Everything in Between (2 page)

Chip went to her. “Are you going to be okay?” He took her by the shoulders, the gesture natural and easy. He had been her karate teacher for almost nine years, but only in the past several months had their friendship extended beyond the martial arts studio.

“I’ll be fine,” she answered, her voice rusty.

His hands moved closer to her neck, his thumbs caressing her collarbones. “Why don’t you try to get some rest?” he suggested. “We had a long night.”

“You, too,” she said. “Thanks for bringing me home.”

Chip drew her into an easy embrace. His arms, solid and strong around her, tempted her to melt against him. His lips pressed to her head, just above her ear, and the hard thump of his heart against hers gave her a sense of comfort she hadn’t known in a long time. Awkwardly, as if she’d only just remembered how to return a hug, she closed her arms around him.

He sighed. “It was my pleasure, professor,” he said, his drawl a lullaby in her ear. He framed her face in his hands. “You’ll call me if you need anything?”

Her head rose and fell in a terse nod. “I promise.”

Chip held her a moment longer, his eyes searching hers. Zae had to take him by the forearms and pull herself from his embrace.

“I’ll call you if I hear anything new about Gian,” she said, sidling past him to leave the office.

“Thanks.”

He watched her climb the stairs outside her office door, then heard her enter her bedroom and close the door. A moment later, he caught the muted sound of weeping. He climbed the first flight of stairs two at a time, but halted on the landing. Zae wasn’t the sort of woman one barged in on. And if she’d wanted company, she would have invited him to stay. He slowly backed down the stairs, the quiet noise of her tears tugging at his heart.

He might have stayed at the base of the stairs all day, waiting for Zae’s reemergence, if her daughters hadn’t appeared, turning into the kitchen from the family room.

“How’s Gian?” Eve asked, her sparkling brown eyes rimmed red from crying.

“What are you doing here, Chip?” Dawn’s brusque tone and precise pronunciation were exact replicas of her mother’s.

“Gian is going to be fine,” Chip answered, then turning to Dawn, he said, “I drove your mother home from the hospital.”

“Why didn’t she drive herself?” Dawn asked.

“Because she was in no condition to drive.”

“Was she drunk?”

“Dawn!” Eve whispered sharply.

“Well…” Dawn countered with a roll of her eyes.

“What kind of question is that, young lady?” Chip snapped.

Identical twins born only minutes apart, Eve and Dawn Richardson couldn’t have been more different in attitude, personality and style. Eve was dressed in brown suede boots and a long, dark-brown sweater dress that modestly covered her perfect figure. Dawn, all in white, wore a wool miniskirt, tights, a short-sleeved sweater and knee-high boots. Eve’s long hair fell loose while Dawn had pinned hers up in a bun. Both girls possessed their mother’s regal beauty, but where Eve practiced her father’s unerring calm in most situations, Dawn typically resorted to her mother’s uncompromising fire.

“It’s a good one,” Dawn answered. “It’s eight in the morning and there’s a strange man in our house.”

“You’ve known me since you were in pigtails,” Chip reminded her. “I taught you how to grind an ollie on your skateboard. I helped coach your eighth-grade softball team. I’m the one who kept your mom from killing Jonathan Applegate when she caught him climbing into your room the night of your junior prom.”

“I didn’t mean strange as in unknown, I meant strange as in peculiar,” Dawn clarified. Lips pursed, she moved past Chip to get to the refrigerator. She withdrew two brown sacks and tossed one to Eve, who deftly caught it.

“You’re not buying lunch today?” Eve asked, peeping into the bag.

“I’ll be dead by the end of the week if I keep eating the school lunches.” Dawn held up two containers of Greek yogurt. Eve nodded, and her sister retrieved two spoons from the cutlery drawer in the center prep island.

“I don’t know about this health food kick of yours.” Eve pulled a small bottle of bright green fluid from her bag. “What’s this?”

“Wheat grass juice,” Dawn said around a spoonful of thick, creamy yogurt. “And it’s whole foods, not health foods.”

“I’d rather eat a whole pizza than a whole…whatever this is.” Eve displayed what looked like a lumpy brown torpedo encased in plastic wrap.

“It’s a vegetarian kibbeh,” Dawn said.

Eve wrinkled her nose and sniffed the torpedo. “A what?”

“A kibbeh?” Chip said. “Where’d you find those around here?”

“I made it,” Dawn replied, licking yogurt from the back of her spoon.

“It looks like bird food,” Eve said.

“It’s cracked wheat—” Chip started.

“I used bulgur,” Dawn cut in.

“—onions, carrots, garlic, sunflower seeds, black olives and tofu mixed with spices,” Chip finished.

“It’s Indian,” Dawn said. “I thought I’d venture into a different part of the culinary world, for variety.”

“Actually, darlin’, it’s Lebanese,” Chip corrected.

Dawn’s eyes narrowed slightly. Resting her elbows on the prep island, she leaned toward Chip, who stood opposite her, eyeing Eve’s kibbeh. “Are you coming or going?”

“I don’t follow,” Chip said.

“I’m not accustomed to seeing men in the house at this time of day,” Dawn explained. “Are you arriving, or have you been here all night?”

Eve rounded the prep island and took her sister by the sleeve. “We’re going to be late for class if we don’t get going. I haven’t had a single tardy this semester, and I don’t want to get one now, with only a few weeks left before the holiday break.”

“You girls have classes on Saturday?” Chip asked, surprised.

“We’re the teachers, not the students,” Dawn said.

“Tutors, not teachers,” Eve clarified. “We volunteer for the Student-to-Student program at school. I tutor in chemistry and algebra and Dawn does English and composition.”

“Teachers, just like your Ma.” Chip smiled.

“So what’s the deal?” Dawn snapped. “Did you stay the night here?”

“That’s none of our business,” Eve said. She offered Chip an apologetic smile while attempting to pull her sister toward the side door and the garage.

“It’s our mother, so it’s our business,” Dawn argued. “She and Chip have been spending a lot of time together lately. We deserve to know what’s going on, especially if we leave him in the house while CJ is upstairs sleeping.”

“Your mom was too tired to drive when she left the hospital,” Chip calmly explained. “So I drove her home in her car.”

“And now you’re leaving?” Dawn suggested.

Chip noted the hopefulness in her query.

“I’m going to hang around a little longer, make sure your mom doesn’t need anything,” he said. “Then I’ll walk back to the hospital to get my car or have a friend drive it here.”

“You have a car?” Dawn asked. “Since when?”

“Come on, Dawn,” Eve insisted. “We’ll be late!”

“Since always,” Chip responded.

“Why don’t you ever drive?” Dawn persisted.

“I like to walk. It’s good exercise for my leg.”

“Your bionic leg?”

“That’s enough, Dawn,” Eve snapped, sounding every bit like her mother.

“It sure felt like it cost six million to fix my leg,” Chip said. “And yeah, I mean the one I messed up when I was in the service.”

Dawn grunted.

“Have I done something to offend you, kiddo?” Chip asked. “Tell me what it is so I can apologize, or earn my way off your shit list.”

Eyeing Chip suspiciously, Dawn joined Eve at the side door. “We gotta go,” she grumbled. “We can’t be late for class.” She took her parka from its peg near the door and went into the garage.

Chip heard the hum of the garage door rising on its tracks.

“I’m sorry, Chip,” Eve said. “She’s not usually so cantankerous.”

“Yes, she is.” Chip chuckled.

Eve laughed, too. “She’s just worried about Gian. In her own mean, rude way.”

Chip nodded, although he partially disagreed. “I think she’s worried about your mom.”

Eve glanced away. “Hospitals are hard for Mama. Missouri Medical Center especially.” She took her leather car coat from a peg. Chip went to her, to help her put it on. “Thank you.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to stay here for a while. Until CJ wakes up, or—”

“That could take a while.” Eve chuckled. “He was on his Xbox until a few hours ago.”

Standing so close to her, Chip noticed the circles under her eyes and the heaviness of her eyelids. Family and friends at the hospital weren’t the only ones who’d had a long, troubled night worrying about Gian. Chip gave Eve’s shoulders a familial squeeze. “You take it easy today, kid. And check in on your mom.”

“I will.” Prompted by Dawn’s blare of the car horn, Eve stepped into the garage. She turned back to Chip and said, “Thank you. For always being there for us.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Chip said. He stood in the doorway and watched Eve climb into the passenger side of the small SUV the twins shared. Her door had barely closed before Dawn peeled out of the tidy gray and white garage, leaving tracks of rubber on the spotless floor.

* * *

“Where is everybody?”

Chip looked to see CJ standing in the archway between the family room and the living room. Twelve years old and short for his age, CJ still fit the footed, spaceship pajamas Chip had given him on his tenth birthday. The boy fiddled with his zipper pull, his expression anxious as he awaited Chip’s answer.

Chip turned off the flat-screen television mounted above the fireplace opposite the sofa. He set the remote control on the coffee table in front of him, then stood to face CJ. “Why don’t you come over here and we’ll talk,” Chip said.

“Is Gian dead?” CJ asked, his voice eerily devoid of emotion. “Is that why Mama and Eve and Dawn aren’t here?”

“No, kid, no way.” Chip went to him and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Gian was hurt pretty bad, but the doctors are fixing him real good. He’s gonna be all right.”

CJ stared at Chip, his gaze unwavering.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, kid,” Chip assured him. “Gian is gonna be fine.”

CJ chewed a corner of his lower lip, a mannerism Chip recognized. It was something CJ did whenever he felt like crying. Chip planted a hand between the boy’s shoulder blades. “Your mom had a long night, so she’s upstairs resting,” he said, although he didn’t know that for sure. “Your sisters had to teach some class this morning. What do you say the two of us make a big breakfast and take it downstairs and eat it while we play that new Xbox game of yours?”

“I’m not that hungry,” CJ replied quietly.

“You’ll be plenty hungry once you get a whiff of the bacon, eggs and pancakes I’m gonna whip up.” Chip ushered him into the kitchen.

CJ took a seat on a tall wooden stool at the breakfast counter. The sun warmed the cheery breakfast nook, but did little to brighten CJ’s melancholy.

“People are tough,” Chip told him as he collected a carton of eggs, milk, butter and an enormous package of bacon from the refrigerator. “The human body can take a lot of abuse and recover from it with time and proper care.”

“My dad never recovered,” CJ said dully. “Dawn said he was in the hospital for a real long time.”

Chip set down the flour and sugar he’d taken from Zae’s baking cabinet and went to CJ. “Gian’s the big daddy to all of us,” he said. Fatigue, combined with the gravity of Gian’s condition, threatened to overwhelm Chip. He noisily cleared his throat before he could continue. “I don’t know what we’d have done if we’d lost him. But I know this: no matter what happens, there are a lot of people who love you and who’ll be here to take care of you.”

“Like you?”

Chip affectionately scrubbed a hand over the top of CJ’s head. “You got that right.”

“Like when you ran the Father-Son sack race with me last Field Day at school?”

“More like when I let you vomit on me when you got sick from eating too much cake at the Sheng Li anniversary party,” Chip countered.

CJ laughed. The merriness of the sound instantly elevated Chip’s spirits. “That was so funny!” CJ rolled off the stool, holding his middle. “You should have seen your face!” He widened his eyes and dropped his lower jaw, mimicking Chip’s expression from that moment. “I blew chunks all over your pants and your shoes.”

“You can upchuck on me anytime, kid.” Chip chuckled. He returned to the ingredients lined up on the counter. “Would you grab a big mixing bowl for me? I don’t remember where your mom keeps them.”

CJ brought him the bowl, then helped Chip scoop, measure, grease and pour. CJ’s first pancake tore in half when he attempted to flip it. “Shoot,” he muttered. “I ruined that one.”

“I’ll eat that one,” Chip offered. He took the spatula from CJ. “The key to a good pancake flip is patience,” he advised, standing behind CJ. “You gotta wait until little bubbles start to form on the edges of the pancake. Then it’s ready to turn.”