The Ways We Become Undone [ON HOLD]

Chapter Four

THE REST of the week was spent in an array of madness; from running around the house helping Mom furnish the place to organizing my own mess into some reasonable arrangement, while at the same time trying to keep Samuel occupied so he wouldn’t bring the whole house down. In other words, moving was tough.

    

“Oh! Oh! Look at this one,” Samuel shoved a rock into my view. It had a natural glint to its alabaster color. Finally, after badgering Mom and I for what seemed like hours, he was in a fixed position on my bed, his feet crossed into a half-lotus position. “What color should I paint it?”

    

I finished hanging my last blouse into the closet before turning to him with a smile, “Don’t paint that one. It’s too pretty.”

    

He frowned. “That’s what you said for the last one.”

    

I chuckled, “Oh I did? I don’t quite remember.” I started unpacking my jeans.

    

“Well, I’m going to paint it anyways!” he kicked his feet out so that he was lying on the bed now. The rock was raised a few inches away from his eyes as he examined every inch of it, while trying to figure out what color would make it into a masterpiece.

    

I smiled at the sight of his determination and focus but that smile quickly faded when I thought about how that focus will be absent when he went back to school. Over the summer, I had made a keen observation over Samuel and ever since he stopped taking his medicines, he seemed like a regular cheery eight-year old who sometimes had his tantrums and untimely eccentrics, but overall, he was fine, well to me he was fine. However, Mom was the one who was very worried about his behavior and I still remember when she told me that he was starting to become “too much”.

Whatever that meant.

    

I heard the phone start to ring in the hall and excused myself from the room. “Paint it blue,” I ushered quickly to Samuel who gave me a thumbs up in return.

    

I smiled and rushed to pick up the phone. “Hello?”

    

The sound of unpleasant coughing was the response to my greeting as the terrible whooping blared through the phone.

    

“Hello?” I repeated.

    

The coughing ceased and the faint low-pitched voice of a man began to speak, “Sorry about that. May I speak to Helen Kumar?”

    

“Speaking. Who is this?” I immediately asked.

    

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Robert Rivers, Attorney at Law.” His voice grew in clarity as he acquainted himself with me and I couldn’t help but think that he had done this introduction too many times.

    

“Okay...Uh, do you need to speak to my Dad? Because he’s not here right now,” I replied thinking that he wanted to speak to Dad about some criminal case.

    

He chuckled. “No, actually I was hoping I could speak to you.”