Page 49 of Breakdown
“Absolutely not. I know this is important to you. Besides, I have enough to keep me busy.” Nik jerked his head toward the garage. He winced in pain instantly; neck movement was still not his strong suit.
Peter’s worry didn’t dissipate quite as fast. “Don’t overdo it, okay?”
Peter spent most of the leadup to the NA meeting concerned that he should have stayed home with Nik. It passed in a haze. Distracted, he was contemplating sneaking out the back of the church hall when someone slid into the chair beside him as graceful and quiet as a thief.
“Fancy meeting you here, sweet-pea.” His mother’s voice was falsely bright, all nervous energy, her hands wringing in her lap. “You left yourself pretty open to a tail, you know.”
“I’m trying not to worry about that kind of thing anymore.”
She laughed, a strangely strangled sound. “Sure. Who trails a mechanic, right?”
Peter took a long pull of coffee, gathering himself. She seemed ready to bolt, and he didn’t want to spook her before he got a chance to say what he needed to. “Frank let you know I was looking for you.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it all the same, bouncing her knee so hard that the chair began to squeak. “Yeah. I’m running some jobs for him again.”
He tried for a joke. “Hopefully not getaway driver.”
Cynthia winced.
“I didn’t mean...” He sighed. “Look, what I wanted to say was thank you for coming back the other night.” It couldn’t have been easy for her to look through that glass door, see Erik Bauer in all his hateful splendor, and walk in unarmed anyway.
Cynthia let out a slow, audible breath, and when she spoke again, it wasn’t tinged with flight response. “Seemed like the least I could do after stranding you in Mar Vista.”
“There were cops swarming all over. You were just playing it smart. And you’d already shot a Russian crime boss in the chest for me. Besides, if you hadn’t come back to the garage when you did...”
Maybe they were both thinking about it, how his father looked at the end, powerless and confused and impotent. They’d both let their adult lives be shaped by the fear of him. How did you go about coming back from something like that? Maybe you couldn’t, at least not all the way.
“I shouldn’t’ve left without you,” she said, placing her hand over his, tentative and shaking. She wasn’t just talking about the botched car heist, Peter realized.
He stared up at the water-stain on one of the drop-ceiling tiles as it blurred out of focus, blinking hard. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have. But I know why you did it and I understand it, even if I can’t accept it fully. Not yet.”
“Iamsorry,” she said softly as the secretary began the opening remarks of the meeting.
“I know, Mom.”
Around them, scattered voices mumbled along with the Serenity Prayer. Trapped and unsure, Cynthia hovered on the edge of her chair. “Look, if you don’t want to see me again...”
She was his mother, his family by blood, but Peter didn’t owe her a place in his life that she hadn’t earned. He’d spent so long putting the Bauers first, and it was time he started protecting his new family, the one he had found in Nik and Mia.
They’d just gotten Liv’s money out of the garage; Peter didn’t need anything to jeopardize the legitimacy of his and Nik’s business going forward, and that included ties to the south end Don and any of his employees. But it wasn’t just that. He couldn’t bear the thought of Mia getting attached to her and then Cynthia pulling a disappearing act again.
That sort of thing was tough on a kid.
And yet. She’d come tonight, hadn’t she?
“I’m here every Wednesday,” he said quietly, finishing his coffee. “That seems like a good place to start.”
She nodded, settling back in next to him, the familiarity of the NA process rolling over them both. It felt like sitting next to her on those hard pews in Our Lady of Immaculate Grace that summer before she left, repeating things he didn’t understand and wasn’t entirely sure he believed in. There was power in that familiarity though. Maybe the whole thing was just about the comfort in participating in the ritual.
“Do we have anyone who wants to share their story tonight?” the secretary asked.
Something he couldn’t quite explain propelled him to his feet. For the first time, in all its messy, unflattering detail, Peter did.
—-
THE AUTOMATIC DOORto their attached garage rolled slowly skyward; Peter realized even before it got halfway up that he wasn’t going to get his Jag in there.
The doctor warned Nik might be a bit scattered for a few weeks as a side effect of the concussion, the curse that kept on giving. But Peter couldn’t keep the worry from settling in his stomach as he ducked under the still rising door. This seemed next level.
