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“Yes Daddy,” she easily agreed as she slipped off the chair and headed for the stairs.
I knew I should be helping him to clean up after dinner, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to move. I was sore, like all over sore. Between cleaning the house and then the office today, it was going to be a miracle if I could bend down to put my shoes on tomorrow. It had been a long day, and it didn’t really feel like we accomplished much. The office was clean, but we had barely made a dent in the paperwork, much less the financials. The town was a mess; there was no other way to describe it. Or at least not another polite way to describe it. I could think of a few colorful words to use, but I was trying to curb my swearing with Zoey around. The last thing we needed was a phone call from her school because she was saying fuck this and fuck that.
The only shiny bright spot in my day had been picking up Zoey from school. The smile on her face, God I thought she was going to break her face it was so big. She had an amazing time and made friends with six girls in her class. She had talked nonstop about her day from the moment she bounced into the truck until she ate the last bite of ice cream for dessert. It was good to see her so happy though. To hear that she made friends that all liked the same type of things she did. Apparently, they were known as the Anime Girls in their grade.
“I’d offer to help, but I’m afraid my arms will fall off if I try to lift them,” I said with a small smirk, and he gave a deep chuckle that made my lady parts pulse. Too bad for them, the contract was signed. No more sex. Besides, I was too tired and sore to enjoy it tonight.
“I know. I’m a bit sore too, and I am used to getting tackled by a three-hundred-pound man. Thankfully, everything is clean now. I spoke with the movers as well; they will be here in two days with the rest of the furniture. Another company is going to grab the rest from the house to donate, and then the house can go up on the market.”
“Will you miss the house?” I didn't know how long he had been living there for. Some people, especially parents, can have a hard time letting go of a house that they had lived in with their young child.
“Not particularly. Or maybe that’s not the right word for it,” he said with a slight sigh before he elaborated. “I bought the house when I was with Elizabeth when we discovered she was pregnant. Even though marriage was off the table, I still thought we would grow old together in that house. That Zoey would end up with it for her family one day. But then everything with Elizabeth went to shit, and a lot of bad memories came from that in that house. So, I won’t miss the reminders of that, but at the same time that was the house that Zoey grew up in for the past seven years, and I will miss those memories.”
“That makes sense. Now though, you have a clean slate with her to make all new memories. It’s just four walls and a roof, right?” I said with a small shrug. I didn’t get attached to houses. I knew at any given moment it could be gone. I did get attached to the kids that I was around in the foster homes.
“What about you? Any home out there that you feel emotionally attached to?”
“Nope.”
He turned and leaned against the kitchen counter as he spoke, “Really? Not even your parents’ place?”
I knew what he was doing. He was fishing for some more intel on me. I had gotten very good at keeping everything close to my chest. I didn’t want to make any of the same mistakes that I had when this whole mess started almost six years ago. Still, we were living together and would be for a year. He was going to want to know something about me, especially with me being around Zoey.
“You have to have parents for them to have a home for you to miss,” I said with a small shrug.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. When did they die?” he asked gently.
I gave him a small smile as I spoke, “It’s not like that. I have no idea if they are alive or dead. I have no idea who they are. I grew up in foster care from the moment I was born apparently. For whatever reason, I never got adopted as a baby. I knew a couple of places I had stayed at wanted to, but something always happened to make it fall through. They lost their job, or they got pregnant, etc.”
“Wow, I don’t even know what to say. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“It was okay. A few tense moments, but for the most part the homes, I was in were decent. They didn’t have much money, and times could be tough, but they were never abusive. A lot of screaming at times, but nothing more. I mostly kept to myself and when I was older, I would help with the younger kids.”
It really wasn’t that bad, especially compared to what some of the other kids had gone through. I had gotten lucky.
“Still, I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. What did you do after you were eighteen? You’re what? Twenty-three, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-five, and I went to college for business.” That was the truth as well. I figured if I was going to be here for the next year, then I should try and keep to as much of the truth as possible so I wouldn’t have to try and remember what lies I had told.
“That explains why you were so good today with all of that paperwork,” he said as if a lightbulb went off in his head.
We didn’t get into much today, but there were areas that I had been able to pick up quicker than him. I also knew the financial side was going to be mostly pushed on me unless he was good at accounting. I suspected he wouldn’t be, that he had an accountant handle his taxes. I wasn’t holding that against him; lots of people sucked at math. I wasn’t an accountant either, and there were going to be parts that I would have questions and we were gonna have to ask someone. But I was hoping we could get by enough that we could get started and have a rough idea of what we were looking at in terms of loss within the town because there would be loss. There was no way the town was profitable. The best we could hope for at this point was that it was breaking even or as close to it.
“Well, my couple of years in college are not going to save our asses when it comes to tax time. We really need to get the financial paperwork in order and then start going through to see what businesses are viable and which ones and homes are behind in property taxes.”
“You think people haven’t been paying?”
“I think when a town is this run-down, people stopped caring about it a long time ago. If the last mayor didn’t care too much to try and rejuvenate the town, he most likely looked the other way when property taxes didn't get paid.”
“You might be right. I guess we will find out tomorrow when we get into the financial aspect of things. For tonight though, my ass is exhausted. I’m gonna take a hot bath and get some sleep,” I said as I pushed myself up and out of the chair.
“Goodnight,” he simply said before he turned his attention back to the sink of dirty dishes. I could have offered to help, but fuck I was too tired.
I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired. I was used to getting very little to no sleep. I was also used to cleaning all day. There had been a few times I could get a cleaning job that paid cash under the table. It wasn't like this was a new experience for me. And yet I felt like I had been run over by a truck. A hot bath and an early night was exactly what I needed to try and re-energize for tomorrow.
I lightly walked down the stairs and headed into the living room. It was nearing two in the morning, and I had woken up not feeling too great. I didn’t understand what was going on with me, but I was really hoping it would pass soon. Everyone was asleep, so I made sure I was extra quiet. I didn’t want to turn the television on at risk of waking Zoey and Charlie. They both needed sleep, especially Zoey. There were a couple of boxes left to unpack, so I grabbed the one and slid it over to the couch before I sat down. I easily opened it and was surprised to see that they were photo albums and pictures. I couldn’t help the curiosity and picked up the photo album. It looked old, too old to contain baby pictures of Zoey which meant this was a gold mine.
I opened the album and started to look through the different photos. They were definitely aged. Some of them were turning yellow; that’s how old they were. I could tell that some of the baby photos were of Charlie. There was no mistaking those eyes. Fuck, he was a cute little boy. He looked happy. It was only him and two other people whom I had to assume were his parents, and I couldn’t help but wonder where they were. I knew he said his grandfather had raised him since he was around ten, so where did his parents go?
