“He would know. Thatcher is a doctor.” There were stacks of wood, all the different types, put into neat piles with the names of the wood on them. “This is really nice, Jamie. I hope you thanked him.”
If he answered her, she didn’t know. She was looking at the art that Jamie had already been working on. And he was good at it too. Even with his mind just a little fuzzy on some things, he could take wood and make it into beautiful works of art that he sold all over the world.
“I’ll have to get you someone to help you with the labels and money, you know.” Jamie told her that Thatcher had hired him one of the pack to help him.
The door opened and closed, and she looked over at Thatcher when he joined them. Rogen noticed right away that his hair was wet. Turning away, she had to wipe tears from her eyes. He’d done this for her brother, without wanting anything in return.
“Did you see his latest project?” She nodded but didn’t look. “Come here, Rogen. Just let me hold you for a moment or two.”
She went to him, laying her head on his chest. After she told him she was sorry, he lifted her head up by a finger to her chin. He smiled. It was sexy, and yet still little boy charming.
“Thank you. For this and for my office. It’s really nice in here.” He laughed and told her that he had an ulterior motive for doing this for Jamie. “You want something from him?”
Rogen stiffened and started to pull away when he pulled her tightly against him again. “Cool your overactive mind. I don’t want anything other than a piece or two of his work. I was showing you this one because it’s my parents’ home. Before they moved to where they are now. It had been in their family for decades before my mom hit the lottery when we were still in high school. And he’s doing it from photographs for them.”
She looked at it then. The picture was blurred a little, black and white with a curl of smoke coming out of the top. It was stuck to a clipboard, just as her brother always did his work, and there were notes all around it. The color of the shutters, the wood that had been used, as well as the kind of trees; all of them, unrecognizable in the photograph, were apple trees.
The work that Jamie had finished so far was amazing. He had the strips of wood in the form of the house nearly finished. The curl of smoke was just the right color of grays and white. There were trees too, without the fruit just yet, and there were a couple of clouds in the sky that made her think there was impending rain.
Once Jamie had the entire thing cut out the way he wanted it, he would then fit it together perfectly before putting the wood in the correct order in the frame. Rogen ran her fingers over the front door to the little home. It was as smooth as she had expected it to be.
“I don’t think he’s ever done anything with a photo before. Usually he does things that he thinks up.” Thatcher told her that Jamie had been very excited about getting a start on it. “It’s beautiful. You lived here? All eight of you?”
“Yes. It was tight, but we were family, so it didn’t matter that we were nearly on top of each other. I know that Mom was glad for the large yard to toss us out into when things got bad for her. But she loved us and made the house a nice home. I don’t miss the smallness of the house, but there are times when I wish I had the same homey feeling that was there. This house, it’s large and somewhat cold to me at times.” She looked up at him. “I hope with you and Jamie here, it’ll be what we need. A home. Shelter, as well as family.”
“I don’t know that much about making a house a home. I just put things in the places we’ve stayed that made me feel good.” He said that he’d made sure that all of her things were brought here. “Thank you for that. Jamie, he can be picky about how his things are put in a box.”
“I noticed that too. When my dad was trying to help him pack up his clothes, he had to stop when Jamie had a meltdown.” She looked over at her brother, who was working on some wood. “He’s not violent, but he is loud, isn’t he?”
“But he can be. Violent, I mean. He doesn’t know his own strength sometimes, and he will hit rather than let you touch him.” Thatcher nodded as he watched her brother. “He thinks a great deal of you, Thatcher.”
“How do you feel about me? You don’t have to tell me what you think I want to hear. I mean, your undying love would be nice, but I can handle it if you only like me a little.” She laughed, telling him that she liked him a little. “Then I have something to work on. Oh, before I forget, Winnie gave me a cell phone. She said that there was one in your office for you in the safe. Took me a few to figure out that she’d had one put in. She’s sort of scary smart too, isn’t she?”
“Yes. As I mentioned before, I trained her for the job she has now. Winnie is smart and can do anything you wish her to do. If you need anything, including something for me, you’re to call her direct. Donaldson, as we’ve talked about before, is a moron, but he’s easy to fob off most of the time.”
“You don’t trust him.” She said that she rarely trusted anyone. “Me? Do you trust me? Again, I would rather you told me the truth than something I want to hear.”
“Yes. I don’t know why, but I trust you. And your brothers, the ones that I met. Your mom, she’s wonderful. Your dad is too, but he’s a little...I guess you could call it out there. Where does he come up with those outlandish sayings?” Thatcher said that he made most of them up. “Yes, I can see that. But I trust him too. I don’t know why, so don’t ask me, but I trust your family. If not, I’d have you killed.”
She walked away from him then, to see what Jamie was doing. Rogen knew he was trying to figure out if she was joking or not. She wasn’t, but it would be good for him to think that she was for a little while. Rogen wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to have him dead if he ever did anything to hurt her or Jamie.
~*~
“What does this mean?” Lisha Hall hadn’t learned to read when she was younger and had thought it stupid to try and learn now. She could pick out a few words and know them. Her first and last name mostly, and little words that did you no good if you didn’t know what the rest of them meant. “It has our name on it. See? Hall.”
“It says…. Let me focus it a minute here.” While she couldn’t read, Jimmy couldn’t see well close up. Distances weren’t that bad, but close up stuff hurt his head, he told her. No one even made glasses that would make the words big enough for him, Lisha thought. “I don’t rightly know. Something about Rogen. I have to take it to the window for better light.”
“At least I can admit I can’t read. You won’t admit that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.” Jimmy told her that she’d be able to read his mind when he stuck his fist in her head. “Is that even a good threat? Christ, Jimmy. You’ll have to do better than that if you’re going to shit talk to me.”
They never hit each other. They rarely argued past just saying things. They’d had a lot of ups and downs throughout their marriage, and some of them were really down. Just the other day, Jimmy had found out that he had sarcoma—stage four soft tissue cancer. They didn’t give him long to live, as it was inoperable. He had even less time for him to be considered active.
“It doesn’t even say where this is from. For all we know it could be from right across the street.” She looked out the window and shivered. The only thing across the street from them was a trash dump. Lisha hoped that her kid would do better than that. “I’m going to call the newspaper office and ask them what they know. Surely, they would know where this came from if they printed it, don’t you think?”
She did but doubted that Jimmy would get any answers. All those HIPPO rules, or whatever they were called, was fucking up a lot of things nowadays. As she laid back on the bed, in the only room that was at least a little cleaned up, she thought about Rogen. The girl had been smart, she’d give her that.
“Too smart for her own good, if you ask me.” The kid was forever getting into their business. Why, she’d even had the nerve to balance their checkbook when Lisha told her that she didn’t know if they had any
money or not. Turned out that not only didn’t they have any money, but they were in the hole about two hundred dollars. Bounced check fees were a killer.
But it was her knowing how to save her brother that had shocked them all. And to find out that not only could she read well, but she could run a computer too. Rogen had been close to her forth birthday when she’d saved his life and called the ambulance, all the while her and Jimmy had been standing there with their mouths open. They’d been lucky no one had believed her when Rogen had told them that they’d tried to kill him.
After that, not only did they watch what they said around her, but they also were careful about what they did to Jamie. Rogen seemed to be around every corner waiting on them. She’d even taken to letting her brother sleep in her room on the floor, like he was nothing but a puppy.
Lisha had hated Jamie since the day she’d found out that he’d ruined her for other children. He’d been so big, and—well, she’d not really taken good care of herself, so when he was born, he tore her up inside. Not only that, but he’d made it so she’d not be able to carry another child even if she was to get pregnant again.
“Fucking dip shit.” For months, even years before Rogen had become his watcher, Lisha had tried everything to get Jamie out of her life. To make him suffer as his daddy and she had. Her and Jimmy had wanted ten children, enough so that they’d be able to live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives on the government’s dime.
But that had never happened. And when they’d gone to the welfare office to tell them that they had a dummy in the house, a note had been on their file that said that they were not only to be turned down for any extra income, but they were to be cut off from all government help. Lisha had always blamed that on Rogen. Jimmy didn’t think it was possible for her to have done anything like that, not being so young, but Lisha had known better.
“I just got off the phone with the newspaper. They are rude, did you know that? Anyway, they won’t tell me where the article originated from, only what it said.” She asked him if she’d read it to him. “Sort of. They told me that Rogen Hall was considered a hero for saving a family from a burning car. Something about it being a great risk to herself, but I don’t get that. Why would she even bother if they weren’t her family? I guess I will never understand her. Rogen will always be a mystery to me.”
“To both of us. When was the last time you heard from her? It had to be a while ago.” He told her. “Six years? Wow, never would have thought that. Christ, really? Six years? I wonder if I’d even know what she looked like now.”
“She’d never be as beautiful as you are, my love.” She loved him for that, and he tossed the paper on the bed. “I’m going to go and see if I can rustle us up something to eat. You suppose a good faerie came in and cleaned up the kitchen? I’m getting sorely sick of living like this. It’s much too late to try and clean it up now, don’t you think?”
“Yes. We should have done it years ago, I guess.”
They were hoarders. And worse than that, they never cleaned up after themselves—really, never. When they cooked, the pans were put in the sink to “soak.” They only used paper plates and plastic forks. Those were tossed away. And the only reason a pan or something would get washed was because they needed to use it again. The only thing that ever got cleaned up was the coffee maker, and that had better be clean at all times, she thought.
Making her way through the piles of newspapers, she nearly fell over a stack of books. Neither of them read, and why they had kept them was beyond her. But they kept everything. Even if it broke down, fell apart, or even caught fire, as a few of the fans they’d gotten had, they would just toss it aside and go out and find another one. Thank God for auctions.
Their entire house had been furnished at some time in auctions. They’d sell off the good stuff if they didn’t want it, then keep the rest until they needed cash for something. Or it simply ended up in a corner with the rest of the crap. Lisha was just bypassing a stack of empty cans when she heard someone at the front door.
Answering it, she made sure not to allow whoever it was to be able to see inside. They’d been living there since before the kids had been born, and so far as she could remember, no one had been at their door since the kids left. She asked the woman there what she might want.
“I saw in the paper that your kid is a hero. I wanted to come over and ask you what you might have thought of that. I’m sure you’re not proud of her.” Lisha, no longer concerned about what this woman saw, opened the door wider. “Also, I don’t know if you are aware of this, since I have never seen you go to the mail box, but they’ve bought up the houses along this block, and you have to move out. I would have told you when the letter first came out, but...well, I don’t like you, so I’m telling you today because this is the last day you have to get out. They start bulldozing them in the morning.”
The woman, Lisha had no idea what her name was, left her standing there, cackling as she left—actually cackling as she walked away. Closing the door, Lisha looked at the paper in her hands. It was bright blue and the lettering was huge at the top. But she could see the numbers on it. Thirty and then a twenty-two. Running to the kitchen, she found Jimmy looking at the instructions on a label.
“We have to move.” Jimmy stared at her with that blank look. “Here, look at this. It’s a notice of some kind. Jimmy, they’re going to tear down our house. A woman just came over and told me that today is our last day we can live here.”
“I wondered why no one was harping on us about rent being due again. It’s been a few months.” He took the paper to the window, and she had to wonder again why he did that. Was there some sort of magic that came in that helped him see it better? “You’re right. We have to be out of here by six tonight.”
They both looked at the clock, and Jimmy wondered aloud if it was working or not. Pulling out her phone, she knew that there wasn’t any minutes left on it, but it kept the right time. It was five minutes until six now.
“What are we going to do now?” Jimmy said he didn’t know. “We don’t have any money to move. And what will happen to all our things? We’ve worked hard on saving things for a rainy day.”
They’d only started hoarding when the trash wasn’t picked up. After that, it was sort of fun seeing how high they could stack shit, and which one of them would be the one to topple it all. Just the other day it had taken Jimmy an hour to dig her out of the newspaper stack that had fallen over onto her. They’d both been laughing so hard, she thought she was going to be there forever.
“I guess we just take what we need.” She looked around when he did. “I don’t have any idea what that would be either, love. Perhaps we can get some of our cleanest clothes? Some of the things that we can sell. I don’t know where we’re going to put ourselves after this, but we can’t live here anymore. That bastard of a landlord, he should have told us what was going on. Not let us be in the dark.”
“She told me that notices went out and we didn’t check our mail.” Jimmy said that was possible. “Yes, so I guess we got nothing out of this. Damn it all to hell and back, Jimmy. This is our home.”
“It was, love, it was. But now we have to move on.” He was being terribly calm about all this. She asked him what was going on. “Look at the newspaper that came a few days ago. I never had time to put it on the stack after you knocked that other one over.”
Lisha looked at it but didn’t see anything about it. It said their last name and that was about all she could tell. He told her to look at the license plate on the car.
“It’s all blurry, Jimmy. What are you trying to tell me?” He picked it up and showed her what an Ohio license plate looked like with the one on the map on the wall. “They’re the same. I mean, all but the numbers that you can’t see, it’s Ohio.”
“Yes. Wherever Rogen is, she’s been in Ohio. I don’t know if she lives there or is just going through. But she’s been to Ohio, and we’re going to go there and find her.” Lisha asked him
why they’d do a fool thing like that. “Because, my dear wife, she might have a few bucks for us to take from her. And if she don’t, then we’ll sell her off to someone. It’s the least she can do for her old parents, don’t you think?”
“Yes, she can do that. But how do we get to her? That has to be a long way away, don’t you think?” He said it would take several days to get there, no matter what they drove. “Okay, so how do you propose we get to her, and also eat and sleep?”
Jimmy said he was working on it, and he’d have it in a bit. For her to start gathering up some things they could sell off, but to make it little. When he left her, she looked out the window to see that everyone on the street had waited until the last minute, it appeared. There were all kinds of cars and trucks loading up at every house. Lisha didn’t have any idea how they were going to keep their things after leaving, but she was going to pack up as much as they could.
Chapter 5
The last of the computers was set up, and Thatcher looked at the row after row of monitors. He had no idea how she was going to keep track of all of them, but then, he could barely keep track of one, much less twelve of them. Going to where she was standing, stretching her back, he rubbed her shoulders and asked her if she was finished.
“As much as I can be until they get me the cables that I need.” He nodded and kissed her on the neck. “What do you have in mind?”
Thatcher’s mind went into overdrive with all the things that had been on his mind all night. It was nearly midnight now, and while exhausted, he wanted her still. But he let out a breath and knew that he could wait for her.
“I was thinking that you could go and change into a cat. There is a full moon out, and you should be able to play without being seen.” She tensed up. “Or not. It’s up to you. But as your doctor, I’d say you are more than ready to do this, Rogen. And you need to get used to her so that if you do have to shift or need to, then you know what to do to walk and to move.”
Thatcher: Robinson Destruction – Paranormal Tiger Shifter Romance Page 5