Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) Read online

  “Whoa!” I said, stepping backward onto someone’s backpack.

  Thankfully, one of the teachers called them off. If ever there was such a thing as cooties, these kids had them in spades.

  “Daddy look,” Max said, and he held up a tiny cement mixer.

  “That’s cool, Max,” I said absently. I was trying to gather his things as quickly as I could so we could escape before the mob returned. I handed Max his lunch box and grabbed a stack of artwork and his backpack. We thanked the teachers and I made a beeline for the door. Three steps out the door, I realized that Max had absconded with the cement truck.

  “Oh. You can’t take that with you, Max. That belongs to the school.” I tried to take it out of his hand, but he had a grip of steel.

  “Mine!” he said defiantly, clutching it to his chest.

  “No, it’s not yours. You need to take that back to the classroom. Now, come on. Let’s go.” I turned back to his room, but Max ran the opposite direction. “Max!” I said, trying to put some authority into my voice without raising it. “Get over here, right now.”

  “Mine!” he yelled adamantly. He came closer, but he was clutching the toy so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  “No. It’s not yours, Max. But you can play with it again when you come back on Monday.”

  “No!”

  “Let’s go talk to your teacher about it,” I suggested, and surprisingly, he was completely agreeable. He willingly followed me back to the room. I opened the door, hoping not to draw the attention of the dirty mob again. The teacher looked up in surprise.

  “Max walked out with this toy, and he’s very adamant about not returning it,” I said, hoping that she’d know the magic words to get him to release his grip.

  The teacher looked at Max and then at me. “He came in with that this morning.”

  I got this sinking feeling and I looked down at Max, who was nodding his head vigorously.

  “That’s yours?”

  Nod.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Tore.”

  “At the store?”

  Nod.

  “This morning?”

  Nod.

  “Sorry, Max. I didn’t know it was yours.”

  “Mean Daddy.”

  We left Max’s classroom and went upstairs to get Oliver. “Look what I have!” he said, holding up the identical toy.

  “Mom got you those this morning?”

  “Yeah.” He looked thoughtful for a second then he asked, “What’s a wiener?”

  “A wiener?” What were they teaching him at that school? “A wiener is a hot dog,” I said, but he didn’t look convinced.

  “Mean Daddy,” Max said.

  Oliver laughed. “Max said you’re mean.”

  That was how the weekend started, and from there it only got worse. It took an eternity to get the three kids strapped into their car seats, and we’d barely made it two blocks when the next portent of disaster loomed before us. I’m not a superstitious person, but when a scrawny black cat appeared out of nowhere and started limping across the road directly in front of my path, I felt a kind of doom spread through my body, starting at the temples and working its way down to my feet. Had it been any other weekend, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but there was no denying the feeling of dread.

  For starters, I’d never been a cat person. An enormous Siamese had adopted me the year before, and even though I’d actually grown fond of him, I didn’t extend the affection to other cats. This one was dragging his back left leg, taking all kind of effort just to get across the street. I couldn’t tell if the leg was a new injury or an old battle wound, but he was taking so long to cross in front of my path that I had to slow to a stop to avoid hitting him.

  “Why are you stopping?” Oliver asked, wiggling in his seat, trying to see what I was looking at.

  “There’s a cat,” I said.

  The cat actually looked up and made eye contact with me, as if to make sure that I saw him and wasn’t going to hit him. I waited. He moved in slow motion. I waited some more. And then, no sooner had he finally gotten across and stepped a front paw onto the sidewalk than there was a huge jolt, the sound of crunching metal, and my Suburban lunged forward. The timing was so incredible that for a split second, I actually considered that the black cat had hexed us.

  Oliver and Max started screaming, Morgan started crying, and in the faint background over the commotion in the car, I was pretty sure I heard a cat yowl. I looked in my rear-view mirror and the woman who had hit us was sitting with her hands on the side of her head with a stupid expression on her face, making no attempt even to get out of the car.

  “Is everyone okay?” I asked, trying to hide the shock in my voice. “Oliver, Max, you guys okay?”

  “What was that?” Oliver asked.

  “The moron in the car back there hit us,” I told him.

  The baby was in a rear-facing seat so I couldn’t actually see her, but by the way she was wailing, I figured she must be fine. No way could she cry that loud if she was really hurt. I got out and went around to her side of the car to check on her and that’s when I saw the cat lying on the sidewalk. He hadn’t made it out of the street before the impact, and there was a tire mark on his hip. Damn it to hell.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, squatting down and running my hand over his dirty fur. I couldn’t tell how badly he was injured, but it was obvious that he’d been in bad shape before I hit him. There were bald patches in his fur, the membrane was sticking out around his eyes, and he just looked old and tired. Oliver opened the car door, took one look at the cat, and burst into tears. I unstrapped Max, then the screaming baby, and I bounced her up and down on my shoulder trying to get her to stop crying.

  Max joined Oliver and looked down at the cat. “Mean Daddy.”

  The moron still hadn’t bothered to get out of her Volvo. I walked the screaming meemie back to the car and shouted through the closed window, “Get out of your car!”

  Her eyes got big and she shook her head no. Unbelievable.

  “Then open your window!” I said, mouthing the words in case she was deaf and dumb.

  No response.

  I threw my free hand in the air to express my exasperation and stomped off to the Suburban to call the police. They arrived shortly afterwards to find a screaming infant, a sniffling 5-year-old, a cursing 2-year-old, a dying cat, and the woman responsible for it all, locked up tight in her car.

  With the officer’s arrival, the moron decided it was safe to come out. The locks popped up and she squeezed her large frame out from behind the wheel and waddled over to where we were.

  “What happened here,” the officer asked me.

  Before I could say anything, Oliver pointed at the woman, “That moron made my dad run over this cat,” he said matter-of-factly.

  The woman glared and the officer stifled a grin.

  I smiled down at Oliver. “That’s pretty much what happened,” I agreed. I was glad Maddie wasn’t there to be mortified.

  There wasn’t a lot of damage done to my Suburban, but I got the woman’s insurance information. The officer took some information down and within 20 minutes I was getting the kids back into their car seats. The only loose end was the cat. He didn’t look like he was going to survive the ordeal, but I couldn’t very well just leave him, so I scooped him up and laid him down in the back of the Suburban.

  On the few occasions when I’d taken the Siamese to the vet, the bastard had yowled continuously during the short car ride. This one didn’t make a sound from the minute I laid him down in the Suburban to the time we pulled into the Feline Clinic parking lot in Hollywood Park. I feared the worst.

  I looked through the tinted window into the back of the car, and was surprised to see that the cat was still alive. Oliver disembarked, and I unstrapped Max and Morgan again. It occurred to me that a large portion of Maddie’s day must be spent strapping and unstrapping kids from car seats, and I wondered if I were her, if I’d even bother to venture out unless it was an absolute necessity. Even the most trivial of outings became a huge hassle with that many kids. Tack on a dying cat, and I was definitely feeling overwhelmed.

  I had Morgan in one arm and the cat in the other, and Max holding my pant leg. Good thing Oliver was going through a phase where he liked to show off his muscular strength; he had become the official family door opener.

  “What do we have here?” the woman behind the desk asked.

  “I ran over this cat,” I said, handing him over to her. “He was limping before I hit him.”

  “A moron made us hit him,” Oliver added.

  The woman looked at me with raised eyebrows and I shrugged my shoulders. She cradled the cat in her arm and made some cooing sounds that reminded me of Penny, and the cat actually started to purr. The four of us followed her into an exam room.

  “How’s the Siamese?” she asked, feeling the cat’s stomach and hind legs.

  “He’s fine. What about this one? Do you think he’ll make it?”

  “She,” the woman corrected. She gave the cat the once over and shook her head. “I don’t know. Can you leave her here for a couple of hours?”

  A couple of hours? And then what? I’d never considered that the cat might actually survive. I’d just sort of assumed we’d be putting him out of his misery. I didn’t want another cat but I wasn’t about to say anything in front of the boys.

  “A couple of hours? Sure. Should I call you or do you want to call me?”

  “We’ll call you.”

  We left the cat and went through the car seat ritual again, and I decided right then that car trips would be kept to a bare minimum for the rest of the weekend. There was plenty to do around the house.

  But for som
e reason, the house seemed so empty without Maddie. She was almost always home when I got there after work, and if she wasn’t, it was never too long before she arrived. It had been an easy change, adapting to the lifestyle of a husband and father; coming home to the aroma of a home-cooked meal, with a beautiful wife to greet me. It was something that I had not yet taken for granted, and walking into the house, knowing that Maddie wouldn’t be there for days, bummed me out. The baby had fallen asleep in the five minutes it had taken to drive from the vet’s office, and notwithstanding Oliver’s explicit instructions on how to get her out of her seat without waking her, I’d managed to wake her. She was screaming again, and I was at a loss what to do. I laid her on the floor on a blanket while I heated a bottle, and Oliver was trying his best to amuse her. He’d finally had his limit and I could hear him in the other room saying, “Be quiet, Morgan!”

  I took the bottle out of the microwave and was about to fetch the screaming meemie, when Max came into the kitchen with a weird look on his face.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  I fully expected him to say I was mean, but instead he held his hands up for me to hold him. I was glad he’d decided to forgive me, and I squatted down so that we were eye level.

  “Just a second, okay Max? Let me get your sister and we can all sit together on the couch.”

  Without warning, the kid opened his mouth and threw up all over me. I jumped up and yelled involuntarily and he threw up again all over the floor. It was something straight out of a horror movie. I picked him up and held him over the sink, although by that time, the kitchen floor was a write-off. All I succeeded in doing was extending the mess and stopping up the sink.

  After my initial outburst, I tried to get my shit together and comfort Max, but my shirt and arm were covered in spew and I was so grossed out that it was difficult to be soothing. I felt very unfatherly. Oliver had come running in to see what was happening and he slipped in his socks on the vomit. He took one look at the mess and gagged.

  “Don’t look at it!” I yelled. “And hold your nose!”

  Max was standing there looking dazed, Oliver was gagging, Morgan was crying and I was covered in vomit. I heard the front door open and close and Felicia appeared in the kitchen. She’d changed her hair color again – red, it must be summer – and I didn’t even recognize her at first.

  “Holy smoke,” she said under her breath, taking in the scene.

  I was never so happy and relieved to see anyone in my life. “Felicia!” I exclaimed, knowing full well the height of my hypocrisy.

  She set her purse down on the counter and started rolling up her sleeves. “What can I do?”

  I looked around at the mess. “Feed the baby,” I said decisively, and I passed her the bottle.

  I took off my shirt, thanking my lucky stars that it buttoned and didn’t have to go over my head; I stripped Max down to his diaper; and I helped Oliver out of his socks and shorts; then I threw all the clothes out the back door.

  “How’re you doing, Max?” I kept asking. If he was going to get sick again, I wanted to be prepared.

  “Okay,” he assured me. He pronounced it “Otay.”

  “You let me know if you’re going to throw up again, okay?”

  “Otay,” he said pitifully.

  I fished out a big bowl from the cabinet and handed it to him. “Throw up in here if you need to.”

  He pushed it away. “Don’t like throw up!”

  “No one likes throw up. But it’s better to do it in here than on me,” I explained. I turned on the faucet and ran my arm under the water. Morgan was still crying and Felicia appeared in the doorway again with the baby in her arms.

  “I don’t think she likes me,” Felicia said.

  “Don’t feel bad. She doesn’t like me either.”

  “Here,” she said, trying to hand me the baby. “You feed her. I’ll clean the kitchen.”

  I dried off and reluctantly took the baby from Maddie’s cousin. And the strangest thing happened . . . she stopped crying. Felicia looked just as surprised as I did. “Wow. She stopped crying,” I said stupidly.

  Felicia smiled. “She does like you.”

  “I think it was a fluke,” I said. “Here. Take her back.” I handed Morgan to Felicia to see what happened and the kid burst into tears again. Felicia handed her back, and Presto! she stopped. I laughed out loud. It was so cool, I almost wanted to do it again. Instead, I looked at the baby.

  “Hey there,” I said in a ridiculous voice that I had sworn I’d never use. “You like your Daddy?” The kid actually smiled. I looked at the kitchen floor and felt a twinge of guilt. “You okay here?” I said, with a sweeping motion of my hand that encompassed the whole ungodly mess.

  “Go feed Morgan,” Felicia said, and I made a mental note that I owed her big time. Maybe I’d even sue the Porsche guy for her.

  So Felicia started on the vomit while I sat on the couch and gave my daughter a bottle. It was a whole new experience for me, feeding her during the afternoon when we were both wide awake. Her eyes were a dark blue like Maddie’s and what hair she had was practically white. Every once in a while she’d stop slurping and just look at me, studying my face, and then she wrapped all her tiny fingers around my finger and held on to it and smiled. My baby liked me.

  Morgan fell asleep in my arms and as much as I would have enjoyed to just sit there and watch her, there was still the kitchen to contend with and Max was in dire need of a bath. I laid Morgan down in her crib and by some miracle she stayed asleep, then I returned to the kitchen to assist Felicia. What would have probably taken me the rest of the afternoon to clean up, she’d done in less than 30 minutes. There was no sign of the revolting mess I’d left her with. Even the sink.

  “What’d you do with everything?” I asked, trying to figure out what I would have done.

  “I said Abracadabra,” she said, wiggling her fingers in the air, “and it all just disappeared. Right Max?” She inched her fingers over to Max and tickled his bare stomach and he curled up laughing.

  There were not many nice things I could say about Maddie’s cousin, but I had to admit that she came through in a crisis. Right then, I almost liked her.

  “Thank you, Felicia,” I said humbly.

  “Glad I could help. How ‘bout I bathe my little friend here?”

  Max smiled up at her, then looked over at me. “Lecia bathe me.”

  I somehow felt like I’d be shirking my responsibility if I let Felicia bathe Max, but it didn’t bother me enough to refuse the offer. “Yeah, sure. You want a beer?”

  “Afterwards.” She turned her attention back to Max. “Come on toughie.” She took him by the hand and walked back towards the kids’ wing. The phone rang as I heard her calling out to Oliver. Prospects were definitely looking grim for the Porsche guy.

  “I’ve got great news for you,” the voice on the end of the line said. “Your cat’s doing great.”

  I was about to ask what she was talking about, since the Siamese was sitting three feet away from me licking himself, and then I remembered. “You’re kidding. He looked like he was on his last leg.”

  “She did look bad, but it’s mostly from neglect. Poor thing was terribly dehydrated and malnourished. That’s why her coat looks so bad. Her leg was broken some time ago and it was never tended to, so it healed crooked, but she seems to get around all right. What is it with you and cats and broken legs?”

  “I don’t know. Bad luck?” Shortly after the Siamese had adopted me, a guy had taken his frustrations over a lawsuit out on my cat. “What about where I hit him?”

  “I don’t find anything. Your tire must have barely touched her.”

  I was beginning to think the lying-on-the-sidewalk routine was all a ruse. The damn cat knew a sucker when he saw one. It all made sense. He wasn’t looking me in the eye to make sure I didn’t hit him; he was scoping me out as a prospective owner. I was his mark. Seeing it in that light, my respect for the cat went up tremendously.

  “When can I pick him up?”

  “Her. Any time. We’re here until 5:30.”

  Felicia had surfaced the year before, shortly after Maddie and I had gotten married, which also happened to be the time when Maddie had come into a sizable fortune. I was suspicious not only of the timing of Felicia’s appearance, but of the circumstances surrounding her initiation into the family circle, as well. She called Maddie out of the blue one day, announcing that she was a long-lost cousin; the daughter of Maddie’s mother’s first cousin once removed, or something ridiculous like that. She claimed to have been adopted out at birth, and having lost the only parents she’d ever known within months of each other, she’d sought out her biological mother. As she had put it, No way in hell was she going to go through life without a family. When Felicia arrived, her birth mother had been dead for four years, but there was a senile great aunt, and of course, Maddie’s branch of the family. Maddie was ecstatic to have a new relation. I smelled a rat.