Fox Mate (Madison Wolves) (7 page)

"And they know that?"

"No, but if you run, I'll order them to stop you. And then they'll find out."

"Lara, don't make me do this. I don't want to talk to her."

"Then don't. Go in and stare at her for a while, then leave."

I glanced at the enforcers. "Do I have a choice?"

"Please, Michaela," Lara said. "Don't think of it that way. Go in. Talk. Don't talk. Tell her what you had for breakfast.
Tell her you're mad at me for tricking you. I don't care. But you need to keep seeing her, and you know it."

"She isn't helping. She's delving into things that are best forgotten."

Lara kissed me on the forehead then pulled me forward and opened the door, gently ushering me inside.

"How long do I have to stay?"

"Half hour," she said.

"Fine," I said. "But you're not getting any tonight."

I pulled out of her arm, stepped into the room, and plopped down in the chair, sulking. The door closed behind me, and I heard the wolves in the hall walk away. I glanced over my shoulder at the door.

"She'll bring you back," Vivian said.

I turned to face her. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

"I know." She looked at me sadly. "Will you talk to me about your house?"

"My house?"

She nodded. "Yes. I gather you are very proud of it, although you don't ever really say so."

"You don't really want to know about my house," I said.

"Why not?"

I looked into her face. "Will you answer some of my questions for once?"

"You can ask," she said. "I may not have answers for you."

"Are you a good psychiatrist?"

"I believe so," she said.

"And a psychiatrist is a type of medical doctor. You went to med school." She nodded. "You have patients that pay you."

"I can't talk about my other patients," she said immediately.

"I'm not asking about anyone in particular, just in general. You have patients that pay you."

"Yes. And I supervise a group of psychologists."

"So, you make the same kind of money a doctor makes."

"I am a doctor."

"That's evasive. You know what I'm trying to ask."

"Yes, I make the kind of money you expect."

"How much did you make last year."

"Michaela," she said. "I'm not going to talk about that."

"I made thirty-one thousand dollars last year," I said. "That's pretty good for a public servant without a high school diploma. Francesca said I'll make thirty-eight beginning next school year and more if I get a four-year degree. I bet you make ten or even twenty times that much."

She looked away. I'd never gotten her to look away before.

"More," I said.

"Yes, if you count investments."

"In one month, you make more than I paid for my house," I said. "I've done a lot on it in the eight years I've had it, so it's worth more than that, maybe even two months' salary for you. And you want to hear about my house? You don't care about my house. Why aren't you being honest with me?"

"I want to hear you tell me about your house," she said, looking straight at me.
"And that's the truth."

I stared at her for a minute. I didn't trust her. "So, I start talking about my house, and then you ask a few harmless questions. And then you're going to ask about the places I lived before."

"No. Unless you bring it up, I don't intend to talk about anything from before you moved to Bayfield. Can we talk about your house, and Bayfield?"

"No tricks?"

"No tricks."

"All right," I said. "We can talk about my house, and about Bayfield. I'll even talk about the Apostle Islands, if you like."

"I would like that," she said. "Will you tell me about buying your house?"

"All right," I agreed. "I'd had my job for a while, and I was saving all my money. Robert and Virginia helped."

"Who are they?"

"
Bree's parents. Bree is the girl I saved. I think you know about that."

She nodded.

"So, they helped. I didn't know much about money then, but Virginia declared me a fast learner. One evening over dinner, I told them I hoped I could buy my own house one day. And Robert said I could, and it didn't need to be 'one day'. It could be 'next week' if I really wanted."

I sighed, remembering. "I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't have anywhere near enough money for a house, even a really bad house. He told me about loans. I laughed and told him no one would loan me money. He assured me they would. He said, 'you have a good job an
d good references', and then he if necessary, he would co-sign a loan with me as long as I was sure I could make the payments."

"That was very generous," Vivian said.

"Have you always had money, Vivian?"

"Yes."

"So it's difficult for you to imagine not having money, I bet. Not having a home."

"Yes, it is."

"I didn't want his help," I told her. "I stayed late at work the next night and researched buying houses, loans, and everything. I saw that you need a credit rating, and I didn't have one. I hadn't done anything to build one. But I started wondering what a house would cost. I was living in a little apartment in Ashland, but I already knew I liked Bayfield better. So that weekend I found a realtor. I told her I didn't have much money, but I just wanted to know what houses cost. She told me if I promised to come back to her when I was ready to get serious, she'd give me a tour of what was available."

I sat back, remembering. "She started with expensive houses. Not expensive for you, but far too expensive for me, even now. Then she showed me more modest houses. They were cute, I guess. I asked her to show me the cheapest houses available. So she showed me some trailer homes, but I didn't like those at all. They looked like they would fall apart, and I wasn't going to spend my money on something that wasn't going to last."

"Very prudent," Vivian said.

"You really don't care about any of this."

"Yes, Michaela, I do. Please keep going."

"I told her no more trailers, but if she had any other cheap houses to show me, I wanted to see them. She said, 'I have one, but it is in really bad shape, and you wouldn't want it.' But I asked her to show it to me anyway. She was right. It was in really bad shape. The garage was falling apart, and I was afraid to even go in or lean against it. The yard was filled
with weeds, there were boarded-over windows, and there were vermin in the attic; I could hear them scampering around."

"Yuck," she said.

"Yeah. The roof leaked, the basement leaked, the plumbing leaked. Well, you get the idea."

"So you bought it."

"Yeah. It had been on the market a long time. The previous owner had died and it now belonged to some distant relative from Minneapolis. They'd never even seen it and certainly hadn't put any effort into making it presentable. So I asked Julie, my agent, 'Do you just pay the asking price?' And she said, 'Oh no, you can make an offer.' So I told her, 'I bet this property is on the verge of being condemned. The house isn't worth a dime, and the proper selling price is whatever the value of the lot is minus what it would take to tear down both structures and haul everything away.' Julie smiled and told me that was about right."

Vivian was smiling. "I've seen your house, Michaela. The description you just offer
ed doesn't remotely describe your house now."

"I know. But I didn't have enough money to buy even the lot the house was on. So I invited myself to dinner at Robert and Virginia's and ask
ed them if they were serious about helping me. They went to see the house with me the next afternoon. Virginia took one look and didn't want to go inside. Robert went in with Julie and me, and he examined the entire house very carefully. Then he said, 'Let's go to dinner and talk about it.' And I was sure he was going to tell me I was being very foolish, and that I had disappointed him by even suggesting this house."

"But that's not what happened," Vivian said.

"No. He outlined everything that was wrong with the house. He had taken notes. And he told me what was right about it, too. The basic structure was still sound. The foundation seemed sound. And he said, 'Everything can be fixed. It would be a lot of work, and some of it might be expensive.' He told me what I would have to do first -- the various forms of water leaks. I asked him if I had to hire someone or, if I learned how, could I do it myself. He said I could do it myself, but I would need building permits for some of it and some of the supplies would be expensive."

"It's hard to get a loan for a house in that condition," Vivian said. "Even with an excellent credit rating."

"That's what he said next. Then he told me to go to the bathroom."

"He wanted to talk to Virginia."

"Yes. I came back and they told me they were strongly encouraging me to look for another house. That the only way I could buy this house was if I were willing to do an awful lot of work, and I'd have to do it myself. 'Darling,' Virginia told me. 'This is a good house for someone who works in construction and knows how to fix it.' I told them I was willing to learn, that I could do anything I set my mind to, but I understood they wouldn't recommend such a risk. Then they looked at each other and Virginia said, 'You won't be able to get a bank loan, Darling. We'll have to loan you the money.' I couldn't believe they were willing to do that."

"You saved their daughter, though. They would have done anything for you."

"Yes, but they weren't going to let me be foolish. Robert told me there would be strings. The first string was I had to fix the roof immediately, and that I would have to either hire a professional to do it or accept help. And there were other things I had to do immediately, and he didn't think I could learn to do all of them at once."

I started to cry. "They loaned me the money. And they loaned me extra money to pay for the repairs I would need to do right away. They were going to do it without interest, but I insisted on paying what the bank in town was
charging. They offered a twenty-year loan, but I wanted ten, and I paid them off in four. I hunted nearly all my food for four years, but I paid them off in four years. I did all my repairs myself, but Robert insisted I had to accept help for the roof, and I had to do it the weekend after I moved in. I thought he'd come over and show me what to do. But instead he, Virginia and Bree came. And his brother and nephew. Virginia's father was there, and a cousin. The cousin was a contractor, and he brought all these tools with him. He got all of us going, and then he disappeared. Later I found him inside, and he was fixing the plumbing.  By the end of the weekend, we had fixed the things Robert told me I had to do right away. And the cousin had done a complete inventory of the entire house, telling me everything I had to do and how to figure out how to do it."

I dried my tears. "Robert and Virginia gave me a house warming gift. They bought home repair books, several of them, plus all the basic tools I would need. Hammers, screwdrivers, saws, all that stuff.
"

I sat up straight. "But after that, I did the rest. I fixed everything. The walls were plaster, but they were rotted from water damage, so I stripped them, one room at a time, and replaced them with drywall. I didn't want to work with plaster, but drywall seemed easy. I painted, I learned how to fix the electrical. I replaced both toilets." I paused. "Well, you get the idea. I spent years fixing the house,
making repairs and improvements as I could afford to pay for the materials."

"You have a right to be very proud," Vivian said. "I've never done anything like that. Neither has Lara."

"You don't have to," I said.

"No," she said. "But you did, and you did an amazing job. You should be proud."

"I am, I guess, but it's not like millions of people don't do the same things I did."

"That doesn't belittle the accomplishment," she said.

"I guess."

I had been talking for a long time. "Why did you want to know all that?"

"Because it's part of who you are. And maybe I suspected some of the story, and I wanted you to remind yourself of what you've accomplished."

There was more. "And you don't want me to avoid you anymore."

"No," she agreed. "I don't want you to avoid me anymore."

"All right," I said. "I won't make up any fake excuses anymore."

She smiled. "Good."

"No, I'll make sure I have real ones."

"Michaela-"

"Teasing!" I said. "You're always so serious."

* * * *

I didn't avoid
Vivian anymore. Some days were harder than others. Some days I'd arrive for our session, and I would tell her, "I am having a bad day," and we would talk about Bayfield, or how I felt about Lara, or whether I felt I was integrating in with the pack. One day she tried to get me to brag about all the ways I lose the wolves when we're playing our games out in the woods, but I fed her a line of bullshit a mile wide. She knew I was doing it but kept a straight face the entire time. When we got done that day, she asked, "Was a single word of that true?"