King of Her Desire

59

The sibs sort of hung back a little bit at first. They were escorted into what was once some sort of library off the living room of the big, "repurposed" house.

It actually felt pretty comfortable, not "institutional." But the anger, fear and sadness of all the kids who'd been corralled there had seeped into everything over the years. It seeped into me, too.

So I went right over and knelt down in front of the kids almost like I was asking forgiveness, I guess. But mostly waiting for them to show me how they felt before I grabbed hold of anybody. I owed them that much.

We could hear people walking Mima through all kinds of final "instructions" in chirpy voices nothing like the ones we'd heard before that day. You would've thought we were at some sort of kiddie resort, the way they greeted and fawned over us when we got there.

Cody gave me the side eye over that. He knew something weird was up.

But Carli finally grabbed hold of me and then Kelli joined in and told me, "It wasn't that bad," like she was more worried about me than herself.

And then Cody said, "What'd they say? At that thing you all went to?"

In his "hard guy" voice. I wasn't home free yet.

"We're taking you home," I told him.

And he smirked and said, "Where's home now?"

"Don't talk to him like that," Mima said, hugging a big folder full of "dos and don'ts." "Cause on account of him, home can be wherever the hell you want it to be. If you act like you got some sense."

I didn't want to go into all that with them yet. I wanted to get them as far away from that place as we could, as fast as we could.

So I stood and hoisted Carli up onto my hip and said, "You ready to rock?"

And Carli gave a big, loud, "Yaaaaaay!" Sassy. Strong. The way I hoped she'd always be.

Cody sulked his way along behind us and I let him. I had my own attitude adjustments to deal with.

First off, I knew my whole life had opened up in some strange way that I couldn't comprehend. Having all that money was like having a real superpower. Because of all you could do with it, right? Only it scared me, to be honest. It made people act funny.

Would it do weird things to me, too?

I remember I was sort of in a daze at the little extended family gathering at Gerri's house, afterwards. I mostly sat there with the kids next to me on one of the patio couches and listened to everybody else yammering.

They were all so happy that they didn't really notice. They deserved to be. They'd come through for us big time. I was still struggling to believe that, too.

And then Abra's phone rang. And when she smirked, Aaron looked over at her from the bar he'd commandeered and said, "The moment of truth..."

And she said, "He can't handle the truth—Matt?"

And put him on speaker so we could hear: "What the hell's happening right now? I'm on three phones—he just quit?!"

"You're calling me about this?"

"Look...okay, yeah, I hear you, but I need to know what's going on. The big man's calling some kind of emergency briefing in a minute—I gotta know--"