Unravelling

Chapter 38 - Gullible

I am on a mission.

The mission is to somehow convince Alex that it is my biggest desire to spend Future Day with him at the police station. A bigger desire even than going to Disneyland was, before they took me to Six Flags instead, effectively solving that issue.

I am not yet sure if and how I can pull this one off though.

Not only will it be an almost impossible feat to make him believe that I am genuinely interested in his work. There are additional difficulties to overcome, too.

The fact, for example, that Aidan tried to persuade Alex two years in a row to let him tag along and he failed both times. Even I believed Aidan that he was truly considering a future career with the police. But it was to no avail. Our oldest brother was adamant that he could not bring a kid along with him even for a day. I remember how some of us siblings tried to support Aidan's proposition, but we were unsuccessful as Alex remained firm .

So, not only does it seem almost impossible to convince Alex to let me or anyone else spend the day with him at work, but if I should be successful, I am putting myself up to being exposed to Aidan's wrath on top of everything else.

The third challenge is the time factor. I have been procrastinating for so long that I am now in a situation that demands that I sort this out by the end of this weekend. That leaves me two days to a) work up the courage to ask and b) make it so convincing that Alex simply cannot deny letting me come with him. Monday is the school's deadline to hand in our forms that confirm where we will be spending our Future Day, and with whom. So, in the likely event that I fail, I will have to come up with an alternative plan, and very fast.

Finally, to actually catch Alex in a situation where I can ask him if he would be willing to let me come to work with him is an almost impossible task, too. I don't want to ask him with an audience, for obvious reasons. Which means I have to get him when he is alone. And that doesn't happen often – unless he is asleep.

Recently, even that has been a rare occasion. He is always at work. Like, literally, all day, every day.

He pops up irregularly for the odd family dinner and sometimes we catch a glimpse of him when we come down for breakfast on school days. But by then he is usually already out of the house with one foot.

I cannot quite shake the feeling that he is actively avoiding us, or, more to the point: avoiding me. This may sound irrational, but a lot of evidence says that I am onto something here. He has not come to wish me a good night for weeks. And I have gone days now without him telling me that he loves me. For as long as I can remember, that has never happened before.

I don't like to admit it, because it makes me appear weak, but I miss it.

I miss our one-on-one moments where he makes me feel like I am the most important person is his life, even if it is just for a couple of minutes.

I miss giving him a cuddle after he spent an exhausting day chasing after criminals.

I miss the rare but very genuine smiles he gives me when I say something that amuses him.

I miss him.

And it hurts a bit, too.

Still, since I am on the clock here, I have decided that I need to move things along if I don't want to give up on the possibly only opportunity I will ever get to have a look at my birth record. Shady as the plan is that Finn came up with, as I am well aware.

So, I have established that my only chance to talk to Alex is to wait for him to come home for a few hours of sleep. What makes it twice as difficult is the fact that this happens very sporadically and doesn't necessarily have to be at night, either, because his sleeping pattern seems to be all over the place, what with the weird hours he puts in at work.