Page 81 of Badd Ass
“I’m really not,” I said. “There’s absolutely no reason to be awake before seven.”
“Don’t you ever get up early to fly?” Zane asked. “Like for airshows?”
“Sure, obviously. But I hate it. And everyone I fly with knows to leave me alone if it’s early, especially before coffee.” I followed Zane into the warehouse and set my load of drywall on the floor just inside.
Zane had purchased the warehouse for a relatively cheap price, considering the size of it and its decent condition; I hadn’t realized Zane had as much money saved as he had, and when I asked, he just said he wasn’t much of a spender, so he’d saved almost all of his earnings over his ten years in the Navy, which, apparently, equalled a sizeable chunk of change. Obviously so, if he could afford to buy the place outrightandthe supplies necessary to renovate. The warehouse wasn’t abandoned; the company that owned it had gone out of business and needed to unload it. It was, as Zane had claimed, a three-minute drive from the bar, so it was a convenient location. The interior had been set up for production of some kind of metal product, with offices in a loft area over the production floor. The company had removed and sold all the equipment and supplies in an auction before selling the building itself, so there was very little to do by way of clean up and demolition.
Zane, Xavier, and Bax had already spent most of the preceding week in here, knocking down all non-load bearing walls, and getting the interior ready for construction. Apparently Xavier had done some dabbling in architecture and design—because of course he had; only Xavier could “dabble” in something like architecture—so, he already had a CAD program on his laptop and the basic skills necessary to redesign the interior. Apparently Bax had moonlighted at a house building company during the offseason over in Canada, so he was actually a skilled builder, and the rest of us were all fairly handy naturally; Dad had renovated the upstairs apartment himself, so we came by it honestly.
Thus, I found myself roped into helping Zane turn the interior of a ten thousand square foot, one hundred year old warehouse into a liveable home. Despite my complaining, though, it was going to be a fun project. The outside of the warehouse was in excellent condition. Being an early twentieth century design, it was built to last, constructed of deep red brick, two stories, with a row of windows on each level. Inside, the front half of the interior was open from floor to ceiling, and then the back half was split into two levels. It had its own water tower on the flat roof, and a massive and fairly new central heating and A/C system. Zane had already had the electrical and plumbing inspected, so all we had to do was put in walls where he wanted them upstairs, build the kitchen, put down flooring, have some extra insulation blown in where necessary…
Yeah, that was it. No big deal. And, oh yeah, he wanted it done before the baby came, sometime in May. Which meant he was planning on spending every available moment here, and was hoping the rest of us would too. And us being the brothers we were, he knew he could count on us. We’d helped the twins build their studio, we’d all helped each other move, and we’d all pitched in to help both Dru and Mara move as well. If one of us asked for help, he got it, no matter what—and Badd brothers didn’t do anything half-assed.
We went to work, Xavier guiding our efforts. The day went pretty fast, and we made decent progress. A quick break for lunch, and then we worked through until four. Bast had requested we all put in a few hours at the bar tonight, since he expected a busy crowd and the twins were playing a couple sets and thus couldn’t work the floor, which meant I put in five hours behind the bar before Bast told me I could cut out.
I found Claire by herself up in the living room over the bar, staring at her phone, sniffling, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. I took a seat next to her and drew her close.
“What’s wrong, babe?” I asked.
She showed me her phone; she had received a text message from an unknown number, the sender’s bubble in green rather than blue.
Them:Claire, this is Hayley. Texting you from my friend’s phone. Dad is sick. Stage 3 cancer. Come home soon.
I read the message several times. “I’m probably latching onto the totally wrong thing here, but why is Hayley texting you from a friend’s phone?” I read the message again. “And…why would shetextyou this, rather than calling you? And why her and not your mom, or your dad?”
“I told you my family situation was complicated,” Claire said, wiping at her nose.
“Yeah, you said your dad and you haven’t spoken in, what, six years?”
She nodded. “And I told you why.”
“You got pregnant out of wedlock, then had a miscarriage.”
Claire took the phone back, staring at it; she hadn’t responded, I noticed, and she’d received the message more than an hour earlier. “It’s not that we don’ttalk, Brock. We didn’t have a little falling out; hedisownedme. I don’t exist to him. If you asked him, he’d tell you he only has two daughters, even though Mom bore him three. He took me out of his will, retook all the family photos, deleted me from all contacts lists in his phone, in Mom’s, in Hayley’s, and in Tab’s.” She clicked the side button to put her phone to sleep, and then immediately woke it back up again. “I…do…not…existto him.”
I hesitated; Claire seemed more fragile than usual, on edge, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed without hurting her more. “And, um…because your dad disowned you, that means your mom and sisters can’t contact you?”
She nodded heavily. “Right. They’re not allowed to talk to me, see me, email me, nothing. I’m not in the family.”
“So your sister felt like you should at least know that your dad is sick, so she texted you from a friend’s phone.”
“What do I do, Brock? He’s my dad and he’s dying, but…hehatesme. It wasn’t just the pregnancy and miscarriage, that was just… the last straw. That would have been enough, don’t get me wrong, that alone would have gotten me kicked out of the house at the very least. But I’d been…stubborn. Rebellious. I hated my dad’s rules, hated the church, hated religion, hated being controlled and told what to do. So I did what I wanted. Drank a lot, stayed out for days at a time, did drugs, messed around with boys, and I didn’t try to hide any of it.
Dad tried to corral me, but I refused to listen, refused to capitulate to his fucking rules, so then when I had the miscarriage that was it. I mean, I hadn’t told them I was pregnant. I’d been hiding it, because I had no clue what the fuck I was going to do about it. I couldn’t afford an abortion, and I didn’t think I could go through with that anyway, so…I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, not my sisters, not the guy who knocked me up, no one. And then my family came home from mass one day and found me on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. They knew right away what it meant, and once I’d recovered, they kicked me out, told me not to come back.” Claire wiped under her eyes with the Kleenex again. “Well, notthey, just my dad. Mom wanted to talk about it, wanted to give me another chance, but Dad had made up his mind.”
I struggled for something useful to say. “I—shit, Claire. I have no clue what to say.”
She laughed and sniffled. “I don’t expect you to say anything. There’s nothingtosay.” Another sniffling laugh, but this one was bitter. “My dad is dying of cancer, and I find out via text message from my baby sister. And there’s not a damn thing I can do. I can’t even fuckingseehim.
“You’re not going back?” I asked, shocked.
She shrugged miserably. “Why? What’s the point? He’ll just ignore me until I go away. You don’t understand my father, Brock.”
I hauled her onto my lap. “Claire, honey, listen. I don’t claim to understand your situation, but you know how I feel about this. I’d give anything to see my mom and dad one more time, literallyanything. I’d give up flying, and that’s…flying is my fucking life, it’s who Iam.” I cupped her cheeks and forced her to look at me. “You cannotjust sit here and pretend it’s not happening, Claire. Youhaveto go back. You have to at least make the effort. If your dad dies and you don’t at least make an attempt to see him one last time, you’ll never forgive yourself.”
She ripped her face out of my hands and buried herself in my shirt. “It hurts too much. I act tough, but…it hurts. I miss my family. I never did any of those things because I don’t care about them, I just…” she shuddered, shook. “I can’t do it.”
“I know it’s gonna hurt, but you have to try. You’ll regret it the rest of your life if you don’t.”