Page 34 of Out Of A Fix

“Dar,” I yelled.

He jolted in his seat. “What?”

“We need tissues, man!”

His laughter as he scrambled to get them made me smile.

“Do you guys have bikes?”

“Yeah,” Tatum affirmed.

“We should ride after dinner. It’s good for the digestion.”

“That’s great and all,” Darwin said, blowing his nose again, “but I wanna eat more first, because your spaghetti is really good.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Why did you throw the noodle at the wall?” Tatum wanted to know.

“Yeah, I wanna know that too,” Griff apprised me as the doorbell rang.

Everyone started to get up.

“No,” I said quickly. “I answer the door until further notice.”

Checking the peephole, I saw a woman there with a young girl—her daughter, given their resemblance.

“C’mere, Griff.”

He reached me quickly, and when I had him look out the peephole, he said, “That’s Christine Wilson, the chief’s daughter, with her mom.”

Of course it was. Taking a breath, having him step behind me, I opened the door.

“Luke, I—oh. You’re not Luke.”

“No, ma’am,” I said gently. “How may I help you?”

“Who are you?”

“Ma’am,” I rumbled, “how may I help you?”

“I—we’re here to ask Griffin if he—ohmygod,” she gasped, seeing his face. “Sweetheart, did Gerald do that to you?”

Griff turned to me instead of responding, and I was proud of him.

“Ma’am,” I began, “we’re not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigation, so if that’s what you’re here for, we⁠—”

“I lied, Griff, and I’m so sorry,” Christine barely managed to get out, hands over her face as she dissolved into tears.

I looked at her mother. “What did she lie about to her father, the chief of police?”

“She lied about who talked her into throwing the party at our house, and who was climbing out of her bedroom window at one in the morning when we got home.”

Christine sank to her knees on the porch, and her mother had her arms crossed tight, hugging herself, shivering in the chilly thirty-seven-degree breeze.

This was why being a fixer was never dull. Because along with the main event—protection, life-coaching, sober companion, and so on—there were regular life events that had to be dealt with. I was there to protect this family from a potentially nonexistent threat, but at the same time, through no fault of his own, Griff had a target put on his back by one of his classmates. She gave up Griff to her father because, I suspected, she’d be in much bigger trouble over whoever she’d actually had in her room.

“I’m sorry your home was trashed,” I told her. “And I’m sorry your husband made the decisions he made based on lies, but as you can see, Griff was badly hurt, and at this point, as I said, we cannot discuss an ongoing investigation.”