Page 26 of Bred By the Minotaur
I place a few more calls and argue my case, but I’m denied.
Denied.
Denied.
Eventually, I give in to the hopelessness, hanging up the phone that Hank gave me. It’s been a real lifesaver. I should find a way to thank him—something that won’t give him the wrong idea, though.
Now I finally have access to my money, but it’ll be a while before I get my insurance settlement, so I have to pay for replacing everything in the meantime that I need to keep doing my job. After blowing my limited wad on a new tablet and computer, I try to set up a desk in the corner of Sandra’s living room. But the house is small and cramped as it is, and we’re always in each other’s way.
Of course, we have fun times together, watching movies late into the night and eating food that’s bad for us to try to forget about the fire. It reminds me of when we were teenagers and snuck a small television into our room to watch bad late-night TV.
But even when she’s too tired to get up and be a busybody, Sandra is constantly interrupting my work to ask for things. I don’t mind helping, but it was easier to focus on my job when I lived elsewhere and only came over when she needed me.
She’s feeling better these days, which is good, and I try to hold that one upside close. But it also means she’s up more often, tsking as she cleans around me. I wake up to find the clothes I dropped on the floor folded and placed on the chair. Everything is put away and rearranged, like some fairy came in the middle of the night.
This is why we live in separate places, in separate homes. As much as I love her, at some point, this will escalate. She’ll shoot me dirty looks when I don’t put something back exactly where it belongs and exclaim loudly when she finds something out of place.
But I don’t have a choice right now about my sleeping arrangement, so I do my best to abide by her strict guidelines and not leave anything out on the counters. From time to time, I think about Hank’s offer of the spare room, and wonder why I didn’t accept. When my debit card arrives, I go to buy some new clothes, and get a little organizer to put against the wall so they’re not lying around.
Then I leave a half-finished muffin out, intending to come back to it later, and I hear Sandra grumbling about ants as she tosses it in the trash.
“That was mine,” I grouch as she dumps it.
“Don’t leave food out. Put it in a container.”
It’s barely a few weeks into cohabitating when I’m already so close to exploding I could scream. That’s the last thing I want to do when things are already fragile between Sandra and me, so instead, I get up out of my chair, throw on a coat, and head out into the spring afternoon air.
“Where are you going?” my sister calls.
“Out.” And then I slam the door behind me.
I breathe in as much fresh oxygen as I can, grateful for it filling my lungs. I coughed up dark stuff for a few days after the fire, and I never want to go through that again.
I head down the street, and it’s not until I’m standing right outside that I realize I’ve walked to Hank’s house. It’s cute and surprisingly big, with a porch that has two chairs, a little table, a barbecue grill, and some children’s toys scattered around the yard—among them a plastic slide and a forgotten Big Wheel.
I puzzle over it for a while, these remnants of the little boy who lives here. My son. My flesh and blood child.
“Who’s that lady, Dad?” a little voice says.
I glance up to find Hank coming down the street, holding the hand of a small minotaur child. The boy is patterned just like his father, splotched all white and brown.
But his eyes... his eyes aren’t anything like Hank’s, which are big and endless and brown. No, the boy’s eyes are bright blue.
Just like mine.
“Milo?” I ask reflexively. The boy’s eyebrows jump high into his shaggy hair. He really needs a haircut. I can barely make out the nubs of his horns through it.
“How does she know my name?” The minotaur boy tilts his head at me. “I don’t know her.”
“I know her,” Hank says gently, leading him toward me. Milo is studying me as they come to a stop. “She is, um... a friend of mine.”
“Ohh.” Milo nods like this is all information that he knows already. “Is she coming in? Can she meet Darla?” He drops his father’s hand and comes over to me, grabbing onto my pant leg and tugging me in the direction of his house. “Darla likes other girls. Did you know my dad is bringing home a baby from the baby factory? But we don’t know if it’ll be a boy or a girl.” He continues on like a freight train. “I hope it’s a girl, though. So Darla will be happier.”
I glance up at Hank with a brow raised. “Baby factory, huh?” I ask. “That’s lucky. That there are factories for babies.”
Hank drags a hand down his long face in embarrassment.
“I don’t think Phoebe needs to meet Darla today,” Hank says, prying Milo’s hands off me and taking them into his own huge palms.
