Page 20 of Madison

Emma had been born without a name. No first, and no sir name. Her mother, or father, she didn’t know, had dropped her off at the firehouse when she’d been a newborn. Not even having her cord fall off, she was estimated to be only a few hours old. Then, she was sent to stay with a family that worked in some indirect way for the system.

After three months, she was taken to the Gregory household. From the very beginning, she’d not been welcome. She’d been taken in so that the wife, who had already had Poppy, could get pregnant. Their thinking was, and it turned out to be not true, that when you adopted a child, meaning her, then you’d finally get pregnant.

For sixteen long years, Mrs. Gregory, Poppy’s mother, and granddaughter to Pop, would tell her every week that she wasn’t her daughter, but their plan was going to make sure she had another child. And as soon as she was with child—a term that she’d come to learn the hard way, Emma, what they had named her would go right back to the children’s home and not be heard from again.

Every single week, she’d go to the doctor to be tested, and every week when she returned home, Emma would be punished—she didn’t have all that much—by having her things taken from her, including supper for a week.

As soon as she was sixteen years old, long past the time that Mrs. Gregory could become with child, she was ordered to move in with Pop Marshall and his wife to become their servant.

It, of course, never was like that between them. And before long, she’d been adopted by Pop and his wife so that she’d be able to have a last name, he’d told her. No one in the big house knew about that. To them, she was still Emma, the girl who didn’t belong.

“Whatcha thinking about, there, Emma? Some planning going on in that head of yours?” She told him that she was thinking of the things that she might need at her home while she was here. “I’m not paying for it. You know that, don’t you? If’n I do, that daughter of mine will take away my ability to get around again.”

“I know that, Pop. I have the money to pay for my things and yours if it comes to that.” He said that he might have to owe her, as Poppy had taken the cash he had for her gasoline. “Figures. They have more money than sense, and they’re stealing from the man who created their way of living.”

After getting him set up in one of the electric carts with the promise of not hitting anything or anyone, they did their shopping. When she noticed him look longingly at something, like a new flavor of tea or some ice cream, she’d put it in her cart to give him when they got back to his place.

“How about when we get back to the house, we have us a nice cookout? The weather is gonna turn soon, and we might as well enjoy it while we can.” She agreed with him and asked him what he wanted. “Can you do me that salmon that I love so much? The one with the rice with it? Oh, that’s my favorite.”

She ended up paying for the salmon as it was out of his budget the family had him on. He only gave in when she told him that she’d used the leftovers in her lunch for the following week. As soon as they were back to his home, she set him up to take his evening nap, put the groceries away that she’d gotten with his, and started dinner.

The two of them had become best of friends over the years. She literally didn’t have anyone else and he pretended like he didn’t either. The man had run a multibillion dollar company for nearly all his life right from the ground up, and when he’d turned eighty-five, he was retired by his son. He came into the kitchen just as she was setting up the table for the two of them.

“I got me an idea. I want you to tell me what you think about it. Now, don’t be thinking with your heart, child, but your head.” She told him that he owned all her heart, so she didn’t know how that was going to work. “Ain’t you the sweetest thing. All right. Then try to listen to me before you tell me no. I don’t want to live here anymore.” She was afraid that he meant to move into the house with his daughter and granddaughter, and she’d never be allowed to see him again.

“Where did you want to go? You know that I would follow you to the moon and back, don’t you? You’re my hero.” He took her hand into his and held it to his face while he cried a little. “I’m sorry, Pop. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t. I was just thinking hard about the fact that I don’t have my blood family saying such things to me, and it broke my heart for a minute. But I won’t be moving into the big house. I lived there with my Sally, and I don’t think I’d last a day being there again. Besides, I think they’d kill me off. No, I want to look into some nursing homes for me. The kind that lets you get out and about sometimes. It would be nice too if I could cook me some meals, you know I need oatmeal every day and they won’t be tossing out my things because they don’t like it. Will you help me out with that?”

“You know that I’d do anything for you. But they’re not going to like that. I believe you’ve said this before, they enjoy having you here where they can keep an eye on you. They still don’t know that I come here every day, do they?” He told her that he’d not want them to know, that he’d already fixed it up with his own attorney. “All right. Good job in getting ahead of them. When do you want to go? I’m assuming that you have a place all picked out.”

“Yes. I do at that. I’m going to stay at the Little Bit of Sunshine home, the one next to your place.” She said they’d have a fit. “Honey, they don’t know that you’re still around, much less helping me out daily. I can’t imagine what they think was supposed to happen to me with them leaving me all by my lonesome. Not even once a month do they come here and bother with me. Unless they need something from me. And we both know that they’re not needing any advice from an old man like me.”

“Are we leaving in the darkness of the night? Packing you up and leaving like you’ve not paid the rent or something.” He laughed, just as she hoped that he would. “When do you want this to happen?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve been sending things out by my attorney for the last couple of weeks. You’ve no idea how terrified I’ve been thinking that you’d tell me that I’m better off here. With this move, I can see you every day without you having to travel here. I can go to your house too. I asked. You’d be my second in command if anything should need to be talked about. I mean my death, so’s you know.”

“I don’t want to talk about that part, but yes, I know.” They’d made a promise, the two of them. When it came time for either of them to die, they would go on with life as if nothing had happened. Like that was ever going to happen, she thought. But they had promised.

As she was piling his clothing in the back of the rented van, she thought of all the things that could go wrong with this. He could fall, break a hip, and she’d be in trouble again. But he was happy with this move, happier than he’d been in a while, and she was going to do it for him if it was the last thing he ever asked of her. Damn it, he deserved so much better than he had right now.

~*~

Sidney didn’t know what was going on with the family, but he wasn’t going to be suckered into anything right now. Not that they’d make him be a part of something when he didn’t want to, but he had things going on, a purchase that he’d been waiting for since he’d been a young hatchling. With this buy, he was going to be able to expand things in the south end area just the way that he wanted it. No more malls. Not only that, but he was going to be putting small one and two-bedroom apartments that would be furnished for the homeless. He’d been without a home once when he’d been out on his own for a while, and it hadn’t been anything that he wanted to happen to anyone. Not even some stranger that he met on the street.

“Hey, did you want to get some dinner with me? Layla is…what’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve been caught at having girly magazines in your room, and it was Dad that caught you.” He told his brother Madison what he was doing. “I would have helped you with that. You know that Layla would have been on board, too.”

“Everyone would have taken over. They still, even you, think of me as the baby, and that—” Madison pointed out that he was the baby. “I know that. I just want something of my own to work on. I have the money and the knowledge of what needs to be done. Stay out of—” Dyson took a deep breath and let it out slowly when he saw the look on his brother’s face.

“All right now. Do you want to start over with that? I mean, I’m not mad. I still have my bouts of anger, too. But I was just asking you a simple question.” He told him he was sorry and that he knew that. “But? What’s going on?”

“Nothing and everything. I feel like I’m sneaking around in the dark doing this, like when I skipped school that one time. Remember that? I was sick for a week because I’d done it. Come to find out, I didn’t skip at all because the school had been closed down due to the weather. Christ, I’m such a dork sometimes.” Madison told him that he was a dork all the time. “Thanks. I knew that I could depend on you to real things out for me.”

The two of them hugged then Sidney pulled out the planning sheets for his idea. After explaining a few things and answering a couple more questions, he could tell that Madison was finding fault. He asked him what he’d found wrong.

“No, I’m not. Just let me absorb, will you? You’re worse than Kyle when it comes to letting people help you out.” Madison looked over the plans again. He did ask some questions, good ones that he’d not thought of as he went through the blueprints, too. When he was finished with it, he told him that he liked it. “I don’t know that I’d make them furnished. That would be difficult to make everyone happy even if you gave them golden beds or something like that. But I would go ahead and do what you said about the kitchens. Having them a part of the walls would make it less likely that stuff would be stolen. But it’s a good, solid plan, Sid. You should be proud of yourself.”

After making notes on the things that Madison had said, he and his brother went to dinner. Layla, his mate, was out doing things with their mom, so she’d be out for a while. Sidney loved his new sisters-in-law, but he was terrified of them both, including his mom too. But then he thought that everyone should have been terrified of their mom.

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