An older couple ambled toward the Cadillac parked across from them, the woman on the man’s arm. It took them an agonizingly long time to get in their car.
“For how long?” Patrick knew better than to even entertain the idea with such a question. But it just slipped out.
“Ninety days.”
“NINETY DAYS!” It echoed through the garage, sounding more like a jail sentence than a favor. He shouldn’t paint himself as the real victim here when a man had lost his wife and two children had lost their mother. But he’d lost someone, too. “You’re out of your goddamned mind.”
Greg burst into tears.
“Oh, god. Okay. Just . . .” He reached out to comfort his brother, but couldn’t decide where to place his hands. “You should know I’m an alcoholic.” Patrick wasn’t, but he was grasping at straws. Maybe he could check into this facility, too.
“Patrick. You’re a social drinker.”
“I live alone in the desert, how social could it be!” Ninety days sitting in a sharing circle talking about his feelings while sober seemed like hell on earth, but it had to be better than babysitting, and maybe the facility had a chef and masseur. Patrick lifted the key fob in the air and pressed the button furiously, searching for the car, his arm spinning around like a periscope that had just broken the surface. Goddammit, Joe, he thought, as he often did in times of great stress. Why wasn’t I the one driving? But he wasn’t. He was buckled in the passenger seat when Joe was T-boned by a fucking teenager out for a joyride. That was just his bad luck.
And then, out of the darkness, a chirp. They both spun around.
Finally, the car. They could argue about this later.
TWO
“It’s brunch. You don’t know brunch?”
“Is it breakfatht?” Grant asked while being strapped in his car seat. He was six and had a pronounced lisp.
“No.” Patrick gave the straps a good tug. Secure. Thirty-six hours had passed and the subject of his taking the kids had come up nine more times. He volunteered to treat them both to brunch without other adults just to avoid a tenth. “Fingers on noses,” he said before slamming the door. Did he really just utter that out loud? It was something his mother used to say.
“Is it lunch?” Maisie waited for an answer as Patrick crossed around to the passenger side.
“No.” He checked the straps on Maisie’s booster. Tight, too tight. “How do you kids breathe in these things? Christ.” She was nine now and no longer needed the chair, but she was on the smaller side and Greg warned him that she preferred it.
“We just do.”
Patrick stared at the kids. Grant had Sara’s features, including (impossibly) her third nose; Maisie had her hair and kept it pulled back off her face with some sort of elastic. He closed his niece’s door before climbing into the front passenger seat.
“Then what is it?” Grant threw his arms up, exasperated.
“It’s both. Breakfast, lunch. Brunch. Get it? Didn’t your parents teach you about brunch?” Patrick bit his lip. Their mother wasn’t even in the ground and now Greg was about to vanish, too—now was not the time to be critical. But how do you not teach your children about the most important of all meals? He would trade an arm to be able to give Sara a stern talking to right about now—brunch was an early pillar of their friendship. “Sunday brunch?” It was a last-ditch effort to see if it rang any bells.
“It’s Thurthday!” Grant screamed.
“Chill out, little man. No one can be that uptight about brunch.”
“You’re on the wrong side to drive,” Maisie pointed out.
Patrick took a deep breath. He didn’t drive, not since the accident. For years the studio sent a driver or he’d spend his own money to hire a car. He was paid a ridiculous sum, and it was easy to convince himself it was a necessary expense. Then, with the rise of Uber, he never had to think about it again. “Not in England.”
“We’re not in England, GUP.”
“New England,” Patrick said, as if that explained anything. He shot Greg a text asking if he would drive them. “And why do you keep calling me GUP?”
“I forget. Ask Dad.”
Great. Patrick stared at his phone, willing it to buzz with a return text. Already, two minutes alone with these children was two minutes too many. “I just don’t drive, okay?”
“You don’t know how?” It was clear Grant had never heard of an adult not knowing how to drive and he wasn’t about to let it go.
“I know how. I don’t like to turn my head because it makes lines in my neck, so I can’t use reverse.”
“You don’t have to, GUP,” Maisie said. “The car has a camera.” She pointed at the screen on the dash.
GUP. There was that name again. GUP, GUP, GUP. They’d been calling him that all morning. “I know it has a camera, Maisie. But cameras lie.”
“No they don’t. Cameras can’t speak!”
“They find a way.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Wait until you turn forty, then all they do is lie.” Patrick thought of the recent headshots he’d been strong-armed into sitting for by his agent’s new something—assistant—and how they’d required an arduous effort from the retoucher.
Greg opened the driver’s door and hopped into the seat. “Someone call for a ride?”
“We need you to drop us at the restaurant.”
Greg started the engine as he fastened his seat belt, all one fluid motion.
“Why do your children keep calling me GUP?”
“Gay Uncle Pat.” Greg’s expression said it all. Duh.
Patrick was appalled. “Seriously?”
“What,” Greg began as he gripped the wheel, “you don’t like being gay?”
“I don’t like being Pat.”
“Are you our guncle?” Maisie asked.
Patrick buried his head in his hands. “Make it stop.”
“Audra Brackett in my class has two guncles,” she continued. “She’s my best friend.”
“Guncle Pat!” Grant exclaimed.
“Patrick. Guncle Patrick. We’re not doing Pat.” Pat was so—oh, god—he didn’t even know the word. Heterosexual. “And I don’t like guncle, either.”
“What’s wrong with guncle?” Greg asked.