Page 64 of Fixed Asset

“Yup. Thankfully my mom’s cousin, Lina, took me in. She was divorced, had two sons, lived in a not-so-great trailer in a not-so-great trailer park. She was a waitress at a truck stop. One of her sons was a little older than me. Her other son was twenty and still living there. He actually moved in with his girlfriend so I could take his room.

“You know, my uncle and his family didn’t live in all that great of a neighborhood and didn’t have a lot of money. The house was old, cluttered, and messy. My aunt’s house was a wreck. Her and her husband drank their paychecks away. They were at the bar more than they were home. I can’t be a hundred percent sure—living with them was a nightmare—but I don’t remember either of them cooking.

“But Lina’s trailer was spotless. Her boys had no father. They were big boys, rough looking, but they had good manners. Lina made sure of it. She was kind to me. She cooked dinner before she went to work. She asked me about school and how my grades were. The son who moved out, Lars, came around a lot to check on his mother and little brother, but also on me. Steven, the one who lived there with us, acted like my big brother.”

Thank fuck she’d ended up with a family that showed her love and kindness after she’d lost that from her grandmother.

“I joined the Army because of Steven.”

“Really?”

“When I was a senior, Steven was working at an auto parts store. His job sucked. There wasn’t much opportunity in Fredericksburg. San Antonio’s an hour drive each way. He decided to go into the military. I went with him to the recruiter and listened to the First Sergeant talk about all the opportunities available. I knew then I was going to join. But after Steven came back to visit after he went through basic and AIT and I saw the change in him, I knew that was what I needed.

“I graduated high school, got a job as a waitress, worked my ass off making as much money as I could. Right before my nineteenth birthday, I went back to the recruiter and enlisted. Six months later I shipped out, and when I did, I handed Lina the keys to a fifteen-thousand-dollar car I’d bought her. It wasn’t enough, but it was the only way I could thank her. Out of all the people in my life after my grandmother died, Lina was the only one who showed me kindness, and she was the one who had struggled the most financially. Yet she never made me or her boys feel like a burden. She taught me that kindness was free, and if you didn’t show others compassion and consideration, that made you a plain asshole.”

I wasn’t surprised to find that under Cat’s tough exterior there was a heart of gold. What I was surprised to learn was there was no bitterness, no anger toward those who had treated her like shit.

“Hey!” she shouted. “There’s an In-N-Out. Can we stop? I could murder a Double-Double with grilled onions and extra sauce.”

I ignored the emotional whiplash while I signaled, changed lanes, and narrowly made the exit.

“I gotta ask, baby, are you using food as a way to change the subject?”

“What? No. Why?”

“That was an abrupt outburst.”

I heard her chuckle but didn’t take my eyes off the road.

“No, I really am starving, and I love In-N-Out. I’m not changing the subject, though there’s not much more to say.”

“Do you talk to Lina? Steven? Lars?”

“Oh yeah. All the time. Well, not Steven so much. He’s still active duty, stationed in Korea. Lars is married, not to the same girl from when I moved in. Thank God, that chick was a pill. He met this girl online and moved to Houston to be with her, and talked Lina into moving down there with him. I haven’t visited in about a year. But they’re doing well. Lars has two little girls—Irish twins. They’re absolute terrors. I mean that in the sense I think they’ll grow up to be criminals. I wouldn’t be surprised if at six, they’re planning their first bank heist.”

I didn’t bother hiding my amusement and laughed.

“No, really, I’m serious. Lars made them this nook under the stairs as a little playhouse. I think they go in there and plot and plan. Lars thinks they’re little princesses and spoils them. Lina says it’s because he didn’t have a dad growing up and he’s determined to be a good one. His wife, the heathens’ mother, does her best to rein them in, but I think she’s realized it’s a lost cause and is saving for bail money instead of college.”

“Can’t say I won’t spoil my girls,” I told her. “I have a good dad. He was tough but fair. But he did his fair share of spoiling Anna—one of those ways is him selling the home he bought with his wife and raised his family in to give her what she wanted.”

“And your mom? Did she spoil you two?”

I waited until I found a parking spot and rolled to a stop so I could give her my full attention.

“My mother spoiled the hell out of me,” I told her. “Make no mistake, she loved Anna. But she thought the sun rose and set with me. Anna’s my dad’s. He loves me and taught me how to be a good and decent man. Lots of lessons while I was growing up, but the most important one was how he loved the women in his life. My sister is Dad’s favorite, his princess. My mother was the queen of his world. He taught me by example how to love to an extreme. But my mom was all about me. Her and Anna were close, very close, especially when Anna got older and in high school. Mom was always doing stuff with her.

“Don’t take this the wrong way; I’m not looking for a mommy, I don’t need a woman to take care of me, but my mom taught me how I should expect a woman to love me. And that has nothing to do with her spoiling me. She openly adored my dad, loved the family they created. But if I had to guess, what she loved the most was the way her husband loved his daughter. I want to give that to my family. I want to give to my wife what my father gave to my mother, so my wife can give to my children what my mom gave me.”

Cat untwined our fingers, lifted her hand, and traced the line of my jaw.

“I love the way she loved you,” she whispered.

“I do too.”

That was an understatement.

“I love the way you love her.”