The Perfect Life (22 page)

My ears and cheeks flamed yet again at my own daftness, and this time, Monroe made no qualms about showing how much she enjoyed my discomfort with her impish grin spreading from ear to ear. I pinched my eyebrows together and gave her a stern warning with the shake of my head, but that only made her erupt in a fit of laughter.

“Holy shitballs! Are you banging a chick right now, Uncle Ollie?!” Callie shrieked so loudly it caused me to drop the phone, and somehow, when I tried to catch it, my finger must’ve hit the speakerphone button, because the next thing I knew, her high-pitched, seventeen-year-old voice was being broadcasted throughout the entire apartment. “Is she hot? Did you play Michael Bolton for her? I bet you totally played Michael Bolton for her. No matter how ugly he is, I’m sure he gets mad pussy because of that sax.”

Dropping to my knees, I fumbled around trying to grab the damn thing, but it was like I’d suddenly sprouted six thumbs on each hand and then coated them in baby oil with the way it kept slipping out of my grasp. And all the while, she kept talking—without ever stopping for a breath. “I’ve always thought you probably scored a ton of chicks too. That’s why you had to move away from Kinderhook and go to the big city, right? Because you’d probably tapped everything that was available around there by the time you graduated high school and needed some fresh meat. You know that whole man-bun thing you’ve been rocking forever is finally coming back into style, so you can totally play up the whole grungy-hipster-musician-who-wants-to-save-all-the-children-in-the-world angle. I bet that’d be like hitting the pussy lotter—”

“Enough! Good Lord, that is enough!” I screamed when I finally grabbed hold of the goddamn piece of life-ruining technology and stopped the speakerphone option, afraid my ears would start bleeding if I heard my niece say the word
pussy
one more time. What kind of parenting job was my sister doing? And what had happened to the sweet, innocent kid who’d helped me hide Easter eggs for the little ones just that Spring? “My God, child, do you kiss your mother with that same filthy mouth? How do you even know about this stuff? Where’s Charlotte? Let me talk to my sister, so I can tell her that you spend entirely too much time watching stuff on TV and online that you have no business watching.”

“So, she’s hot, right? Nice tits? You totally mentioned her tits, so I bet they’re really nice.” It was like she hadn’t registered one single thing I’d said. “Do I get to meet her when I come visit? I swear I won’t mention that you banged the whole high school cheerleading squad back home.”

“I DIDN’T BANG THE WHOLE HIGH SCHOOL CHEERLEADING SQUAD!” I shouted as I teetered on the brink of losing my cool, forgetting that Monroe was still bearing witness to the disastrous debacle. “I DIDN’T BANG ANY OF THE CHEERLEADERS! AS A MATTER OF FACT, I WASN’T BANGING ANYONE IN HIGH SCHOOL, NOR AM I BANGING ANYONE NOW. NOT THAT IT’S ANY OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS!”

The absurdity of the entire scene had risen to Mach-5 level, and I realized that I had been sorely mistaken, for God had not forgiven me at all. The purpose of the phone call wasn’t to save me from anything; it was punishment for my errant, immoral thoughts and for breaking a good chunk of his sacred rules. I mean, there were only ten of them, and in the five days I’d been around Monroe, I managed to cover coveting my neighbor’s wife, adulterating (to a certain degree) with said wife, lying to the wife about my true thoughts, secretly idolizing the wife, and using God’s name in vain on a pretty regular basis. While I was thinking about it, I’m pretty sure one of the first things my Dad taught me once I was old enough to know what he was talking about was, “Don’t ever stick your finger in another man’s honey, son.” So by nature of the whole adulterating thing, I was also disobeying my parents in the process. Hey, at least I had no plans to bear false witness or murder anyone anytime soon, right?

“Dude, Uncle Ollie, chill out. I’m just messing with you, because I heard a girl laughing in the background earlier,” Callie snickered. “Geez, maybe you do need to get laid though. You sound way uptight.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head. “No, I’m good, Cal. Thanks for caring about your good ol’ uncle though,” I gritted out. “Now, can we please get back to the reason you called in the first place?”

Totally unfazed by it all, she jumped right into telling me that PawPaw (my dad) had already booked her a flight from Nashville to Boston the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and that she’d stay with me until that Wednesday, when the two of us would fly together to St. Louis for our normal family holiday weekend. By that point, I didn’t have it in me to bring up how I would’ve liked to be included in the planning before flights were actually booked, nor how I was actually supposed to be working the Monday and Tuesday she would be visiting, so I just told her it sounded great and that I couldn’t wait to see her.

After disconnecting the call and tossing the phone off to the side, I plopped back down in my dining room chair and face-planted onto the table. I was done. Finished. Terminado. Finito. All of that shit. I just wanted the day over. But I couldn’t be so lucky . . .

“Your niece . . . she seems like a nice girl.” Monroe’s voice broke through the buzz of static running between my ears, prompting me to lift my head and gaze over at her sincere, compassionate smile. “Yes, it sounded crazy, but you forget: I know teenagers. And I could really tell at the end of the call how much you love her. I’m sure you guys are gonna have a blast when she comes to visit.”

Taken aback by both her understanding and perceptiveness, my body slackened in my chair as I blew out a huge breath of relief. “She’s the reason I do this, ya know? The Mending Hearts stuff.”

“Really?” Leaning back in her chair, her eyes grew wide with curiosity. “Is it something you mind talking about?”

I shrugged and grabbed the unopened water bottle from in front of me. I was thankful the sexual charge in the room had all but dissipated, but the story I had to tell was on the complete other end of the spectrum from the mood prior to and during Callie’s phone call. “I don’t mind. It’s just not a very pretty story,” I cautioned, pausing for a much-needed drink in my dry mouth. “But if you’re interested, I’ll give you the abridged version.”

Monroe nodded, mirroring my actions with her own water bottle. “I’d love to know Callie’s story.”

Inhaling a deep breath for a small boost of confidence, I began telling her the story of my family’s nightmare—a story I hadn’t told in over a decade. “First, I’ll give you a quick background of my family. I’m the third of four kids—the only boy—and all of us are exactly two years apart, just like my mom wanted it. We were raised in a tiny blip on the map in Western Illinois called Kinderhook, where my mom owned a dance studio in a nearby town, right down the street from where my dad owned a small music shop. It was one of the places where everybody knew everybody and no one locked their doors, not at night or during the day. Crime didn’t exist in our world. It was unfathomable for our neighbors to worry about anyone doing anything to hurt anyone else, so all of us were just living our happy-go-lucky lives, when my younger sister Charlotte got pregnant at thirteen.”

A long hiss passed through Monroe’s lips as she realized quickly where the story was heading, and I used the moment to take another swig of my drink.

“Not to dwell on the absolute repulsive part of the story,” I continued, my voice shaking slightly with the rage I still felt nearly twenty years later, “but it turned out that her best friend’s father—and a close friend of our family for years—had been molesting her since she was ten, pretty much every time she spent the night at their house, threatening that he’d hurt our other two sisters if she told. When she first admitted the truth to my parents, he was out of town on a business trip for a couple of days, so there was nothing much they could do until he got back. They wanted to wait to file the police report, so that neither he nor anyone else in his family caught wind of it before he returned to town and came up with some sort of alibi. So, he got home late that Friday night and texted Charlotte to come spend the night with Tara, and lo and behold, my dad showed up instead.”

“Oh shit.”

“‘Oh, shit’ is right. Once my mom realized where Dad had taken off to without telling anyone, she had me—who only had my learner’s permit at fifteen—follow him to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid before she could get the cops there.” Closing my eyes, I could see the entire bloody scene laid out before me like it was yesterday. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing my first—and hopefully, only—dead person, nor will I ever forget the look of satisfaction that had settled in my father’s eyes as he stood victorious over that sorry fucking excuse for a human being.”

She probed further, her expression empathetic. “What happened then?”

“Dad was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he got out after seven. It sucked for me that he wasn’t there for the end of my high school years, but I understood why he did what he did, and if you asked him today whether or not he’d do it again, his answer will be yes a hundred out of a hundred times. It sucked the worst for Charlotte, obviously. Not only did she not have her dad for all of her teenage life, but she had to grow up real quick when she became a mom. The options of abortion and adoption were discussed at great lengths, but it all boiled down to neither of my parents could place blame on a small, innocent baby, and they always believed everything happened for a reason. Thus, Callie entered our lives, and she’s the light of all our lives . . .” I chuckled softly as I glanced down at the phone. “Well, before today she was.”

“So dealing with all of that is what made you want to work with abused kids?”

“Yep, like I told you before, it is who I am.” I nodded, surprised to feel much lighter after confiding in her with my defining-moment story.

I wasn’t sure why I’d initially been hesitant to tell her. I guess I’d been afraid she’d pass judgement on my family, but after thinking about it, I realized that was silly. She was just as connected and devoted to helping abused kids as I was. Which led me to wonder . . .

“Now, your turn,” I prompted, turning on my most charming smile. “What is it that made you want to do this?”

Lightning bolts of panic struck in her eyes the instant I asked the question, and immediately I knew the answer to my question, without her ever having to open her mouth. I also knew I wasn’t going to get an honest answer.

White-hot rage boiled in my bloodstream, but when it came to this, there was nothing I could do. I wouldn’t force her to tell me . . . shit, I wasn’t even sure if I can handle hearing her talk about it. So when she quickly recovered and gave me the bullshit line she recited in all of her interviews of how she knew it was her calling from the time she was a little girl, I nodded and accepted her answer.

But that night when I went to sleep, I dreamed in vivid detail that I murdered the man who had preyed upon Monroe as a child, and when I woke up the next morning, remorse for the satisfaction I’d felt in my dream was nowhere to be found. Because a hundred out of a hundred times, I’d break that Commandment too.

Because she was worth it.

“what do you

want me to say?

love is safe?

i will not spit out

those plastic words.

sometimes

love is taking

the train

because you

are terrified

of planes

but the train

derails

and blood is

spilled

anyways.”

–Christopher Poindexter

Monroe

AS I PULLED
up in front of Oliver’s apartment building Sunday morning, I still wasn’t sure taking him to one of Colin’s games was a very good idea . . . for numerous reasons.

Sure, Colin and I had made up after he’d shown up at the children’s home and apologized, and once we’d gotten back home, we’d stayed up late talking about the enlivening yet terrifying feelings that were all so new to me. With a much more understanding attitude—and an even gentler tone—than the first time we’d discussed it, my husband expressed his valid concerns about the risks I’d be taking individually, and the ones we would face as a couple, if I pursued something with Oliver. And even though I promised him I wasn’t interested in heading down that road once I’d had a chance to think about it, Colin urged me to become friends with Oliver, to get to know him better, without allowing the kiss to cause any awkwardness between us, and to see if the attraction continued to grow.