like that…” She was up from her seat again, pacing to clumsily cover the fact she was crying too.
Tyler stood, and carrying her ever-present Kleenex packet, joined her by the window. Standing side by side, looking out onto Pearl Street and the morning downtown traffic, she finally admitted, “I haven’t given up. No way. I’m just shocked, and hurt. And I’m…do you really think this is about Danny DiNamico—her own father—being a bastard, or is she that scared she might drop dead the next time she takes a slip?”
“Both, but it’s the dropping dead on you that’s freaking her out. Look,” Lori said, “none of us really understand what goes on in her head, but Helen said Georgie had an amazing memory, even as a child. She watched Uncle Dan hurt the people she loved. Then Aunt Georgina leaves Helen and rides in on her white horse to save the day. It’s not just what she did that’s been ingrained in her but how she did it. She gave up on having a normal relationship with Helen so she could be there to protect Winnie and all us kids. It’s what she knows, and the one example she has been trying to live up to all her life. She must believe this is best for you, for everyone. It’s like wham, if she’s not in your life, you won’t have any more worries.”
Tyler stood silently contemplating everything she had heard.
Then Lori added one more concern. This one so disturbing, she whispered, “Just so you know, Marnie’s out of patience. She’s meeting right now with the family lawyers. If we can’t get Georgie back on track, she has every intention of shipping her off to the funny farm. She won’t stand for her just sitting there, withering away.”
“Don’t even joke about something…” At the look on Lori’s face, a horrid dread began making its way through her gut and pushing hot bile up her throat.
“Sorry Tiger, but she only needs two signatures and you know Lou would bend over backward to sign on the dotted line.”
Returning to Georgie’s computer and opening her appointment app, Tyler pulled up the daily production schedule and milestone list. Tapping in a few changes, she asked, “How much work can I reasonably give Henry? I mean, is he really here to work?”
Lori nodded. “He’s not a young man, but he wants to help. I was thinking maybe Aydan could run point on whatever you need him to do. That way she can handle emails and stuff and let him catch a nap when he needs it, if that’s okay?”
She agreed, even if she didn’t. It wasn’t as if she could ask an eighty-year-old to put in eight hours a day. “There’s nothing I can’t push back, nothing except the one project that was most important, the design of the new office.”
“When does Fener need the new drawings?”
“Two weeks ago. Leslie’s got him busy on the third floor and Marnie’s given him a list of improvements to keep him busy but…”
Pulling out the chair across from her, Lori sat down, suggesting, “I think you might have something sooner than later. Dad and Aydan spent all weekend working on it. I think they were just trying to get her interested, but when they didn’t, well, Aydan didn’t want to let you down, and I think Dad’s kind of in the same boat.”
“Henry’s worried about letting me down?” Of all the ridiculous things she had heard...
“We all are,” Lori said, quiet again. “But Dad…I kind of freaked out on him, you know, after talking with Helen. I guess I sort of lost it. I was…kind of loud. I wanted to know why he didn’t stop it and how he could be sure Uncle Dan never pounded on Georgie.”
“Weren’t you worried for Marnie or your own siblings?”
She shook her head. “Me and Marn shared a room, and Sophia, she slept in the nursery with Leslie and Lou...”
“Did Henry know?”
She was silent for a long time. Finally, she explained. “Remember that letter from Aunt Georgina the lawyers gave us each to read and how it said it was a different time? I guess that was his excuse too. If it’s any consolation, he’s really ashamed that he thought he had to respect Uncle Dan’s privacy.” At Tyler’s hostile expression she added, “Please. I know its bullshit, but I kind of see where he was coming from, considering everything.”
“Really?” she demanded, back on her feet. “What excuse is there for letting a man beat his wife, or worse, letting a seven-year-old child witness the whole thing?”
Lori was on her feet too, arms out, hands open as if to prevent a spooked horse from bolting, “Hey now, Tiger, we don’t know that. We just know she understood that Aunt Georgina had to leave Helen and move back out to the big house to protect her family. And yes, my dad screwed up, but come on. Old Luigi welcomed my African American dad into his Italian family, treating him like a son and true equal to Uncle Dan, his flesh and blood. Even you must wonder what it was like to be a black man living with this white family. Everything good in his life, his wife, his kids, his job, were all connected to his friendship with Uncle Dan.”
Caught by that revelation, she had to think about Lori’s words. She couldn’t remember when, or even if, she had thought of Lori or her dad as African American. The DiNamico/Phipps clan were so familial it just seemed impossible to think of them as black or white. They were unapologetically family. Race wasn’t invisible so much as respected for the varied paths that had brought them all together. Still, she had a point. Times were still hard in this country for people of color. Hell, life sucked if you were anything but a straight white middle-class male. She might not know what it was like to be a black man in the seventies, but she was familiar with the perils of being a woman and a lesbian in this day and age and while things had improved vastly, there was even now such a lack of parity in every imaginable field. She sighed at the revelation. “I think I get it. I don’t like it,” she warned.
At the desk computer she updated her schedule, then closed her apps. “Here’s what I’m willing to do,” she stated. She wanted to make sure Lori understood exactly what she was saying, as she laid out her demands. When she got no argument or bullshit, she nodded. Marnie was right, Lori might play the joker most days, but when it came to crunch time you could count on her to rein it in. “We are going to go out there and make sure Henry and Aydan are on the right path. Once I’m comfortable with what they’re doing, you and I are taking a drive.”
“Great, I’ll drive us out to the big house then—”
“No. First we are going to visit this Helen. Once I’m satisfied there, we will drive out to the big house and we will take my truck.”
“Sure, okay but wouldn’t it be better if—”
“If I’m going to do this it’s with one goal in mind. I’m going to get to the bottom of all this family crap then I will sit down with my fiancée and talk some sense into her!”
“Okay, that sounds good.”
“And if that fails,” she warned, “we will bring her home anyway and by any means!”
That got Lori’s attention. She held Tyler’s gaze, gulping in air and then offering her agreement, however awkward. “You’re the boss, Ty. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right, even if that means I have to drag her broken ass out the door. I promise!”
* * *
Aydan sat down at her desk to organize her task list for the rest of the day. She wanted to have the drawing changes completed by the time Henry was back from his nap. She almost snorted at the irony. Part of her new job was to babysit the VP of engineering. It had never occurred to her that all the engineering veeps, past and present, needed babysitting. Henry had been at her side since arriving early that morning. She had taken him and Lori to Georgie’s office thinking it would be wrong to let them into Tyler’s, or worse, make them sit on the bench outside. Both Henry and Lori had assured her it was the right thing to do, and while Lori paced, she and Henry discussed some of the old DME drawings she had been cataloging.
They had spent the weekend hammering out details for the new office. It wasn’t anything they had been asked to do, but Georgie’s accident and subsequent withdrawal had pushed them, and cleaning up her boss’s work priorities seemed to be their one common ground.
She liked Henry. He was soft-spoken and unpretentious, much like she remembered her father being. And he was a gentleman. How rare was that in this day and age, a gentleman who immediately treated her as a fellow professional. Skippy too was good that way. Obviously his grandfather had taught him well.
Then there was Lori. Lori Phipps was like no woman she had ever met. Yes, she was obviously a lesbian but not in some unreasonable way. She carried herself tall and proud for the whole world to see and she didn’t care what they thought of her personally, just as long as they didn’t insult her boats! She considered herself a craftsman and so did the people who worked for her. She was hands-on in every facet of the boat building business. So was Georgie, but this was different.
Spending the weekend at the DiNamico/Phipps estate had not been part of the plan, but after arriving Saturday morning with a backseat full of stuff deemed necessary for the family to care for her employer, Lori had asked her to stay. At first she agreed, worrying over Georgie’s health and confused about what had happened between the time Tyler had left to drive her home from the hospital and when a panicky call had come in asking her to pack Georgie’s clothing and meds. She didn’t immediately worry when Tyler didn’t come home Friday night, but when she got to the big house on Saturday she knew better.
How could something like this happen? It had been more than a month since her move into their guest room. It had taken much of that time for her to relax. They hadn’t pushed her to join them yet always included her whenever she was interested or confident enough to accept their invitations. From watching movies, to quiet dinners, or joining them for a walk by the lake, she was always welcome. After the hit-and-run, she had fallen into the same pace and schedule as Tyler and the family, focusing on Georgie, while keeping the company humming. And Georgie too had been upbeat and so forgiving. Not like Lori or even Skip, for that matter.
She’d expected Skip to act out, doing the male protective thing, but it was Lori who had gone ballistic. Aydan was sure she called in every favor she had to bring the deputy chief himself in to immediately launch an investigation. They hadn’t wasted any time, identifying the vehicle with its damaged right fender from traffic cam footage collected all along the route where Georgie was hit. With extensive high definition video, it was easy to trace the truck to the trucking yard where the vehicle was registered. Lori’s cop friend, the sergeant on the deputy chief’s staff, had described rolling with five other units on the yard. They found the driver sleeping it off in the office. The truck too had been easy to spot. So was the bucket of soap and water the company owner was using to wash away Georgie’s blood from the front grill and fender. They had arrested both of them, shutting down the entire trucking yard until they had gathered all their evidence and investigated the legality of the operation.
The really odd part was the aftermath, the reactions, Georgie’s and Lori’s. With blood vengeance in her eyes, Lori wanted the guy handed over so that she and her men could handle it themselves while Georgie worried for the other trucking company employees, the law-abiding men and women whose livelihoods were now in peril. Aydan could appreciate both positions, but something about Lori’s protectiveness, while misguided, had struck a chord with her. That’s what families were supposed to do, stand up for one another, protect one another.
Holding herself back from these people, from everyone really, was how she had been living her life since her father’s
untimely death. Yet, just months after being tossed out of her family home, her life had been completely turned around, and all it had taken was for one concerned member of their extended clan to notice her situation. Their immediate response was to talk to her, protect her, and offer her the tools she needed to take care of herself.
It was at that moment she understood time meant nothing. For more than a decade after her father’s death she’d had to survive by her wits, living with complete strangers who considered her inferior and unworthy of even the smallest morsel of esteem. A decade and a half lost, a whole fifteen years! And just months with these people, these complete strangers, and I feel more at home than I ever have been.
She respected Lori’s strength and her boldness, even when it sometimes seemed wrongheaded. Lori was good. Like the rest of the family, she treated her as an equal, and more than that, she was a friend, a protective and caring friend. How had that happened? She could only imagine that Lori’s protective nature had recognized in her a woman in peril. How strange to have a complete stranger care—except she didn’t feel like a stranger.
Not like she did around Georgie. It was harder to get to know her or even feel completely free in her company. Not that the woman did anything to alienate her or make her feel unwelcome. She just lacked any mechanism to comprehend someone else’s discomfort. It was fascinating to watch Tyler educate her. It was also a bit annoying, but Georgie wouldn’t hesitate to pause a movie to ask for Tyler’s explanation of some emotional plot twist. It was always amusing to hear Tyler and Lori debate the situation with Georgie. That was another sweet thing she had been doing. Whenever Tyler invited her to join them she always asked if she would like either Lori or one of her sisters to tag along. It was a relief to go out and not feel like a third wheel. Better was just going. Having fun. Even if it was just a burger at Milo’s, it was still so much more. Georgie had been the opportunity she desperately needed while Tyler provided support and guidance—but Lori was her friend. Even with everything going on, she smiled every time she called or stopped by. It was sweet to think about, sweet to know she had someone to count on, someone who would stand up for her, maybe even protect her too.
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