Completely (New York 3)

“You’re welcome.”

A pause followed, the sort of pause in which Rosemary would have once felt obligated to tell Evita she loved her, although she’d never done so. She’d always let the guilty pause pass. “I love you, Evita.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rosemary, pull yourself together. Find a strong cup of tea. Call me in a week or so to let me know how things have turned out.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Ta.”

The call disconnected. Rosemary let her arm flop to the side. She laid on top of a picnic table soaking up the sunlight and thought about whether she’d made everything more complicated than it had to be.

Whether all she had to do was love her daughter, and love Kal, and let her love be the center of everything.

It sounded worth a shot.

Chapter 26

Kal didn’t know where to go.

He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing in Wisconsin. Nursing a broken heart was an activity best handled alone, at home, where he could be sullen with his family and nobody would care. But his mom was off baby-showering some obscure cousin with Jigme, and Rosemary had the car. So that was that.

When he couldn’t stand sitting in the living room anymore, batting away offers of food and drink from a nice lady he barely knew and dealing with Bea giving him the fish eye, he took a walk.

At the back of the property, the lawn ended in a neat line at somebody’s field. The field was too muddy to explore in these shoes. He almost did it anyway, but then he noticed the door to the garage workshop was open and went in there instead.

It was quiet. Neat rows of workbenches and pegboards with tools filled one whole wall. He didn’t see Bill around. The light filtered through the windows, both garage bays closed.

He could breathe in here.

Kal leaned against a worktable and scrubbed his hands over his face.

A throat cleared. Chair legs scraped over concrete. Bill Fredericks stepped into view from an alcove Kal hadn’t seen behind a tall pile of cardboard boxes.

“Hello,” Kal said.

“I was dozing,” Bill replied. “Didn’t hear you come in, or I would’ve said something.”

“It’s fine. You want me to leave?”

“?’Course not. Listen, you want something to do? I could use help packing supplies. I want to get this shipment ready before the kids descend on us.”

“I guess.”

Behind the cardboard boxes, all along the back wall of the garage, there were plastic tables covered with supplies. Bill showed him the drill. All he had to do was follow the list, put however many of each thing it said into each box. Cans of infant formula. Medical stuff, like gauze and bandages, syringes, sterile boxes of gloves. Diapers.

“Where’s this going?” he asked after a while.

“It’s for the Syrians.”

“Here in the States?”

“Naw, it goes to Greece.”

Kal guessed Bill was the one who was responsible for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign in the Fredericks’s front window.

“These done?”

“Yeah, tape them up.” Bill handed him a tape gun. Kal worked his way down the line. When he got to the end, Bill brought him ten more boxes to fill.