Page 4 of On the Line

There’s really no other option, so I buckle him into his booster in the back seat.

“How you doing, bud?” I ask as I ruffle his hair back from where it’s plastered against his forehead with sweat. The kid is burning up.

“Awful.”

“Yeah, I can tell. I’ll get you home and in bed, and hopefully that’ll help.”

He leans his head back against the seat and closes those big brown eyes, so I shut the car door, come around to the driver’s side, and get in. Then I crack my window despite the cold temperatures because I can hardly breathe through the stench of our soaked clothes.

Every time I peek in the rearview mirror, Graham’s eyes are closed. And by the time we get back to the South End and turn onto our street, I breathe a sigh of relief. We made it.

“I don’t feel good.” Graham groans.

Oh shit.

“We’re almost home,” I assure him, giving him another glance in the mirror.

He’s thrashing his head back and forth like he does when he doesn’t want to do something you’re telling him to do.

“I’m going—” his words are cut off by the projectile vomit.

I glance over and watch it trickle down the passenger seat, where it runs along the white stitched seams of the dark gray leather.

My stomach roils and then clenches in disgust, and I’m dry heaving. I take the turn to the alley that leads along the side of our brownstone a little too quickly and come to a skidding stop in the space next to the side entrance of our house. I push my car door open and run around to the passenger side to get Graham out before he can do any more damage, and as soon as I open the door, he vomits all over me. “Fuck!”

“That was averybad word, Uncle Jameson,” he says somberly as he unbuckles himself.

“Yeah, well, this is averyexpensive car you just threw up in,” I mutter as I lift him out of his seat and set him on the ground. His little body weaves back and forth like a boxer who just got clocked in the head. “You going to throw up again?”

“I don’t know.” He looks down at his abdomen, then back up at me. “My stomach says ‘maybe.’”

* * *

“I need three huge favors right now,” I say quickly, hoping that Derek, my personal assistant, is in a forgiving mood today.

I sigh, thinking back to thirty minutes ago in the school nurse’s office when I didn’t think my day could get worse. It feels like maybe I was inviting disaster.

“You already owe me big for last week.”

“Like hell I do.” Last week I gave him five hundred dollars to show up in my place to a fancy dinner at an outstanding restaurant, because I had somewhere else I needed to be: taking Graham to a Boston Rebels hockey game.

“Listen, this is very much not within your role as my personal assistant, but I need you to get your ass over to my place as quick as humanly possible. Then I need you to stay with Graham until Jules gets home.”

“Why isn’t Graham at school?” he asks. Over the speakerphone, I can hear him putting on his coat and gathering his things.

“Stomach bug. Audrey is flying back from that conference in Chicago, and Jules is at a jobsite in West Roxbury.”

Together, my sisters run the construction company that’s been in my family for three generations now. Audrey is the architect, and Jules is the structural engineer and lead contractor.

“I talked to Jules a few minutes ago and she’ll get here as quickly as she can, but I suspect we’re looking at a minimum of forty-five minutes and I don’t have that long. I need to get back to the office for the signing in”—I glance at my watch—“thirty minutes.”

I hear the elevator ding over the phone and Derek says, “If I get the stomach bug, I’m taking three days of sick time and not feeling bad about it.”

“Understood. But you’re invaluable to me, so don’t get too close to Graham, and you’ll be fine.”

As he gets in his Uber, I give Derek some more instructions about scheduling the dry-cleaning pickup for my suit and finding a detail place that can pick up my car and have it back to me before I leave for work tomorrow morning.

“I’ll be lucky if I can find someone to pick it up today,” he says, “much less get it back to you by tomorrow morning.”

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