With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,48
her black nightie and no panties – I was this close to getting laid – my wife wades through the crowd of elementary and middle schoolers and pushes me toward the front door. “You go. You take Jimmy. Izzy, you go to bed. Everyone else, stop talking and watch the friggin princess movie.”
Ignoring my wife, Izzy bolts from the room and down the hall. A set of keys jingle against the kitchen counter, then the chain on the front door clangs against wood as she jumps and works to unlatch it.
She’s too short, but she’s clever.
It won’t take long for her to figure it out.
I look to Nelly. “She’s coming with us. I’ll take her and Jimmy. We’ll be back in a few hours.”
“No way,” Jon rumbles. Slipping out of the room with an air of rage simmering beneath his skin, he rushes into Bobby’s room and works to pull on shoes. “She’s not going anywhere without me!” he shouts. “She goes, I’m coming, too.”
Bobby sprints from the room on a giggle and unlatches the front door. “I’m coming, too!”
As it closes in on midnight, I sit in a hard-plastic hospital chair with a numb ass, pins and needles in my feet, and a sniffling Aiden leaning against my side; he’s still sorry. Bobby sits with his feet up on the chair and a Gameboy in his hands, and beside him, Jon reads a ratty paperback book and strokes long brown hair off Izzy’s sleeping brow.
Everyone came.
Like a damn circus coming to town, all seven of us piled into the truck and noisily made our way across town. Izzy sat with her best friend for as long as she was allowed, but the x-ray technician forbid her from going in and taking the scans for him.
Though she swore she was willing.
Since then, she climbed into Jon’s lap and promptly fell asleep. She loves her big brother more than anyone else in the whole world. Because Jon is her world, even when she’s being a brat about Jimmy.
Electric doors buzz open, and because I’m bored out of my fucking head, I look up and follow thick, beefy legs covered in jeans. A skinny, knobby pair of knees beside him, then an even smaller kid, even smaller than Iz, clutches at the knobby kneed girl.
They’re an unremarkable family.
No need to look up.
But I do, and when I stop on a familiar face, warring emotions lance through my heart. Familiarity, and memories of good times. But there’s also rage, and memories of a shitty time.
I swing around in my chair in search of his wife, the psycho fucking bitch that she is, and my heart yearns to see my wife, to make sure she’s okay.
But the room remains mostly empty and silent.
I turn back to the man I know as Reilly and swallow when his eyes lock onto mine. His are red rimmed and weary. He’s exhausted. His little girl clutches to his hand, then the little boy, just a toddler, clutches to hers.
Standing, I push Aiden toward Bobby. “I’ll be back in a sec, guys. Don’t move. Hey.” I tap Bobby’s knee to take his attention from the game. “You’re the oldest. I’m talking to you. Don’t move. Don’t let the others move.”
His eyes shoot back to the noisy Gameboy, but he nods. “I promise, Dad. Won’t move a muscle.”
I rub my hand through his messy hair – because I know it annoys him – then I step across the large waiting room filled with a billion other ass-numbing chairs, three vending machines, two of which have ‘do not use’ signs, and stacks of dog-eared and wrinkled magazines that are probably as old as my broken-armed son.
Reilly steps back and warily pushes his daughter behind him, so I stop six feet away and raise my hands in surrender. “Truce?”
He swallows nervously and casts wary eyes around the mostly deserted waiting room. “How pissed are you, Bry? I haven’t seen your face in a decade, so that’s probably a lot of lingering anger.” He hesitates. “If you’re looking to get shit straight, let me get my babies into the car. You understand that, right? I gotta protect them.”
Charles – Charlie – Reilly has been nervous for a decade. He’s been waiting for retribution that whole time, because his wife kicked my wife’s ass. While she was pregnant.
All this time has passed while nerves ate at him, and yet, I can honestly say I haven’t given him much thought at all. I was angry