“Maybe I should send Beau to ride with you. How do these things play out? I’ve never had a paper shred case before,” I said, my mind tumbling over Stone’s safety and the security of what was dropped in our laps. “Are these old records?”
“Don’t know,” he said calmly. “The paper seems fresh. You’ve made me nervous. Am I safe with the shred? Do we need to have it securely transported?”
“Let me hang up. I’ll call Carter then find Beau. You know what? Have the security guard load your car then you two ride over here together,” I said, now worried how Beau was going to view this interruption to our routine. “See if Brianne’s in town. Get her over here too.”
Somehow, I’d made it to the driveway and parked in front of the house. Beau wasn’t home yet. And a weird case just turned weirder. I certainly didn’t want my father to make any more of an ass of me than he had.
Forty-eight hours later, Beau wasn’t the only one growing a beard. While I worked through the days and nights with Stone, my mister slept, worked his charters, and played with our children. He also ate some of my tamale dinner while bringing it to the guesthouse.
Where Beau shined was in sending Livie out to help us. She thrived in the chaos, her sharp mind piecing together the fragments like a pro. If I could make this her daily life, I’d be her favorite parent forever.
But then we hit something, changing the entire energy in the small space.
We found text message threads from my father’s cell phone, or so it appeared.
The realization hit like a punch in the gut. I instructed Livie to stop reading, but I couldn’t stop myself. The messages were damning. Each page held a back-and-forth exchange that contained condemning behavior. Once we put the pages in order, the heinous acts were all laid bare.
I handed the latest page to Stone, who read it and paled.
“How do we prove it to be true?”
“We have to find the people who own these different phone numbers,” I said. “The most consistent number has to be my father’s or brothers.”
“I can do that,” Stone said with a yawn. He had his laptop on top of his lap, clicking away. “I’ll probably need some real sleep. That was an obvious answer that I missed completely.”
“Livie, baby, only follow the patterns. Don’t read anything or I’ll have to stop you and send you back to the house,” I said, coming to stand behind her. She sat at the table inside the open kitchen and living room, a lamp was on nearby. Her fingers moved deftly as she brought piece after piece together.
Her gaze darted up to me. Her hands stilled. The disappointment was clear. “Don’t stop me. I like it. I haven’t read any of it since we saw the first bad word. But, Daddy, I’m helping the people too, so let me keep going.”
My hand coasted down her hair. She’d been at it with us for almost the entire time. This might be the only occasion that she hadn’t bathed in a twenty-four-hour period in her life. My heart tripped at her happiness at helping others.
Maybe she’ll take over my practice someday.
Maybe I could shred a bunch of paperwork and put it in front of her, perhaps the dictionary. She’d have the best time. I grinned broadly, even through my exhaustion.
25: The Lon
Beau
“Homework goes directly in the backpack,” Amelia called from her spot in front of the stove. Her voice wove through all the tendrils of chaos happening in the hub of the house: the kitchen.
“I’m not finished,” West said, pencil in hand, concentrating on the math assignment in front of him. “I don’t really get the shapes being math.”
“Put it in your backpack. We’ll go over it after dinner,” I said, working Fisher’s folder into the small pack he wore.
“Paw, they don’t give us enough time to play anymore. We go to school and home and homework and dinner and baths and reading then bed.” West’s hands splayed out as if trying to solve the complicated problem. “So we only get to play on the weekend?”
“On Saturday, you gotta go to practice and do chores, goofball,” Ava said, shuffling her feet to the small area in the kitchen where a desk was supposed to be. Instead, we had hooks for backpacks and lunch bags to hang on, ready to be picked up on the way out in the morning. That station was critical to the success of the morning.
The girls’ designated hook spaces were neat and organized. Even their shoes were nicely placed underneath. The boys clearly didn’t get the value of order, or properly fastened zippers, or the strap on the end of the backpack that actually hung on the hooks. Chaos ensued within their three spaces.
To my mom’s constant irritation, I knew I was the same way at their age. Maybe I was still that way, but I loved them. That love regularly drove me to return back to school with different assignments left at home. Sometime soon, I was going to have to show them tough love , which would be so much harder on me than them. It wasn’t going to be fun.
“Paw, do you think it’s ready for a badge?” Livie asked.
What she really meant was she wanted me to sign the bottom of the intricately thought through, and way overprepared form to earn a Girl Scout merit badge for both her and Mia. Ava had given up a long time ago. Mia loved the scouting program, being all earthy and devoted to keeping every single bug alive. For Livie, it was a competition that resulted in a small, triangle-shaped iron-on badge as an award. She had to have all of them by now.
She handed me a pen, and I scribbled my name at the bottom.
