Wheels (Tabor Heights Year Two)

by Michelle Levigne

  Tommy sighed. Somehow, thinking about all the fun he would have, spoiling Sammy rotten, depressed him. Maybe it was the suspicion that Sammy was staying with Stacy Belmont because maybe, just maybe, Paul or Claire or both of them didn't quite trust him to control the six-year-old while they were on their honeymoon.

  The best cap to today's success would be to have Sammy right next to him, giggling and wriggling and finally falling asleep during a VeggieTales marathon, and looking forward to a week of getting her off to school, cooking for the two of them, and working at the Mission. Essentially, acting like a father. He would settle for being the best uncle in the world, though.

  His movie marathon and junk food feast didn't have much appeal anymore. Sighing, Tommy rolled backwards, pulling Sammy's bedroom door closed, and headed back to his own room. His notebook computer caught his attention. He hadn't checked his email for probably five days. The only email he might be waiting for would be from the utter disappointment of a manager, who was supposed to be lining up comedy gigs for him. The only reason Tommy kept working with the guy was because he didn't demand a share of the fee whenever Tommy arranged a gig without his help. Not that the chances of a comedy job suddenly appearing in his email were all that great, but since he had nothing else to do he might as well check -- and brace himself to be disappointed yet again.

  "Story of my life," Tommy muttered, and opened his notebook. He rolled out to the kitchen while the computer was booting up and put a plate of riblets and wings in the microwave. He snagged a bag of barbecue chips on the way back to his room, logged in, and clicked on the icon for email just as the microwave pinged. He headed back to the kitchen, nearly forgot to put a towel on his lap to insulate against the heat from the plate, and wheeled back to his room.

  He started with the ribs, eating with his left hand and clicking his way through the emails with the right hand. Most of it was junk, including a record five scam letters addressing him as "my dear," asking for his help in getting massive amounts of money out of their country before the evil government that killed their beloved father/brother/husband/wife confiscated it. Tommy deleted anything with either "no subject" or "my dear" or the subject written in all caps, without reading it. The e-newsletter from church stayed in the "new" file. He had notices from two sellers on eBay, saying his payments had cleared and they were sending his orders. Tommy's spirits rose at that bit of news. He had been searching for all the episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain to thoroughly indoctrinate Sammy. Much as he loved VeggieTales himself, they just weren't warped enough to suit him.

  Deleting recent emails brought up older, unread emails into the frame. Tommy clicked on and deleted three in a row from three different banks, proclaiming security problems that had to be dealt with immediately before his accounts were frozen. He didn't have an account in any of those banks. The same for an email claiming to be from PayPal -- he had an account to process payments for comedy gigs, but any email addressed to "dear client" rather than using his name was a scam.

  "Huh?" he muttered, while reaching for a wing. Tommy frowned at the subject line that had just appeared in the bottom of the frame. "Truce?" He didn't recognize the email address. A chill up his back made him pause, just a moment, seriously considering deleting it unread. Tommy was in the mood to be contrary. Maybe if he was lucky, he would find something utterly stupid in the email and he could put it into a comedy routine.

  Grinning, he opened up Notepad and made notes about junk mail and spam and the stupidity of crooks who sent letters claiming to be from bank officials, but were full of mis-spellings and grammar mistakes. Tommy crossed the fingers on his left hand, hoping for inspiration, when he finally clicked on the email to open it.

  He froze, his gaze caught on the first line. The words made no sense, though he read them multiple times.

  "The guy never learns, does he?"

  A snort escaped him, when he wondered if maybe he had had some warning that this letter was coming. Why else would he think about Jarod several times in one day after months of silence?

  Dear little brother--

  I'm so ashamed of how things went down when I showed up in Tabor last summer. Not just my not realizing that you and Claire were together. I mean, yeah, I expected you to be on your own.

  "Liar," he muttered. "You wanted me thrown in an institution, drugged and drooling my life away, hidden where I wouldn't be an embarrassment to you or Dad's family."

  It's great that you're there for Claire. She needs a lot of help. Always has. I mean, yeah, she held the family together when Mom and Dad blew up and destroyed all our lives. Dad couldn't handle it when you landed in the wheelchair, and Mom wouldn't cut him any slack when he couldn't do the job she expected of him. You gotta admit, if she'd just given him a chance to make up for walking out on us, we'd still be a family, you know? But Claire couldn't take the pressure, always considering herself a martyr, always forgetting her sins and magnifying everyone else's.

  But I shouldn't have even said that.

  "No, you shouldn't, so why did you leave it in the email?" Tommy muttered. He considered clicking on the button to send the email to spam, but like someone horrified by a gruesome accident along the highway, he couldn't stop reading.

  I'm not writing about Claire, I want to hook up with you again. You're my brother, after all. I really want my kids to get to know their uncle. Maybe you can come spend some time with us. It'd mean a lot to me. What do you say, bro? Let bygones be bygones?

  You see, I've been through some things in the last year or so. A lot of disappointments. And the old man has been part of them. I finally had my eyes opened. The guy isn't exactly the scum of the earth, but he's working his way down to that level. He just refuses to admit all the harm he did us. I think sometimes he actually blames you for the family breaking apart. How could he do that? Was it your fault that the guy driving you home from the game was drunk? Was it your fault that him and his kid walked away without a scratch on them, but you got your back broken? When you think about it, everything is his fault. I don't know if you remember, but he was supposed to come watch your game and bring you home. But he never did.

  "Yeah." Tommy's voice cracked. "I remember."

  He remembered the reek of alcohol in Shane Holbrook's car, mixed with the stink of cigarettes. Tommy had sat in the back seat with the windows rolled down, his head sticking out the window, nearly blind from the wind battering his face. He remembered the blare of car horns, the sudden jerk of the car, then the deafening crunch of the oncoming car hitting the rear of the car half a second before he felt it. The car tipped upward and Tommy flew halfway out the window. The frame knocked the wind out of him. Then the world turned upside down. Everything was blank until he opened his eyes and struggled up through a fog to find strangers leaning over him, their faces somber. Even now, the biting smells of the hospital still came back to him, filling his mouth and nose, whenever he had nightmares about the accident.

  Can you believe the guy? Not that you've had the bad luck to run into him over the last few years. You haven't, have you? Get this -- he's back in the old neighborhood, yep, back to Owens Forge, running around, boo-hooing and making a lot of noise about making amends, fixing his Christian testimony, making things right with all the people he betrayed. If he really meant it, don't you think he would have looked for us, first, and made things right with us? We're the ones he hurt, not all those other people in our church and neighborhood. The guy is a stinking hypocrite. Thank goodness the guy is a real Luddite and won't have anything to do with computers, otherwise he would have found you and Claire years ago and glommed all over you, trying to worm his way in and probably live off you. Yeah, little bro, you know the type.

  Anyway, I'm warning you about the guy so you don't get hurt, and I'm trying to get back together with you. I really want you to be part of our family again.

  "I was never part of your family to begin with, except when you proclaimed yourself head of the
family and tried to run my life," Tommy muttered.

  He dug in his pants pocket for his cell phone, intending to call Pastor Wally. The elderly minister had been like a surrogate father to him and Claire since the day they came to Tabor Heights to join the staff of Tabor Christian and launch the Mission. Pastor Wally knew all about Jarod, all the pain he had caused, the lies he told. He had counseled both Tommy and Claire on letting go and putting the betrayals and pain thoroughly behind them, so they could walk free and grow in their spiritual journey.

  Tommy sighed when he saw the time display on his phone. He definitely couldn't call Pastor Wally, who had left the reception early, to go home and go to bed. Who could he talk to? He needed to let go of his fury -- he needed to unload, like he had last summer when his brother had had the gall to show up at the Mission.

  "Well, duh," he muttered, and clicked on the "reply" button on the screen.

  Words churned in Tommy's soul, wanting to call out Jarod on every lie he had ever told, his many machinations, his attempts to manipulate people ever since they were children. He was pretty sure that Jarod wanted him to get to know his nieces and nephews just to hurt Claire -- by not offering to introduce her to his family. For all he knew, this was yet another attempt by Jarod to get control of the estate that Claire and Tommy had inherited from their mother. She had taken Jarod at his word, that she was no longer his mother and he was no longer her son and he wanted no part of her estate. She had even given a copy of his last poisonous email to her lawyer and the estate planner, so they would back up Claire if Jarod tried to cause trouble after she died. Unless Jarod Donnelly attempted to make amends with his mother before her death, then he had no claim to her estate.

  Tommy had heard through the grapevine at their former church how Jarod planned to free his "baby brother" of their mother's "inept" custody, so Tommy would come live with him. One of Jarod's former friends reported that when he learned that a trust had been set up for Tommy, to protect funds to be used for his maintenance and large equipment expenses -- meaning no one, especially not his brother, could get their hands on that money -- Jarod had hit the ceiling. He had even looked into legal options for overturning the trust. Tommy wouldn't be surprised if this latest overture of friendship, acting as if the nasty encounter last summer hadn't happened, was just another attempt at controlling him.

  As for talking about their father, who had fled his responsibilities and destroyed his Christian witness in the community… Tommy didn't know what to think. Or more accurately, he didn't want to think. If his father wanted to make amends with their former church and all the other people in Owens Forge he had betrayed, disillusioned, and hurt, then fine, let him. Tommy just didn't want to see him. The only thing he was really sure of was that if Jarod called their father a hypocrite, then the man was being very sincere. However, just because his father was sincere didn't mean Tommy had to accept it, or give him another chance to be a father. Over seventeen years was too long a time to wait.

  Wasn't it?

  Mr. Donnelly:

  Regarding your offer to introduce me to your children, thanks very much. I like kids a lot. My job includes working with children. But as for being uncle to your children, please don't waste your breath or my time. I'm just too busy to spend years working around the lies that you've probably told your children about me. You have to have told them lies, because otherwise how could you explain that they've never met their uncle? Yeah, that's right, I called you a liar, just like I did last summer when you came to the Mission and acted like we owed you.

  Don't you ever come near me or my sister. We don't need you, and we honestly don't want you. If you're warning me to not listen to Dad if he ever shows up, then chances are really good he's a great guy and we should let him back into our lives.

  Just go away, you big liar.

  Tommy paused, his hand over the keyboard, but despite all the angry words churning in his mind, he couldn't think of what to say next. There was so much hurt and poison he wanted to spill on Jarod.

  Chapter Two

  Tommy sighed. As soon as the first angry line appeared, Jarod would have one of his self-righteous snits and delete the email without reading it. Then he would moan and groan and whine to his self-righteous friends, about how his brother was so disrespectful and throwing his overtures of friendship back in his face.

  Another sigh. Tommy read through his email, thinking of all sorts of things he wanted to say. Instead, he hit the "delete" button. Silence was the better response when it came to Jarod. Let him think that his email never made it to him, or it was caught in a spam filter.

  "Need more ribs and wings," he muttered, and headed back to the kitchen.

  Maybe it was a good thing Sammy wasn't here. Tommy would be tempted to let her stay up with him as he tried to fight off his anger and imagined facing down Jarod and making him admit he was in the wrong. A marathon of silly movies or some darkly violent superhero or quest movies would help him, but letting the six-year-old stay up until four in the morning, eating whatever she wanted, would not do her any good.

  It was time to be a grown-up, Tommy decided. Time to let go of the last shreds of his anger, and think about how his actions would affect others. He wanted to be the best uncle in the whole world, and live up to Sammy's adoration.

  "Nothing like a good woman to bring out the best in a man," he told the refrigerator as he scanned it for more barbecue sauce to drown his ribs. He grinned as a new, totally unexpected thought surprised him.

  Any possibility of a good woman -- an actual woman, grown up and smart and funny and level-headed, and able to stand up to his skewed viewpoint -- waiting for him somewhere out there, to bring out the best in him for the rest of his life?

  "Okay, Lord, You know how I hate gimme prayers, but please? Is there a girl out there for me? And if there is... start making me the kind of guy she deserves?"

  Friday, March 6

  Natalie Schaeffer took deep, slow breaths as she drove down the semi-familiar streets of Owens Forge. Knowing for the last two years that her parents had moved back to her childhood home didn't seem to dilute the strangeness. When she was ten, her father had yanked their family out of their church, then took a new job in another state, and swore he would never go back to Owens Forge. Yet here they were, settling back in, rebuilding old friendships, even going back to their former church. It didn't make sense. Natalie hadn't wanted to press for answers, even though her father's explanation for the change hadn't been satisfactory at all. If her boss ever found out that she walked away from digging down to the truth, she would never hear the end of it. She was an investigative reporter, after all. If she wasn't honest in her own life, and didn't apply her work principles to her personal life, what good was she? Sometimes it reeked, working for a Christ-based magazine. When management proclaimed they were a family, they meant it.

  She spotted the sign for Lincoln Street, flinched, and let out a low growl of frustration. Even after so long, she automatically headed down Lincoln, but her family didn't live there anymore. It made no sense, because she certainly hadn't been driving when they left town and only knew the routes between church and home, and school and home. Why would she take the old way home -- to a place that wasn't home?

  Natalie drove down the street, planning to turn around in the cul de sac instead of pulling into someone's driveway. The daylight had faded enough that her headlights came on automatically, and she hated turning around and flashing her lights in someone's front window.

  She hit the brakes when she got to the place where the cul de sac should have been. Heart racing, she looked left and right at the new side streets that had been built in the intervening years. Where was their old house? Where was Tommy's house?

  It used to be right there, where Sinclair Avenue had appeared, with eight houses on the right, nine on the left, and what looked like room for half a dozen more.

  Natalie hadn't thought about Tommy and the house on Lincoln in years. At least, not intentionally
. Lately, she had been noticing a lot of small human interest stories dealing with handicapped people, especially those in wheelchairs. That made it kind of hard not to think about the boy she had adored and wonder how he was doing, condemned to life in a wheelchair. While she sat there, staring at the street, her eyes filled with tears and for a moment she could see once again the big, friendly house almost directly across the street from hers. There had been a time when she and her brothers had been able to go in and out as if they were family.

  "Stop it," she said through clenched teeth, took a deep breath, and turned left, cranking the wheel as tight as she could. No way was she going to drive where the Donnelly house used to be.

  Natalie had herself completely under control by the time she got out of the old neighborhood and found her way to the newer development on the other side of town. She had seen enough pictures of her parents' new home, she recognized it from halfway down the block. Remembering how excited her mother had been over the space, the recent updates that meant she didn't have to decorate much, and the chance to reconnect with old friends helped Natalie get rid of the last of what she called the "oogies" over returning to Owens Forge.