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I laughed, as that wasn’t what happened at all. “No, I got in trouble some, I got so low that I didn’t think I could go on, and I found something that helped. Slowly, it helped. I was self-destructive for years, but there wasn’t one thing that turned me around. I don’t buy that anyone gets turned around from that kind of depression by one thing alone.”
“You didn’t find God?” he asked with a smirk.
“No. I’m not religious. My parents weren’t really either, but they were Hindu. Gods, more like it.”
Finally, he unfolded his arms and sat upright. “I want to get away from here. I want…to be someone else.”
“Yeah. I get that. Whom do you want to be?”
“Someone that doesn’t say whom,” he said, then laughed.
“Ah. Private school, overly educated, that kind of thing. Right. I hated that too.”
He laughed more and said, “I am friends with public school kids. I hide all that.”
“Me too, mostly. It comes out, though. Like…that vase on the mantle.”
“Rome, ancient Rome, nearly five hundred years old, bought by my great-grandfather.”
“Why is it on the mantle and not in a hermetically sealed room or something?”
He stood and waved to me to follow him as he sauntered to the mantle. I did, and once I stood beside him there, he pointed to the bottom of the case, where I saw a green light, nearly undetectable, in the corner of the inside. “Hermetically sealed, bulletproof. Try to move it.”
I was scared to do it, but I had to show him I trusted him. I placed my hands on either side of the case and tried to lift it, it didn’t budge, but more. The light in the case turned red and a high-pitched alarm started to sound, bringing Kendrick running into the room, Colby on his hip.
“What the hell?”
I was about to shit myself, but Chandler laughed. “He asked about it, so I showed him nobody could steal it.”
“Chan, he isn’t here to steal from us,” Kendrick scolded harshly.
“I didn’t think that! God, Dad,” Chandler countered then ran out of the room.
I tried to ease Kendrick. “I asked why it wasn’t in a hermetically closed room, because I recognized how old it was, and he showed me the protections. That was all. He was…was…starting to come around to me.”
“Was. And I just ruined it,” he groaned, then sat hard on the edge of the couch cushion closest to him. His head in his hands, Kendrick was beside himself.
Though it wasn’t my place, I sat beside him and urged, “Go apologize.”
“He’d slam the door in my face.”
“Then let him. He’s trying to express his emotions to you. If anger is one of them, let him get some of it out, then he may be willing to talk.”
Kendrick looked over to me with eyes pleading. “I love him, Kanan. He’s the only reason I got through my wife’s death.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but maybe he needs to hear that, and remind him every once in a while. If I had one of my parents still, either of them, it’s what I’d want to know.”
“You’re…wise. Let him slam it, huh?”
“Yeah, and just maybe he might let you in. If he does, that will be scarier, I guarantee it.”
“You’re not lying,” he said with a nervous laugh. “We are at a crossroads, Chandler and me. If he leaves after graduation, which he fully plans to do, he may never come home again if we don’t…cement some kind of relationship.”
“Was it always like this? Are you up against nearly two decades of fighting or is this teenage angst?”
“We used to be so close that I refused to use nannies for him,” he whispered, staring off in the direction Chandler had left. “He’d play in my office. I had a bed there for him for naps, a chest for toys. I picked him up every day from school, once he was old enough to attend, and that wasn’t always easy, being it’s two towns over, his school. But I did it, and we’d go for ice cream and discuss our day. We were very close, and then…”
“You met someone and remarried.”
