“Yeah. Okay.”
Ben was really worrying her. He careened back and forth from out of control to scarily in control so fast that she could hardly keep up. Worse, in his eyes, he looked two steps from the edge, and she wasn’t sure just how long she might have to pull him back. When his father was gone, there was no reason for him to be here, and that scared her too though she was less inclined to admit that.
“We’ll be back,” Ben said to her at the door.
Kathryn waved him off. “Take your time. We’re fine here.”
With that, they left. When they were gone, Kathryn turned to Mr. Warren in the bed. Carefully she rearranged the pillow under his head. “You have a really great son there, Mr. Warren. I hope you know that. He’s scared, but so is nearly everybody. I just hope he can find peace in all of this.” And then, standing at the bedside, she closed her eyes. “Dear Lord, please help Ben find peace. Amen.”
Chapter 8
The little silver Mustang jumped out into the late morning traffic, and Ben held on, hoping he wouldn’t get thrown off completely. Truth was, he was doing that a lot lately—holding on and hoping he could do that long enough that he could find normal again. This was definitely not normal. In the seat next to him, far too close for comfort, sat his younger brother who looked so much like he remembered and yet nothing at all like he remembered.
It was weird how that was, but that’s how it felt. He strained not to glance over. That wasn’t easy. Instead he readjusted his sunglasses and glanced into the rearview mirror. New York. No place like it especially when your nerves were so frayed you could feel them crawling across your skin.
He didn’t know if it was nerves or the stress, but heat began pulsating from his core outward. Had he been alone, he would’ve taken off the jacket. But he wasn’t alone, and that threw what he would usually do right out the window.
“You said an hour,” Jason said after clearing his throat. “Is this Dad’s main house or the apartment?”
“Main house.” Ben checked the mirror again.
The conversation faded for a long moment.
“Huh,” Jason said, “it’ll be weird seeing it again.”
This time Ben did glance at his brother and then retrained his gaze back to the road. “Do you remember it?”
“Some. I don’t know that I remember it exactly, it’s more visions and feelings. Is there a big island thing in the middle of the kitchen?”
“Yeah.” Ben glanced over. “It’s got all the pots and pans on the rack above it.”
Jason nodded. “We used to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches there.”
“Strawberry because…”
“I was allergic to grape.” Jason laughed. “Still am.” He put his hand up to his mouth as awe drifted through his eyes. “Wow. I can’t believe that was really for real. It seems more like a dream.”
Many, many things seemed more like a dream to Ben at the moment, not the least of which was the moment itself. He glanced over. “So Dad came to your wedding then?”
“Yeah.” Awe fled replaced by solemnity. “I had no idea if he would or not, but when I got his number from Mom and called him, I don’t think wild horses could have kept him away. And Holly just loves him. They hit it off right away.”
“Holly? Your wife.” Carefully Ben made a turn and headed out on the expressway.
“She wanted to come,” Jason said. “Of course, she’s never been to New York, so the thought kind of freaked her out, not to mention we’re six months pregnant with all that entails.”
Suddenly Ben felt very old. “Pregnant. Well…” He stumbled forward, looking for the words. “Congratulations.” He nodded, trying to keep his brain working. “Your first?”
“Second.”
“Second.” Ben lifted his eyebrows in complete disbelief. “Wow. You guys don’t waste any time.”
“Well, Ryley was kind of a surprise. That’s why the whole wedding thing took place like it did, not that I regret it for a second, but…”
It was hard to drive, listen, absorb, and think straight all at the same time. Ben looked behind him and changed lanes. He fought to think of something to say—brotherly advice, that kind of thing, but he was sorely out of anything even approaching wisdom.
“So, how about you and Kathryn?” Jason asked. “You guys got any little feet running around your place?”
The question came from so far out of the blue that Ben swerved into the next lane and garnered an angry honk from the driver behind him. “Kathryn? Me and…? Uh, no. You…? You think we’re married?” How those were all the questions he got out, he didn’t know because there were so many more flooding his soul.
“Well, yeah.” Jason shifted uncomfortably in the seat. “Aren’t you?”
Ben looked over at him, trying to see if he was serious. “Kathryn from the… thing, Kathryn?” He searched in his brain to figure out why Jason would think such a thing. “Uh, no. We’re not… married.” What was that for a word anyway? How had it even come up? “She works there. She’s like the counselor-type person or something.”
“Oh.” Jason sounded totally taken aback. “I’m sorry. I just… You were…” He cleared his throat. “I just assumed.”
“Yeah, well, it’s best if you don’t do that.” Ben knew his tone was harsher than it needed to be, but he didn’t care. He was about to go off the edge, and Jason was not helping.
“So. Hm. Are you married then? Is there a Mrs. Warren in the picture?”
And this was helping? “No.” Ben’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “There is no Mrs. Warren. I’m very much single. I live by myself in a great apartment. I come and go as I please, and I have many lady friends, if you can call them that.”
“Oh.” Jason nodded. “The New York thing.”
That ratcheted up Ben’s annoyance another six degrees. “What does that mean? The New York thing?”
With a shrug, Jason laughed it off. “You know, free as a bird, no attachments wanted or needed.”
“I don’t know that that’s such a New York thing,” Ben said defensively. “I think that’s pretty much an everywhere thing.”
“Some, but not as much.”
This conversation was giving him a headache. He crossed over to the off-ramp and took it, glad they were only twenty minutes from the house. He was ready for this drive to be over.
“So, what do you do… for a living?” Jason asked, and Ben wished he wouldn’t feel the need to try so hard. Couldn’t they just make this trip in silence, get through this horrible ordeal, and go back to their own separate lives? Was that really so much to ask?
“I’m a pharmaceutical rep.”
“Ah, a drug pusher.” Jason laughed at his own joke although Ben really didn’t see the humor.
“For your information, I was number two in sales last quarter.”
Jason was clearly fighting to control the laughter. “No. I’m sorry. That’s just what we call them at the clinic. Drug pushers.”
Ben snagged on the word “clinic,” and it was as good a reason as any to change the subject. “So you work at a clinic then? Are you a doctor?”
“X-ray technician. I wanted to do the whole doctor thing, but with Holly… It was just smarter to go the quicker route at the time. And I like it well enough. It pays the bills. Plus, I see the junk the docs go through. I wouldn’t want that life.”
Memories Ben wanted no part of flashed through his mind. “Yeah.”
Thankfully the let’s get to know each other barrage concluded as the freeway and its rush melted into the posh neighborhood that Ben had called home for the better part of his life. The homes were spaced to give each owner maximum privacy that the gate at the entrance didn’t already afford them. Ben punched in the code, the gates opened, and he drove in.
“Wow. I had forgotten the gates.” Clearly in awe, Jason gazed around them at the two and three story houses looming like sentinels on either side of the street. “I always knew it was big, but wow…”
At the end of the cul-de-sac Ben pulled up next to the curb. He could’ve gone around back, but he didn’t plan on staying that long.
“It wraps around the block,” Jason said.
Ben knew his brother was in the midst of remembering, but he didn’t care. The last thing he wanted to do was to go on a stroll down memory lane. What he wanted to do was handle this and get the heck out of here. They walked together up the sidewalk, and at the door Ben punched the bell. He had a key, but he didn’t want to scare Maria—even though she was expecting them.
After several minutes, the door cracked open and then swung all the way to the gapingly dark interior.
“Oh, Mr. Warren, thank goodness you are here.” Maria’s thick accent and slight, cinnamon brown features told a good deal of her story. “I was so worried when I got that call…”
“I’ll take care of it.” Ben took off his sunglasses and slipped the earpiece into the v at the top of his shirt. “I’ll just go up to the office and see if I can find something to figure out how this happened.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Jason asked.
“No.” The word was sharp, harsh even. Then Ben remembered himself and let out a breath. “Nah. I can handle it.” And with that, he left them at the foot of the stairs.
All morning, Kathryn had been thinking about him. As she made her rounds to the other patients, as she talked with Misty, and even as she sat eating lunch, his name and his face kept sliding across her heart. “Dear Lord,” she said over her pasta salad, “please be with Ben… and with Jason.”
“Well, hello there.”
She looked up from her salad and found two electric pools of blue staring down at her. “I… Oh…” Grabbing up her napkin, she wiped her mouth. “Hi.”
“I’m sorry. I saw you sitting over here alone and wondered if you might like some company.” It was Doctor… wow, she couldn’t find his name in the swirl of Ben’s circling her consciousness.
He deflated slightly. “I’m sorry that was presumptuous of me…”
“No!” She practically jumped out of the chair. “No. It… wasn’t. Please. Have a seat.”
And then, somehow he was sitting down in front of her. If her mother could see her now, she’d be picking out the drapes for their new house and the names for the children. Then again, that’s pretty much what Kathryn was doing too.
Papers. Envelopes. Bills. Junk mail. They were everywhere in the office. Ben had been in this office many times, but it had never, ever looked like this. He rifled through one stack and then another. Some of the bills were from as much as six months before, and there were stacks of letters that hadn’t even been opened yet.
In one such stack he found an electric bill from two months before that hadn’t been opened. He ripped into it and perused the information therein. The total at the bottom took his breath away. He blinked twice to make sure he was seeing it correctly, and then he noticed the bright red PAST DUE notice stamped at the top. His gaze slid around the room at the rest of the mess. The bill hadn’t been opened, so presumably it hadn’t been paid.
Quickly he sat down in the chair he’d only been in one other time, when he got the whipping of his life for playing doctor at his dad’s desk. No one sat at this desk. No one. Pushing that and every other thought away, he grabbed up the phone and dialed the number on the bill. It took three more numbers through the company’s phone bank to have a person on the line.
“Yes, this is Ben Warren.” He started through the explanation about his father’s house and the bill. It took only two more minutes for the iceberg to come into view. Three months behind, cancellation notice sent a week ago, electricity to both the house and the cottage set to be cut off in one hour.
Letting out a ragged breath, Ben sat back in the chair and rubbed his eyelids. This couldn’t be happening. “Yes, of course I want to pay the bill. Yes, in full.”
“I will need a valid credit card, sir.”
“Oh, uh, sure.” His body going one way, his mind another, Ben dug his credit card out and transferred the information. Thoughts swirled. Did he have enough of a credit limit to cover the mess surrounding him? Did he have the patience to sort through it all in order to even determine the extent of the damage?
“Thank you, sir,” the lady on the other end said.
“Sure. Thank you.” And he signed off.
When he sat back, that feeling of wanting to escape at all costs invaded his consciousness. Had he been specially selected for this hell? What had he ever done to deserve this? His stomach began to knot-up worse than it ever had. It was like someone was gripping it in a fist and refusing to let go. Doggedly, he pulled himself forward, knowing how easily the self-pity would pull him down if he let it. Slowly he picked up a stack of envelopes and thumbed through them. Water, gas, phone, credit card statements.
Fear crept over him as he turned one of those over and slid his thumb under the flap. He tried to steel himself for what he would find when he unfolded the pages. A shudder shook him to the core when his eyes adjusted on the numbers. He leaned forward and put his hand to his mouth. It was worse than he could have imagined. What and how questions played tag in his brain. How had this happened? What should he do now? How was he going to have time to sort all of this out and deal with his father too?
The quiet knock on the hardwood door yanked his attention to it. By some surreal phenomenon that Ben couldn’t really understand or grasp, his brother stood there. Older and taller, but his brother just the same. “Did you find it?”
There really wasn’t anything else to do. Ben let out a hollow, half-laugh in the breath of air. “Yeah. I found it all right. Along with about six dozen others.” He let out another rush of incredulous air. “Ga…” Sitting forward, Ben threw the envelopes to the desk and put his hand to his forehead, pushing to get life to go away.
Jason stepped into the room, his face laden with concern. “What’s going on?”
For a moment Ben tried to get all the words to line up in his head, but there were just too many to know where to start. He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, trying desperately not to cry. The fist in his stomach clenched tighter. “I have no idea. Did you hear that? I have no freaking idea. That’s the answer you want, right? I’m supposed to have all the damn answers, and I have no freaking idea what I’m doing.”
Coming all the way into the room, Jason glanced around. Ben felt him moving though Jason said nothing.
“This whole thing is one big, freaking mess,” Ben continued, giving voice to the utter chaos swirling inside him. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I don’t know how to handle any of this. I don’t even know where to start.”
At the leather couch, Jason sat down and pulled a stack of mail from the little table next to him. Ben couldn’t look. It was too overwhelming. If he could just think of a good place to run, somewhere with sunshine and vodka—lots and lots of vodka. That would be great. Anywhere but here where all he could do was watch his life crumble before his eyes.
One at a time, Jason paged through the documents. “Have these been paid?”
“How the hell should I know?” In a blinded fury, Ben vaulted from the chair and took three steps to the side wall. He wanted to punch it. Something in him said that would feel good, but something else by only the slightest power kept him from it. “How should I know anything? He didn’t tell me about any of this. He didn’t even tell me about you.”
Anger and bitterness spilled over the sides of his heart, and he had no way to stop it. “Where have I been? Where? This isn’t new. Look at those statements. Six months or more. And where was I? How long has this been going on? How long has he been like this, and I didn’t even realize it until I got that call…”
A soft knock on the door yanked Ben’s hand up to his face to stop the words. This was embarrassing enough with his brother right here. He sure didn’t want the world to see him like this.
“Hey,” Kelly’s voice drifted int
o the room. “Maria said you guys were up here.”
Squeezing his eyes closed with his back still to them, Ben arched his head forward and then back, fighting to get the emotions to stand back down. It wasn’t working.
“I’m Jason.” Standing from the couch, Jason shook hands with Ben’s best friend while Ben prayed to wake up from this nightmare. He would sell everything he owned just to wake up.
“Kelly Zandoval. I’m Ben’s friend.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
How could they act so incredibly normal? How could anyone act normal? The world was spinning out from under their feet. Couldn’t they feel it?
“What’s… what’s going on?” Kelly asked softly.
Jason let out a long breath, and Ben felt them looking at him. He didn’t care. He couldn’t face them or the absolute chaos of his life.
“We just got here,” Jason finally said. The sound of papers moving dug into Ben. Did they have to look? Did Kelly have to find out? “I don’t know, but it looks like Dad’s behind on some of his bills.”
The papers fluttered again as Ben forced his blood pressure to descend slowly. He was regaining control. It was a good feeling. Numbness overtook him in a wash, and slowly he turned to rejoin humanity.
“It looks like things just got too much for him,” Ben said, testing his voice with each word as the two gazes from across the room came up to him. Each of the two men held a fistful of papers. How many could there be? Ben didn’t want to know, but he also wasn’t going to let them see any more cracks in his armor. This was his problem, and he would deal with it.
“How many are there?” Kelly asked, looking from Ben to the papers in his hands.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to look yet.” Ben stepped back over to the desk. Sitting down in that chair was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. It felt like death itself. It was strange how dark it was in this room. He had never noticed that. There was no outside light at all, only a couple of dim reading lights. He pushed that thought away as he picked up four envelopes. “The electric bill was three months past due. The lady said they only let it on that long because Dad was such a long and loyal customer.”
Coming Undone Page 11