he was supposed to.
She wasn’t supposed to be walking.
“Should I let your grandson know that the ramp is broken?” Steven asked as he helped Mrs. Blaine to her feet.
“Jason has enough to worry about. This can wait. We’ll just use the back door for now,” Mrs. Blaine said with a firm nod as she slowly made her way across the short distance to her car while Sebastian stood there, biting back a curse as he watched her struggle with each step.
He waited until after she was safely settled in the car and was pulling out of the driveway before he made his way over to the ramp that was supposed to make it easier for her to get into the in-law apartment that his Uncle Jason had built for her. With one last look over his shoulder to make sure they were gone, Sebastian inspected the wheelchair. The wheel was definitely destroyed and so were three of the boards. They were going to have to be replaced.
She definitely shouldn’t be walking, Sebastian thought as he dropped his backpack on the ramp so that he could take a closer look. If Aunt Haley had been home and caught her, she would have glared at the older woman until she sat back down and waited for someone to get the wheelchair out of the car for her, but Mrs. Blaine was stubborn. Always had been, Sebastian thought with a fond smile for the stubborn woman who liked to keep Aunt Haley on her toes.
He didn’t know much about Aunt Haley’s grandmother other than the fact that she was insanely rich, had an unhealthy obsession with barbecue food, was stubborn, and loved to glare at him and he had no idea why. She always wore a fond smile for her great-grandchildren and an amused one whenever his brothers and sister were around, but when she looked at him…
He’d considered asking his cousins why she hated him, but then again, he wasn’t exactly sure that he wanted to know. The only thing that mattered to him was that she’d stuck by Aunt Haley when the rest of her family had cut her off after she’d married Uncle Jason and for that alone, Sebastian would do whatever he could to help her.
Sebastian grabbed the warped wheel and after a couple of tries, finally managed to pull the wheelchair free so that he could get a better look at the boards. They were rotted through, Sebastian realized as he moved the wheelchair off to the side so that he could check the rest of the boards to make sure that they were safe. He found three more boards that needed to be replaced, but the rest of them still looked good. He glanced down at his watch and noted the time.
He had two hours before he needed to head back to the school so that he could walk Mikey home. Plenty of time, Sebastian decided as he headed to his uncle’s garage. An hour later, he’d managed to find everything that he needed, sliced his hand open when he ripped up one of the rotted boards, cut new ones and nailed them in place. He’d have to come back next week and seal the boards, Sebastian decided as he wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm and focused his attention on the wheelchair.
After two more trips to the garage, he was finally able to get the wheel off and secured it to the back of his bike as he mentally calculated how much money he had in his wallet only to sigh when his phone alerted him to another message. Really hoping that his mother wasn’t going to ask him how the spaghetti was, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped it open, and–
Realized that he didn’t know as much as he thought he did.
Chapter 5
“He does realize that we don’t need him to walk us home every day, right?” Mathew asked with an annoyed sigh and a lazy gesture toward Sebastian, who was waiting for them on the park bench across the street.
“He’s not waiting for you,” Jessica pointed out with a pitying look at her twin brother that had Mikey’s lips twitching.
“What are you talking about?” Mathew asked, frowning in confusion as Mikey reached into her backpack and grabbed the old Yankees baseball cap that Uncle Jason had given her after her Red Sox hat had somehow managed to find its way into the trash compacter during