No Quick Fix (Torus Intercession 1)

“Just find a bar, pick somebody up, and fuck ’em in a bathroom stall.”

“Oh, you romantic you.”

“You know what I mean, Brann. You’re not gonna be any use to this guy if you’re living in a fuckin’ fairy tale. Don’t be an idiot. He’s straight and he’s getting married and just because you’re there helping him with his kids, that doesn’t make you his husband or their parent.”

He was always the voice of reason when I didn’t want him to be. “I know that, all right?” I snapped at him because he was right and I was there, in the man’s house, eating my heart out.

“Then fuckin’ act like it.”

He was right, and I knew that, but going to the movies with Emery and the girls, eating dinner, sitting around talking in front of the fire, taking care of Olivia when she got a stomach bug and had to stay home with me, or going on a field trip with April made it really hard to separate me from them.

The way Emery treated me didn’t help.

He called me during the day. He bought me a parka and a scarf and a ridiculous neon orange beanie.

There was a school song contest on a Saturday, and after the third hour, I did a slow pan to him, and my expression must have been grim, because he turned and spit out his water. It was lucky we were at the end of the bleachers, or he would have done his dolphin impression all over some unlucky people.

“Seriously,” I whined without meaning to. “Every grade level in the whole school sings?”

He nodded, wiping his mouth, chuckling.

“Like the whole elementary school?”

“You need to wrap your brain around this,” he teased me.

“But… we could die here.”

More nodding and he cackled that time. “It’s like a high school graduation,” he explained cheerfully. “And I’m speaking from experience.”

“Oh,” I said soberly, feeling for him. “You gotta sit through that every year, huh?”

He waggled his eyebrows at me.

The horror.

Emery found April a new therapist in Whitefish. Even though she didn’t want to go at first, we both insisted, because united front and all, so she relented. She had to go, it was that simple, because even though she’d turned a corner after talking with my buddy, I knew from experience with others, Huck included, that there was no magic cure for grief. Children were resilient, more so than people often gave them credit for, but she was going to have residual periods of mourning. She was going to lapse. She was going to make progress, but there would be days, triggering events and memories that would cause her to backslide.

Wonder of wonders, it turned out she liked Dr. Haggerty quite a bit. He was funny and down-to-earth, and it was like he said, the thing that hit home for us, three years in the life of a child so young was an eternity. Closure and progress didn’t happen in a day. He was thrilled that both Emery and I were on board with an ongoing treatment effort.

His only concern was with me.

“April is quite attached to you,” he told me after one of her appointments, having invited me into his office while she sat in the lobby. “I’m not convinced that your leaving is in her best interest.”

I had no control over that. “Maybe Lydia—that’s Emery’s fiancée—should start coming with her instead of me. What do you think?”

He nearly choked on the Earl Grey he was sipping. “I—uhm, no. No. That’s not—April’s not all that fond of Miss Cahill. I think we’d be moving in the opposite direction of progress.”

I nodded. “Then I should do what?”

He didn’t have an answer.

When I walked into the lobby, April got up and put her hand in mine. Outside, on the sidewalk, walking toward my Toyota, I asked her if she thought, maybe, since Lydia and her father were getting married, she should start coming to talk to Dr. Haggerty with her sometimes.

“I’d rather go on poop patrol every day then have Lydia come with me,” she replied succinctly, capping off her statement with a quick nod.

Poop patrol was what Emery called picking up Winston droppings in the backyard with colorful orange baggies. It was the least favorite chore of both his daughters.

The message was crystal clear; Lydia was not about to be invited into April’s therapy.

One Friday, I had a beer with dinner, and when I glanced up, he was looking at the bottle like it was the Holy Grail.

“Hey,” I said, and his gaze met mine. “Would you like a beer?”

The whine was really cute. “Yes, please.”

I opened it for him, set it down in front of him, and he savored it like he hadn’t had one in years. “Maybe I’ll get some good stuff and put some mugs in the freezer,” I suggested.