God In The Kitchen (4 page)

            “Do you want a drink?” she asked, her hand shaking as she filled the glass with water from the tap.

            “No, I’m fine,” I said, wondering if she was going to answer my question.

            Chloe plopped down into the chair across from me. “I’m sorry,” she said, a single tear making a new track down her face. “You walked in on quite a situation.”

            I wasn’t sure what to say. Did I ask if there was something I could do to help?

            “It’s my son,” she said, looking relieved at having someone to talk to. “He has atrioventricular canal defect.”

            Chloe must have seen the look on my face because she quickly went on, “It’s a birth defect, a type of congenital heart problem. They saw it when he was born and he had surgery before he was even six months old. He was a trooper too,” she said, looking off into the distance.

            I couldn’t imagine having heart surgery as an adult, much less an infant.

            “Anyways, most of the time the surgery works just find and the child leads a healthy life. But in our case…well, we’re in the smaller 10% portion of the statistics. He needs another surgery.” 

            I nodded, feeling as if I finally needed to interject something. “He’ll do just as well this time as he did last time,” I said, trying to reassure her.

            The woman turned her face away and brought one hand up to her forehead. The tears were flowing freely down her face. “That’s the problem,” she said. “He’s only getting worse and there isn’t going to be a surgery.”

            “Why…why not?” I asked, trying to put myself in her position.

            “I’m sorry,” Chloe said, wiping the tears from her face, “you don’t need to know all of this. You probably just want to be on your way.”

            “It’s quite all right,” I said, still wondering why her son was not going to have the surgery he so needed.

            “You mentioned an insurance card or something?” she said and I took it out of my wallet and handed it over.

            “I can copy down the information for you,” I said, reaching for a pen and piece of paper that was nearby on the table. I wrote down my name, phone number, insurance agency and ID number for her.

            “Thank you,” she said as I slid the paper across the table. “And thanks for the ride.”

            I felt as if she wanted me leave, but something stopped me. It wasn’t until I heard the little voice come up behind me that I understood what it was.

            “Mommy?” it said in a tired manner.

            “Oh, sweetie, what are you doing up?” Chloe said, at the child’s side in an instant, her hands brushing his blonde hair away from his face.

            “Who’s that?” the boy asked.

            “This is Jared,” she said, looking back at me as I turned around in my chair. “Jared, this is Ian.”

            “Hey Ian,” I said, allowing my eyes to meet his for the first time. His eyes were blue like ice and his face was freckled and irresistible. He definitely looked tired, but if I had seen him walking down the street, I never would have guessed he was sick.

            “Mr. Jared was just leaving,” Chloe said, giving me my cue to stand up. She lifted the boy into her arms and I watched as he placed his head on her shoulder and his arms around her neck. It was the two of them against the world.

            I walked out the front door and turned to face Chloe one more time. “I’ll call for that tow truck and I’ll have them give you a call when the car is ready to be picked up. Don’t worry about the bill. It’s totally my fault. I’ll take care of everything.” With all that she had on her plate, it was the least I could do.

            Chloe nodded, stroked her son’s cheek, gave me a small smile, and closed the door. As I walked back down the three flights of stairs to my car, I knew only a few things. First, there was much more to Chloe’s story than she had shared. Second, I had to see her again. And third, I was going to help Ian.

I drove home from Chloe’s apartment slowly I still had a large portion of the day to kill. The book that had distracted me from my driving in the first place lay forgotten on the passenger seat. Now, I could only think about the little boy with the freckled face and big blue eyes.

            When I got home, I had already decided my first course of action. The least I could do for the little family was to make their life as easy as possible in regards to the accident. I called the closest tow truck company and asked that the car be taken to my own personal favorite garage.

            I was not exactly a car buff. By trial and error, I had figured out what garage would do the work right and which ones liked to charge for unnecessary repairs.

            I was pretty sure that Chloe’s car would need quite a bit. I wanted the repairs to be done right and I wanted Chloe and Ian to have reliable transportation.

            Next, I called the garage to warn them that the car was coming in and that everything was to be billed to my name. I knew the owner well because I had done endorsements for the business over the years on the radio station.

            “Hey, Bill, it’s Jared,” I said, leaving my last name out because I knew he would recognize my voice.

            “Jared, man, what’s up? It’s been, what…about 5,000 miles has it?” Bill put the standing joke into place. He and his crew always said they only heard from me only every 5,000 miles when I was due for an oil change. 

            “Ha ha,” I stated, letting Bill have his moment. “Actually, it’s only been 3,000 miles, thank you very much.” I then filled Bill in on my recent fender bender.

            “So you want us to fix the damage and put everything back where it belongs?” Bill asked.

            “Yes,” I replied, “and then some,” I paused and Bill waited for me to go on. “The car that’s coming to you isn’t in great shape,” I explained. “But I want it to work as well as it can for what it is.”

            “You want us to do more than fix the damage?” he asked, a note of incredulity in his voice.

            “You do anything and everything that car needs to run itself into the ground. And then you bill me.”

            I could tell by the silence on the other end of the line that Bill had not had a request of this nature before.

            “You know the person you hit or something?” Bill asked.

            “Not really,” I answered, beginning to enjoy his confusion.

            After another beat, Bill laughed, “Oh, I get it…it’s a pretty lady, right?”

            I pictured Chloe in my mind. She was pretty, I’d give her that. She was a tad plain and she wore no makeup as far as I could tell. Her long dark hair was in a simple braid and probably always was. She was pretty, but she wasn’t the type of girl that people would automatically fix cars for just because of her appearance.

            “It’s more than that,” I said, not wanting to give Bill the wrong idea.

            “Love at first sight, huh?” he asked and I could almost feel his elbow nudging me.

            “Just fix the car,” I said, as I thought about my encounter with Abigail that very morning.

            “You got it, boss,” Bill said.

            After I hung up the phone, I began to replay the day’s events in my mind. What a day. I had gone from having virtually no romantic interests to having two women literally dropped into my lap out of nowhere.

            As I sat on the couch and sank back into the comfortable cushions, my encounter with Evan flashed before my eyes.

            I felt my eyes get heavy and smiled. Yep, it had most certainly been a dream. At least I knew the difference now. Meeting Abigail and even Chloe had been pure coincidence.

            One of the perks of working the early morning hours was having all afternoon off. I often stayed up too late at night and the boredom coupled with my fatigue often turned into afternoon naps.

            I almost half expected to see Evan in my dream that afternoon, but the only thing that plagued me that day was a little boy named Ian. I dreamed that he was in the hospital, struggling for every breath.

            When I woke up half an hour later, the question on my mind was one I knew would not soon go away. Why wasn’t Chloe going to let Ian have the surgery? She obviously loved the little boy.

As much as I wanted to know, I knew that I couldn’t very well just storm back over to her apartment and ask. All I could do was fix her car and wait. I might get another chance to satisfy my curiosity, but in the meantime, I had done all I could.

The rest of the week flew by with my work obligations. By the time Friday rolled around, I was inundated with requests for weekend appearances, but I had my calendar well marked for my afternoon coffee meeting. It was something I had been looking forward to since I first met Abigail.

            Even after our disastrous interview on the air, she had been kind enough to give me a second chance. I texted her after my shift that morning, just to make sure we were still on. Text messaging is an interesting way to communicate. With emails, you almost expect there to be a pause because not everyone checks their email each second of the day. But pretty much everyone carries their phone at all times. When you send a text message, you usually get an answer pretty quickly.

            Abigail waited an hour. Or at least that’s how it felt. It’s possible, of course, that she didn’t even get the message until an hour later, but in my mind, she got it right away and had simply waited.

            At least she did answer eventually, though, and what she said was affirming. It wasn’t much, I guess. Just that she was still planning on meeting me for coffee.

            At the very least, I wanted to give Abigail a different impression of me. Even if there was nothing between us.

            I stayed late that afternoon working out the details of the weekend broadcasts and remotes I was to run. Saturday morning, I would be appearing at a local diner. I would broadcast live for a couple of hours and then hang around and talk with the listeners.

            I planned to take the afternoon off to relax and catch up on some bills and then that night, I would introduce the opening act at a concert. It was strange how different it was being in front of a large audience. I knew I talked to thousands of people every morning, but that was not the same. In the mornings, I was in a booth all alone, pushing buttons and talking to myself. At a concert, the people could see me and I could certainly see them.

            No matter how many times I did it, my hands still got sweaty and my knees still shook a little as I walked out into the bright lights in front of the cheering crowd.

            But that was over 24 hours away. What I needed to concentrate on right away was Abigail. I pulled her book out of the bag I had carried in to work that morning and opened the front cover.

           
What Women Know that Men Should Learn
, the title blared. Abigail’s name was just underneath in bold print. Just as I flipped to chapter one, my desk phone trilled. I hadn’t planned on reading the entire book at work. I just wanted to get a small taste before my conference call with corporate about some new procedures on the equipment. As the phone beeped again by my hand, I sighed. I wasn’t even going to get in one chapter.

            I picked up the phone, expecting the voice of my boss, the secretary up front, one of the sales people, or any of the other work-related individuals that might call. What I heard was a quiet female voice I didn’t recognize.