Page 57 of On Merit Alone

Chapter Thirty-One

Ira

“And that’s why Uncle Ira is the cooled-est in the whole wide world!” Olivia finished just as we pulled up to our destination. Maddox agreed with an absolute screech from his spot in his car seat.

Merit gave me a long half-appalled, half-perplexed look before turning back to Liv with a gentle smile. “That was so good sweetie, thank you for the presentation. Is it time for questions now?”

“Yeah!” Liv said excitedly.

Merit nodded, leaning a shoulder into the back seat as she lowered her voice. “Did Uncle Ira teach you all that himself?”

“Yeah!” she said just as enthusiastically.

I turned in my seat too. “Zip it, kid, I only told you to say the part about my record. Everything else you added for flourish.”

“Flourish?” Liv tried, saying the word all wrong and with too much spit, ‘flowisht’ being the phonetic result.

“It means with extra on top, honey. Kind of like when you add sprinkles to your ice cream,” Merit said.

“Ice cream!” the little girl screeched, done with us and onto more interesting things .

I sat back upright in my seat. “Oh no, you said the dreaded ‘I’ word.”

Merit sat up too. “The only dreaded ‘I’ word I can think of right now is your name. I can’t believe you got your niece to lecture me on how great you are.”

I looked away from her, one side of my mouth twitching up in a smile. “Had to. You seemed to have forgotten.”

She laughed lightly, her head shaking. “You aren’t seriously jealous that I was excited to meet your sister?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t at first , but then she started getting all doe-eyed and nice and smiling and happy, and I remembered what a struggle it had been to get her to even look at me like she wanted to be around me when we first met and—okay, yeah, I got jealous.

To Merit, I sniffed, “You weren’t acting like yourself. I was just taken off guard.”

She guffawed but flipped her eyes up at the mirror sitting between us and just smiled tenderly.

Reaching between us she slipped her pinky around my pinky and held.

Then turning my way she said, “Alright then, what are we doing now? Something fun I hope after you put poor Olivia through that grueling display.”

“Actually,” I started as I turned to look at her. Glancing at her unsuspecting face then back at the kids, I winced. Tipping my head I gestured toward the window, “Meet me out back real quick.”

She gave me a slightly cautious look before nodding and getting out of the car.

I watched her go, my chest tightening a little as she pressed her hand to the window to high-five Liv on her way past. When she was at the back of the car, I rolled the windows down and turned an elbow toward the back.

“Guys, I’m going to step out around back for just a second.

If there’s an emergency, holler real loud for me, alright?

Liv, you’re in charge. Be good and we’ll get that ice cream I was talking about earlier. ”

“Ice cream!” Was her shrieked response. Mr. Happy baby shrieking along with her and even mimicking the way she threw her arms in the air.

I laughed as I unbuckled myself and hopped out the car.

Around back I ran into Merit, taking her elbows under my palms and rubbing up and down her bare arms. She’d pulled on one of my short sleeve shirts over her usual tank top and shorts, and she was swimming in the oversized garment like it was a dress.

I didn’t care, I liked her in my things.

“Am I being kicked out for not being pro-Ira enough?” she asked as I met her.

I smiled. “No. But you are going to do something for me, alright?”

She stood up straighter. “Alright, what is it?”

“First tell me, what’s going on with the eye doctor, Six? Why do you hate it so much? They didn’t, like, put leeches on your eyelids when you were a kid or something, right?”

She fidgeted, her eyes going panicky as she darted them around her surroundings more aware now. “No… why?”

“What’s your problem with it then? Why don’t you want to go?” I pressed.

She made that face she did when she felt trapped. Like she wanted to turn tail and run. I rubbed her arms to soothe that panic I knew she was feeling. Coaxing her to just tell me. “Um, I… I just don’t like it.”

“Merit, I’ve got the kids in the car alone. Please just tell me.”

She bit her lip. “I don’t have anyone to receive news with me. To wait with me. To care if there’s something wrong with me. The eye doctor is the least daunting since my eyesight has always been off, but still. I’d rather not go if I don’t have to.”

I nodded. I’d assumed it was something like that, which is why…

I rubbed her shoulders, “Well, you can hate me for this later, Mer, but I had Julie make you an appointment. ”

“What!” She stepped away, and I stepped with her.

“You need new glasses and every time I ask you about it you change the subject,” I explained. “So I told your trainer. I’m sorry, I know—but you can fight me later. Right now we have to get you and the kids inside so you can get checked out, alright sweetheart?”

“Do they have appointments too?” she wobbled out. Anxiety making her voice hesitant and small.

I smiled, trying hard not to show pity on my face even though I felt it in my heart. She didn’t want to do this alone. I was going to make sure she didn’t have to.

“No, but we’re coming inside with you. We’re here to cheer you on. And then, on Livy’s request, we have to get you a reward for being a good girl,” I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes wider now. “You told the kids?”

I laughed. She sounded the most appalled about this. “I told Olivia because she’s a great cheerleader and I needed her help. And Maddox is an infant, Merit. He won’t judge you, I promise.”

“This isn’t funny,” she breathed, completely serious. Her face was worried, her eyebrows drawn in so tight they might have touched.

I wrapped her up without any hesitation.

My arms cocooning her body and my hand going to massage the nape of her neck like she liked.

She melted into me, shivering as she buried her face in my chest. “It’s all going to be just fine.

Quick and easy. And you’ll have three people waiting for you when you get out.

So grab your stuff, grab a kid and let’s show them what we do when we’re scared, huh? ”

“We run and hide?” she squeaked, squeezing me tighter.

I laughed. “No, sweetheart. We face that shit head on. Just like you’ve done your entire life. The only difference is, you’re not doing it alone anymore.”

She stayed quiet for a moment, letting a breath expel slowly from her lungs as she continued to hold onto me. I didn’t mind. I knew she was coming around to it.

Not quite fast enough for a four year old, though. From the back seat Liv screamed, “Uncle Ira, hurry! We got an ab-poind-mant!”

Pulling away, we caught each other’s eyes and laughed. And like she’d done this a thousand times, she went over to one side of the back seat while I went to the other, and we started unbuckling the kids.

Unlike with me, when Livy asked Merit why she was scared of the doctor, Merit didn’t clam up. Instead, she told her some story about how the last time she was here, she saw a “Scaredy Cat,” and it cursed her. Then they spent the whole walk inside trying to find the “Brave Blue Jay” to cure her.

In the end they found none, but Merit promised there was another secret cure. Big hugs. And Olivia supplied her with plenty to braven her up before the optometrist called her name to follow them back.

And the whole time I played with the kids in the little kids section, listening to Olivia tell me how she liked Ms. Merit’s clothes and shoes and asking when she was coming back, I couldn’t get the vision of her with a little girl wrapped around her neck out of my head.

My little girl. And me not far behind.

One day.

“What happened? What did you do to the poor things?” Iris asked as she walked back into the living room after her day with Leah.

The “poor things” she was referring to were the three figures curled up sleeping on the chaise portion of the couch.

Merit tucked up in the corner with her arm over the edge where she’d been reaching over the bounce a sleeping Maddox in his little baby hammock thing.

And a sneaky little Liv tucked into Merit’s other side, where she’d curled up not long after putting on a princess movie and proceeding to conk out before I even brought them the popcorn they demanded.

This isn’t where things got “poor” though. That part came when you looked closely at the girls’ heads, where the two of them sported matching bumps. Both tucked underneath bandages on Liv’s request.

I snickered just remembering it.

After her appointment, Merit materialized a wary version of herself.

It was so obvious that even the baby could tell, in which he supplied her with a hearty smack to the cheek as he tried to crawl out of my arms and into hers.

She didn’t even hesitate. She scooped him up from me and snuggled him close to her chest, slobber and all, just like she had when I’d given her Cash.

“Can you see again?” I asked as I looked at her and tried not to beg her to have my babies right then and there.

She looked so perfect using Mads’ bib to wipe his mouth.

Already seeming lighter as Liv ran her mouth a mile a minute telling her new best friend Merit what she did the entire thirty minutes she was gone.

She gave me a half smile but listened to what Liv had to say before responding to me. We were on our way out to the car before she lifted her gaze to mine and said, “I’ll be as good as new soon. My new glasses come in a week. Contacts too.”

I just nodded, happy to hear that. I decided not to bother her too much about the appointment, just in case she was mad at me for making it for her. But the whole time we journeyed to the car, even as we strapped the kids in, I felt her eyes on me.