Chapter 5 - The Flying Monkeys
By eight o’clock the following morning, the storm had passed, leaving behind a blinding, brilliant blue winter sky and six inches of crisp, powdery snow. The temperature remained locked at a brutal twenty-four degrees.
I was in the kitchen, frying thick-cut bacon in a cast-iron skillet while Lucy sat at the island, methodically working her way through a math worksheet. Owen was at the kitchen table, sketching a detailed blue-jay to replace the birdhouse Lucy had brought back from Mom's house.
The house was seventy-two degrees, filled with the aroma of smoked pork, maple syrup, and fresh coffee.
Then came the assault.
It didn't come in person; Julian and Brooke were evidently too exhausted, or too cold, to make another physical run at my porch. Instead, they unleashed the family extended network.
My phone rang. The screen displayed: *UNCLE DAVE.*
Dave was my mother’s younger brother—a retired high school vice principal who lived in Florida eight months of the year and spent the rest of his time inserting himself into family disputes with all the self-righteous subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I hit speakerphone and set the device beside the stove.
"Good morning, Uncle Dave. How’s the sunshine in Naples?"
"Cut the crap, Rupert!" Dave’s booming, authoritative baritone echoed off the kitchen subway tile. "I just got off the phone with your sister. What the hell is the matter with you?! Have you lost your damn mind?!"
Lucy paused her pencil, looking up at me with wide eyes. I smiled reassuringly at her, tapped the side of my nose, and kept turning the bacon with my tongs.
"I’m having breakfast with my children, Dave. What are you doing?"
"Your mother spent the night in an unheated house, Rupert! She called me at six in the morning, shivering so hard she could barely form sentences! Brooke had to pack up the boys and check into an expensive hotel downtown because you refused to turn a screw on the furnace! You left an old woman to freeze on her birthday because your feelings got hurt over dinner seating?!"
I turned the gas burner down to low.
"Dave, did Brooke happen to explain *why* my feelings were hurt?"
"She said there was a minor misunderstanding about seating arrangements! Families have squabbles, Rupert! You don't weaponize the winter weather against your own flesh and blood! Your father would turn over in his grave if he saw you behaving like this!"
Hearing him invoke my father’s name was the match that lit the fuse, but I didn't explode. When I get truly angry, my voice becomes as smooth and quiet as deep water under river ice.
"Dave," I said, my tone deadly calm, "Brooke told my twelve-year-old son and my nine-year-old daughter to sit inside my truck in thirty-degree weather for three hours because her twins 'didn't like their aura.' And my mother nodded and told me not to ruin her dinner."
A sudden, sharp silence fell over the line.
Uncle Dave was a loudmouth, but he had spent thirty-five years dealing with teenage bullies in public schools. He wasn't entirely deaf to reality.
"She... what?" Dave muttered, his booming tone deflating noticeably.
"You heard me," I said. "My dead wife's children were ordered into a freezing parking lot like stray dogs, while Brooke’s Pomeranian was pushed around the dining room in a three-hundred-dollar baby stroller. Did Brooke mention that part of the story when she called you crying?"
"Rupert... look, if that's true, that was wrong of Brooke. But—"
"No 'buts', Dave. Julian went into the cellar to plug in an electric bed for that damn dog, blindly flipped the emergency fuel-cutoff switch, and tripped the safety interlocks. He broke the system. Not me."
"Okay, fine!" Dave said, trying to regain his footing. "Julian is an idiot. We all know Julian is a useless windbag. But your mother, Rupert! She's sixty-eight! She has arthritis! She can't stay in that house with no heat!"
"Then Brooke can take her to that expensive hotel downtown," I replied. "Brooke has plenty of money for cashmere, boutique dog strollers, and weekly blowouts. Let her pay for a suite for Mom."
"Brooke says the hotel only had one room available!" Dave said, his frustration mounting again. "Rupert, this is childish. Just go over there and flip the switch back!"
"I'll tell you what, Dave," I said, leaning toward the phone. "Since you’re so deeply concerned about Mom's living conditions from your sunroom in Naples, why don't you wire five thousand dollars to my shop account? That will cover the four years of unpaid gas bills I’ve carried for that house, the emergency call-out fee, and the mechanical overhaul Julian’s incompetence triggered. The minute the wire clears, I'll send a truck."
"That's extortion!" Dave sputtered. "She's your mother!"
"And I'm a businessman who is officially out of the charity business," I said. "Have a great day in Florida, Dave."
I ended the call before he could shout another syllable.
I looked over at the table. Owen was staring at me, his sketchpad forgotten.
"Dad?" he asked quietly. "Are we going to get into trouble?"
I walked over, pulled out a wooden chair, and sat down between my son and daughter. I reached out, resting one hand on Owen's shoulder and the other on Lucy’s head.
"Nobody is in trouble here except the people who treated you poorly," I told them, making sure my eyes met theirs with unshakeable certainty. "For a long time, I let Grandma and Aunt Brooke walk all over us because I thought that's what Dad was supposed to do to keep the family together. I thought if I just fixed their pipes, paid their bills, and absorbed their insults, eventually they would treat us like we mattered."
"They don't like us because Mom isn't here," Lucy whispered, her small voice cutting straight through my ribs like a diamond blade.
May you like
I pulled her close against my side. "Your mother was worth ten of them, Lucy. And you have her heart, her kindness, and her grace. Don't you ever let anyone make you feel small just because they're too selfish to see who you are. We don't take abuse to keep the peace. Not anymore."
***
