“Your sister already gave me permission to do that,” I indicated.
“My sister can be overruled if we want to overrule her,” he pointed out. “There’s nothing against you as a person, man. I got this gut feeling you’ll be around forever. But right now, I have to protect the circus. We have to get you on our insurance. We also have to offer you a job and pay you. And with that comes 401(k) compensation, as well as employee benefits. By law, I have to do this all official like, otherwise the government likes to fuck with us.”
I offered him my hand and said, “One day, I’m going to marry your sister.”
“One day, she’ll let you,” he said as he took my hand and shook it.
We both dropped our hands as he got serious for a moment. “You know our hacker friend?”
I blinked. “Yes.”
“She did a background check on you,” he explained.
I felt my heart rate pick up.
Supposedly, those files were secret. Hidden from any and all who tried to look.
But…
“Okay,” I said, feeling my stomach drop.
“She knows just enough to know you’re dangerous but not anything else,” Keene explained. “When she went to you that night, Val tried to spring it on her. Just assume that everything is known, all the way down to your shoe size and whether or not you made As in kindergarten. We know what you did for a living. We know what you didn’t. We know everything there is to know because Folsom is that good of a hacker. Nothing is hidden from her if she wants to find it. And she found everything.”
I felt my anger rising.
“But Simi didn’t want to know. She knows absolutely nothing other than we had a file on you, and at one point in time, you were something more for the government,” he explained. “And I’m only telling you this because one day it might come out that we had that information, and I don’t want you taking it out on her. Hell, at this point, I don’t even know if she remembers that we had it, so she couldn’t tell you.”
“Can I see the file?” I asked.
“You could, yes. But I burned it two months ago so my sisters couldn’t all read your life’s story,” he explained. “Also, I think you should tell her everything. Not now. When you’re comfortable. Bet she’ll surprise you.”
I had a feeling that she would.
After we parted ways, I headed back to the food trailer and put the finishing touches on my marinade.
I was making fajitas tonight for dinner, and the longer the meat sat in the marinade, the better.
“Oh, hey.” I looked up to find Hades, the quietest of the sisters, standing in the doorway of the trailer. “I’m here for some tampons.”
She looked frazzled, as if she’d just woken up and hadn’t gotten enough sleep.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She frowned, consternation filling her face. “I…”
That’s when Kristoff arrived, carrying his screaming daughter on his hip. “Yo, you got anything in there that I could feed to this kid? I’ve tried everything in the damn trailer, but the kid can’t seem to find something she wants. And she’s in the worst fuckin’ mood, and I don’t know how to do this.”
Hades turned and looked at Kristoff. “Let me have her.”
He gave her over easily, looking so relieved when he gave her up that it was nearly comical.
“Go,” Hades ordered. “We’ll watch her for a little bit.”
Kristoff looked torn for all of three seconds before I said, “I’ll cook her something. And if you like, I can borrow the van and take her to the RV place with us. Might be something we need to get used to, anyway.”
Kristoff looked at me as if he knew without me actually voicing the words what I meant.
Hades took about three seconds longer.
“You knocked my sister up?” she squeaked.
Kristoff shook his head. “This parenthood thing is the absolute hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Good luck, and may the odds be in your favor. And, yes, you can take her…I’m assuming Simi is going with you?”
I nodded.
“And she has her memory back?” he asked hopefully.
As much as we could tell, she did. She remembered all of our interactions.
“Most of it,” Simi called from above. “And why are y’all so fuckin’ loud? Can’t a pregnant person get some sleep around here? It’s hard making a life. And yes, I’ll be going with him. I want to make sure he gets me a big enough one that I have my own reading nook.”
My lips curved up.
“In that case…” He left without another word.
The kid kept crying.
Hades looked like she was going to lose it herself.
“I don’t know why I took her,” she whispered loudly enough for us to hear, but not the retreating Kristoff. “I’m actually quite scared of kids. And I’m fairly sure that my uterus is about to expel itself from my body. I came to ask my sister if she could spare some tampons.”
I looked from her to the kid and back, then walked forward and caught the kid up around the middle.
I didn’t have the most experience in the world with children, but I had enough to know that she was likely suffering more because the people around her were stressed.
She was a cute little thing.
She had almost zero hair, just enough fuzz to let people know it was blonde.
Hades looked instantly relieved when the little blue-eyed baby was out of her hands.
“Ulitza is allergic to avocado.” I looked warily at the avocado I’d just pulled out for a quick breakfast of avocado toast. “But only when ingested,” Simi called from the bedroom. “And I have tampons in the tiny bathroom in here, I think. Piper put everything away while we were out to dinner yesterday.”
Piper, I’d come to realize, was the cleaning lady.
She came in and cleaned everyone’s stuff up, even my own. I’d gotten back to find everything I owned hung up in the tiny little closet above the kitchen, in the same damn room as the tiny toilet and shower.
Ulitza screamed harder, and I walked to the toast I’d been about to pop into the toaster and pushed it down into the space between the metal plates. Once it was toasting, I walked to the fridge and grabbed out the butter.
“We need to go to the store today for some fresh meat,” I said as I looked in the fridge. “The container that is labeled ‘bad kitties’ is almost empty. Is that my job, too, or someone else’s?”
“Mine,” Hades grumbled. “I usually keep stock of animal food, bus food, and the kids’ tent snacks.”
“Yet you don’t have anything to do with a kid?” I asked as Ulitza screamed quite piercingly into my ear.
I moved her to the other arm, then gently patted her back as I slowly started to sing a song I remembered my dad humming when I was little.
“Are you singing ‘Back in Black’ to her?” Simi appeared in the opening of the upper level.
“Yeah,” I answered as the toast popped up.
I reached for it, slathered it with butter using the clean knife, then tore off a hunk and offered it to her.
She took it and smashed it between her fingers, then rubbed it along my neck.