13:58 Matthew:want to grab dinner?
14:14 Matthew:I can get take-out?
This was the game we played, the battle of wills we fought every day. Lauren was busy being busy and just once, I wanted her to come to me, and I wanted her to stay with me. We were closer after New Orleans, and slipping further into messy, complicated intimacy with each passing day. But for every obstacle we bested, two more stood in our path.
I stared at my phone, knowing it was fully charged and the reception in this part of town was impeccable, and flicked a glance at my watch.Twenty-five minutes.Sometimes I thought she read my texts but waited, letting some indiscernible amount of time pass before responding.
I told myself I could live with it, I could handle the need for distance that I knew she saw as self-preservation, but I was greedy and I wanted all of her. Especially today. After another run-in with my favorite inspector and Angus’s most recent renditions of batshit crazy, I wanted an easy night with Lauren. But nothing was as easy as I wanted it, and Angus was making a lot of appearances these days. None of them pleasant.
He threw a crystal paperweight at Shannon three weeks ago, narrowly missing her and bringing down the glass wall separating her office from the interior workspaces. He didn’t give a reason, and more than likely didn’t have one.
There was surprise visit from state auditors the next week. They were following up on a tip about undocumented workers, and needed to see five years’ worth of filings.
News of the lucrative brownstone sales finally made it his way, a month after the fact, and Angus showed up at the bank last week, requesting twenty grand in cash from our business account. He had his own account from back in the day, but bitched out a bank manager for access to our funds. He didn’t get it, thankfully, but Shannon spent the following day smoothing things over with the bank.
We got word from a small-run community newspaper that the original Wellesley headquarters for Walsh Associates cleared escrow this week. They wanted us to comment on centralizing our operations at the Beacon Hill office, and Shannon managed a decent sound bite despite being blindsided by the news.
These were uncommonly public shows of the division within our family. He cared enough about his reputation and the firm’s prominence to keep his assholery at home and under the radar, but between the bank and the office sale, things were taking a markedly external turn.
We later convened in her office, the five of us staring at each other, shrugging and shaking our heads in response to this turn of events. There were plenty of theories about why he sold the office and what he did with the cash and why his stunts were occurring with such frequency, but we attributed it to a new level of bastardhood and went back to work.
I wish I could say this wasn’t typical Angus. I wish I could say his antics were the product of hitting the bottle too hard by all standards, but this was who he decided to be after my mother died: a violently angry man who seized every opportunity to share his rage.
Angus didn’t break windows when we were younger, but in some ways he was worse then. One day while we were at school, not even six months after she died, he destroyed everything with any glimmer of my mother attached to it—pictures, clothes, even the little blankets she knit for Erin’s crib. In his fucked-up, diluted world, we were to blame for her death, and though I hated hearing those words now, it didn’t compare to the way they sounded when I was eight.
Another glance at my phone told me Lauren hadn’t responded, and though I wanted to throw it across the fucking room, I tapped out a message. I was strung too tightly to play the game today.
14:44 Matthew:we’ve spent every one of the past 33 nights together. let’s stop pretending I won’t see you tonight. my place.
*
Standing between Patrickand Sam, I watched as Riley described his plan for the third of the four Bunker Hill restorations. His technical vocabulary wasn’t precise and even his most detailed ideas sounded vague, but he was making progress and I needed my brothers to recognize that. Riley worked unbelievably hard at giving everyone the impression he didn’t care, but I knew he did, and I knew he needed this walk-through to go well.
And thankfully, his fly was zipped.
“So we’re moving this staircase,” Riley said.
Sam paged through the designs and studied the exterior elevations. “Any thoughts on rain catchment? Have you considered a roof garden?”
“Would you shut up with the roof gardens? No. End of discussion,” Patrick said.
Sam muttered something about Patrick needing mood-altering drugs and inspected the exposed studs and ductwork. “Can someone walk me through the insulation plan? I have less drafty tents than this structure, and this wall?” He pointed over his shoulder. “This wall is from the fifties or sixties. It’s fucking criminal that we’re not upgrading this. There’s nothing special about it, and it’s flimsy as fuck.”
Riley flipped back several pages of design plans spread over a makeshift sawhorse desk and said, “This is what I’m thinking—”
“No one gives a shit what you’re thinking, turnip. Don’t waste my time with your stupid bullshit,” Angus roared from the doorway. He stormed to the desk and slammed a two-by-four against the plans, missing Riley’s fingers by an inch.
Patrick and I groaned in harmony, and I met his eyes with an exasperated headshake, my arms crossing over my chest as I assessed Angus. His formal wool coat and old-fashioned hat were out of place at the Bunker Hill construction site, and he looked small, bloated, and hunched. His silver hair poked out from his hat, disheveled, and his face red. He looked every one of his sixty-eight years, and if I had to guess, I’d say he spent the morning reminiscing with his old friend Johnnie Walker.
“This needs to stop,” Patrick murmured.
No amount of new office space or glossy magazine spreads was changing Angus, or his sick fixation with fucking us over. Whether it was replacing windows or him stirring up trouble at job sites, we couldn’t run a business like this much longer. Hell, I couldn’t protect Lauren from it much longer.
Angus advanced on Sam. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here? You’re not involved in this project, princess. I saw to it myself that you stayed as far away from this as possible.”
I saw him for what he was—an abuser hungry for a fight—and unless we left right now, we weren’t walking out of this house unscathed. I gestured to Patrick, and caught Riley by the elbow, but Sam was already in it.
“I know it’s difficult for you to understand, Angus, but we work together on most builds.”
