Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5)

by Krista Ritchie

I mechanically meet the driver at the base of the fucking driveway. “This has to be a fucking mistake.” I forget to chew him out about nearly running over my daughter. My head pounds, and my skin has turned ashen white.

  “You’re Ryke Meadows,” he states, not asks, grinding coarsely on a piece of gum. He unclips an envelope, hands it to me. My name scrawled over the front.

  Ryke

  I can’t place the handwriting with anyone I know.

  “I just need you to sign off here, and I’ll unload the Jeep.”

  The Jeep.

  The forest-green Jeep that I’ve ridden in hundreds of fucking times towards cliffs, quarries, the shittiest climbs and the greatest ones.

  I can barely think. I don’t know what else to do. So I sign my name on the line and then watch as he fucking unloads my history.

  An arm curves around my waist. My muscles unbind by Daisy’s presence, and I find some words. “I can’t take Sully’s Jeep.” What the fuck am I supposed to do with it? How can I ride in it?

  Sulli slips between us. “I have a Jeep?”

  It fucking guts me for a second.

  I pinch my eyes—I just can’t hold it in anymore. What the fuck am I going to do? Daisy wavers, unsure of what to say since we agreed not to bring up Adam Sully until our daughter was older. She’ll ask what happened to him, and death can be petrifying for five-year-olds.

  He died really fucking young.

  “Daddy?” The fear in her voice splinters down my spine.

  Eyes burning, I drop my hand to her head. She peers up at me, tearful and confused. Daisy whispers in her ear and rubs her arm.

  “Hey, Sul,” I say in the softest tone I can muster.

  “Hey, Daddy.”

  I wipe my eyes, and then I tell her, “You’re named after one of the greatest guys I’ve ever fucking known. He was a rock climber. That’s his Jeep.”

  Awe brightens her green eyes.

  “Adam Sully,” I tell her his name, and just as the Jeep reaches the pavement, I rip open the envelope. A letter inside.

  Ryke,

  We’re moving this week. We don’t have space for his Jeep anymore, and we can’t bring ourselves to sell it. He’d want you to have it. Take care.

  Barbra Sully

  He’d want me to have it.

  I turn to Daisy. “I’m keeping the Jeep.”

  She smiles. “He always said he had the better car than you.”

  I laugh because it never felt fucking true until now. This Jeep has more value than any other material possession I own. And I’ll take care of it. Yeah. I think he would want me to.

  * * *

  “Quickdraws, honey, bananas, chocolate-covered espresso beans,” Daisy reads a receipt, one of many stuffed in the fucking glove compartment of Sully’s Jeep. I parked in the garage, still behind the wheel while Daisy sits cross-legged in the passenger’s seat.

  I sift through his old CDs on the visor: Oasis, No Doubt, Héroes del Silencio, a band he introduced me to when we were eight or nine. We learned Spanish around the same fucking time.

  No one cleaned his shit out, so after years’ worth of time, it stands like a relic of my long-lost friend.

  “For fuck’s sake, Sully.” I find dried fruit beneath his car mat, moldy like it’d been stuck there a long time while he was still alive.

  Daisy passes me a few receipts. We spend the next thirty minutes just fucking remembering him. I break a smile at a few National Park maps, areas off-the-beaten path circled with a dull pen. He wrote my name beside the ones he wanted to bring me to.

  When Sully fucking called me to climb, I went. All these places with my name—I’ve been there with him. I catch Daisy’s eyes clouding, and I reach out, my hand on the back of her head. She leans into me, and I hold my wife. I’m not even fucking thinking anymore.

  I just exist in this moment, as tranquil as I’d be on a crag. Scaling thousands of fucking feet towards the sky. I look down at Dais, and her eyes flit up to me.

  “Every day that I grow older is a fucking blessing,” I say lowly, my voice hushed in this Jeep. Next to the sun of my life. “But every day that I grow older with you is fucking priceless.” I watch her chest rise high. “I’ve been so fucking lucky.”

  Lucky to be with Daisy.

  Lucky to be alive.

  Lucky to hold my daughter.

  Lucky that we have two chances to have another baby when we could’ve easily had none.

  When we mention surrogacy to one another, we talk about not being able to squander this gift we’ve been given. We talk about how we live our lives taking one fucking risk after the other. This’ll be the same. And I fucking worry about Daisy and Rose—but today, I’ve been reminded of something.

  “Whatever happens, Daisy, this—all of this…” Look at my life. Look at how long I’ve lived. Look at the sun right next to me. “It’s fucking priceless.”

  She has to sit up, her eyes glassing more. She smiles with a short laugh, but both fade too fast. She rubs the corners of her eyes and tries to give me a smile. It’s weak. I can tell that she wants to share my sentiments, but she struggles to.

  In this second at least.

  “Hey.” I pull Daisy onto my lap, and she buries her face in the crook of my arm. “I don’t need fucking pompoms and confetti.” I kiss her head. “If you’re sad, you can be fucking sad.”

  Daisy rests her chin on my chest, and I toss a strand of hair in her face. The sun has set somewhere between the surrogacy talk with Rose and Connor, our daughter almost getting crushed by a fucking tractor-trailer, and digging through the contents of this Jeep.

  I see the I’m sorry on her lips, but she doesn’t utter the words. Instead she says softly, “I’m just as lucky to be growing old with you.” Her smile lasts a fraction longer, and I hang onto every fucking second. When depression leeches onto Dais, she usually tells me, I feel heavy. What I suggest next might not help completely, but it’s enough to shorten the wait.

  “Run with me, Calloway?”

  She nods, and not a moment later, we’re out of the Jeep—and I throw Daisy across my shoulder. Breath ejects from her lungs, and she swings her head back to me, light bursting in her eyes.

  I raise my brows at her.

  “This must be that ‘can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kind of stuff.’” She quotes It Takes Two often.

  “No,” I deadpan.

  “Just no?”

  “Fuck no.”

  Her lips pull upward. “Then what is this?”

  “It’s so much more than that.”

  She gasps. “It’s chocolate.”

  I drop her down my back and grab her ankle, stopping Dais before her head meets the floor. She’s safe and out of breath.

  When I pick her back up, when she’s upright in my arms, I fucking tell her, “It’s us at one-hundred-and-fifty miles per hour without brakes.”

  Daisy says as softly but more tearfully, “I really fucking love you.”

  “You going to be saying that after I run your fucking ass, Calloway?”

  “Oh yeah. I might even add another fuck.”

  “You really fucking fucking love me?”

  She smiles, the biggest one so far. “Fucking fucking fucking yes.”

  [ 31 ]

  March 2023

  Hale Co. Offices

  Philadelphia

  ROSE COBALT

  I vaguely concentrate on my work.

  Do not fuck this up for your littlest sister. She deserves everything. She deserves the entire world.

  Every waking minute, I try to annihilate self-doubt that muddles my thoughts in a pool of you will fail, Rose Calloway Cobalt.

  You will fail miserably and excruciatingly.

  Shut up.

  My eyes narrow at the uncomfortable stabbing insecurity. Pressure mounts on my breastbone. I let out a tight breath and stiffly sip my ice water. I have reason to be concerned. I’m waiting for the results—whether or not the fir
st embryo took.

  There are only two chances.

  I hone in on that word: chance.

  I can’t study harder. I can’t prepare. I was told to just hope for the best—that my body would either accept or reject the embryo. And that will be that.

  This is just a semblance of what Daisy must’ve experienced when she first tried to conceive. I never felt the painful uncertainty and lack of control, not until I stepped into this position, side-by-side with her.

  I might be older, but in this process, she’s my confidant. My coach. My role model. I want to do right by my sister, and all the risk is on me, the outcome is on me—do not fuck this up.

  I pound on the spacebar, completely forgetting what I planned to type out. My phone rings beside the stapler and cup of black pens. I inhale sharply, thinking it’s the doctor. I check the caller ID.

  Connor Cobalt

  It’s his day to stay home with our six children. I put the cell to my ear, my anxiety never leaving. “Richard.”

  No response, but the line isn’t silent. Little children shout shrilly over one another—it is the most deranged, inhuman noise in this world. And I hear it daily. To say it’s been a madhouse would be an understatement.

  We have three boys under three, two five-year-olds, and our only daughter is seven.

  When Connor takes four seconds longer to respond, I stand from my chair and start hurriedly gathering my things.

  “Connor?” I try again.

  “Rose…” His voice is level, but I feel an undercurrent beneath my name.

  Purse on my arm like extra arsenal, I leave my office, keys in hand. Just before I tell him I’m on my way, he speaks again.

  “Rose, I need you.” At first, I think it’s gravely serious, but then he adds, “If you can spare the time, darling.”

  “My time is yours,” I tell him, no hesitation. “I’ll be there soon.” I don’t ask what’s happened. I reaffirm that I’ll be home, and we hang up.

  On my drive to the gated neighborhood, I sit pin-straight, both hands tightened on the wheel. I honk at four of the slowest drivers who’ve ever graced a fucking highway. The click-click of the blinker barely calms my violent pulse.

  After going through security, I enter the neighborhood, and it’s not long before I park by my water fountain, too stressed and high-strung to even reach the garage.

  I walk quickly, locking my Escalade, and then head inside the front door. I scan the foyer, regal marble staircase and glittering chandelier. Chatter and footsteps all originate upstairs, so I climb.

  “Connor!” I shout.

  I reach the hallway, and my head whips towards every empty room. I aim for the ajar door at the end: the children’s playroom.

  “That’s not fair!” Beckett screams shrilly.

  “We didn’t do anything, Daddy,” Charlie pipes in, less emotional than his twin brother, but his voice only adds to the volume.

  I enter the mayhem and barely have time to scan the playroom. I notice Connor knelt in front of Beckett, one-year-old Ben also crying and kicking his feet near a stuffed teddy bear.

  Each head-splitting wail slices a knife through my chest. These are our monsters, and while tears are acceptable, I want to eradicate the source of their pain.

  If only children didn’t cry over things like one broken crayon with an entire unbroken pack clearly in front of them.

  In an even-tempered voice, Connor tells Charlie, “Why did this mess start?” The way he asks, I know Connor already has the answer, but he wants Charlie to use his mind and words.

  Charlie stays defiantly quiet.

  My husband shifts his eyes for a fraction of a second towards me, and he lets me see his irritations, scratching his deep blues. On any other day, I might take pride in his demise, but I don’t care about outwitting Connor when our children are the source of his rare frustrations.

  Connor visibly exhales as he gives Charlie the answer, “This mess started because you didn’t share your book.”

  Charlie plants his hands on his hips and declares, “Correlation does not equal causation.” At five, he’s saying things like this. I question whether he actually understands the meaning or if he just overheard Connor using the phrase.

  Connor opens his mouth to speak—what he does best, even if his words are rooted in narcissism and conceit.

  He’s cut off.

  Beckett stomps his foot, tears surging forth. “Eliot pushed Charlie! Why are we in trouble?!”

  Connor blinks for a second longer than usual, the noise puncturing his eardrums and mine. “Because you pushed him back. We don’t fight with our hands.”

  “Then Charlie shouldn’t be in trouble.”

  Connor’s voice slowly rises. “More than just you two are in trouble, I assure you.”

  Ben lets out a deadly wail, slamming his fists into the carpeted floor. I walk further inside, my left heel at a strange tilt. I’m standing at a fucking tilt. I remove my black heels, the left one about to break.

  I let out a strained breath.

  I quickly sweep the playroom and tune out the screams. Four bookshelves of children’s novels, two window nooks, light-blue painted walls, and a wooden trunk of toys.

  Lettered blocks scatter the carpet, and Jane cries softly by her—no. One of the boys smashed her dollhouse. Beckett would be the first to help her fix her toys, I’m sure, but he’s too concerned with Charlie being punished.

  Three-year-old Eliot screams, “Mommy!” He bounds over to me and grabs the hem of my black skirt, two-year-old Tom trying and helplessly racing after his brother. Eliot tugs me towards the toy trunk as though to say play with me.

  He’s a little menace. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be the culprit of the demolished dollhouse. As I walk past my husband, Connor turns his head fully to me for the very first time.

  My jaw drops.

  A welt surfaces underneath his left eye, bruise forming. His eye reddened, pained by whatever impaled him. I’m not given time to process.

  Jane lets out an angry, shrill scream. “I hate this! There are too many boys!” I know, my gremlin.

  I’d like to think this is a one in a million occurrence, but it’s not. The chaos of our children is our daily routine. That crayon box sob session? That’s a real anecdote. I showed Tom all the crayons he could play with, and he still wailed over that fucking broken one.

  This might be typical, but Connor usually multitasks better and smoother than this. I start to wonder if something else threw him off today.

  I want to help clear his mind, so I start to tell Jane, “We’ll fix it—”

  Eliot yanks at my skirt, my white blouse no longer tucked in. I squat to pry his little fingers off my skirt. He pouts.

  Jane cries softly, “It’s ruined.”

  Connor rises to his feet as he tells Beckett, “You can’t push your little brother, not even to defend Charlie. You know many words; use them.”

  Beckett screams.

  Connor shuts his eyes for an even longer moment, and then his gaze finds mine. “It’s impossible to reason with the unreasonable.” He wouldn’t try if they weren’t his children.

  As he holds my gaze, I realize that he seeks a social exchange that doesn’t end in high-pitched wails and irrationalities.

  I open my mouth to reply, but this time, I’m cut off. Tom tries to crawl up my body. He clutches my blouse at the collar, tugging hard while I wrestle his little devious hands off the fabric. I feel my smile form. Why am I smiling at you?

  I try to glare.

  It’s more difficult.

  “Jane,” Connor says to our daughter. “Tom will help you clean up.”

  “No, I won’t!” Tom says gleefully while popping buttons off my blouse—Eliot chases after them.

  “Eliot, no!” I shout and glance towards Connor, his welt turning purple. What hit him in the face? Who is to blame? Which child needs disciplined first? I am ready to join his ranks, but I can’t do so without the proper informatio
n.

  Connor is just as preoccupied. Ben cries to him, “Daddy!”

  Charlie speaks, but not over Beckett’s emotional screams, face splotched red.

  Eliot hops towards the loose and scattered buttons.

  “Eliot Alice Cobalt!” I yell, my finger pointed at the three-year-old. He freezes. “Do not put a button in your mouth.”

  “Charlie, Beckett,” Connor says deeply, his grave tone close to a shout. “Stop. Think about the reason I’ve given you, and you’ll find greater meaning. I’m not explaining anything else.” He picks up Ben, calming our youngest child.

  Tom begs to be held, so I lift the little gremlin in my arms—and he yanks at my blouse again, my blue-laced bra visible. He tries to wrench my diamond earrings.

  “No, Tom.”

  “But Mommy!” he shouts.

  Dear God.

  “My point,” Connor tells me.

  In a tense breath, I refute, “But Mommy could lead to an insightful argument. Give him a moment, Richard. He needs longer than you.”

  Connor’s lip tics upwards, feeling the beginning of a dialogue between us. “The moment will pass soon.”

  “Tom destroyed my dollhouse!” Jane cries as though I’ve betrayed her—I’m conversing with the wrongdoer.

  Tom grins and shakes his head. “No, I didn’t.”

  Dear fucking God.

  “And there the moment goes.” Connor sidles next to me, his hand brushing my waist. I’m physically more rigid than him, shoulders in an uncomfortable bind. Connor tells me, “He’s escaped timeout three times already.”

  “I did not!” Tom shouts, still grinning.

  I ask my husband, “Have we birthed a liar?”

  “He is something.” Connor then tells Tom, “And I clearly can count better than you.”

  “No, you can’t,” Tom says matter-of-factly.

  Connor tilts his head towards our two-year-old. I try to read more of Connor’s features, but my focus zooms onto his bruise. “One day you might count better than me, Tom, but right now, you’re two and creating more chaos in a minute than I ever created in my lifetime. What would you call that?”

  Tom ponders this for less than a second. “No, you can’t!”

  Connor’s irritations flare mildly again, and he fixes the unkempt strands of his hair, not styled to perfection. To Tom, he says, “I’ve never been amused by absurdities, and you’re just reminding me why.”