“Pyro’s the demolition’s expert, figured he should have the honor,” Atlas grated.
“Ha, ha, fuck you, man. Hammer’s a lot different than blowing some shit up. Way less fun.”
I laughed. “I want to keep the bones, so no hammer really required unless it’s a claw hammer to pull nails.”
“Eh, might need a drill, too. Looks like whoever built it used some Philips and some flat head screws.” Galahad scratched the stubble on one cheek with his middle fingernail and looked a touch irritated.
“I got you,” I said, and looked down at Serenity. “Can you keep the iced tea coming?”
“You bet,” she murmured and drifted to the back slider to go into the house.
“I’ll hit the garage and start bringing out useful tools,” Hope said, with a faint but proud smile.
“I’ll go with ya,” Hossler agreed.
We got to work.
If there’s one thing I learned working construction, nothing ever goes one hundred percent according to plan or smoothly, but, on occasion, it actually did, and this ended up being one such occasion. My plan had been to strip the old garden shed of its shell and to use the bones to put up her existing windows, utilizing the bones of her greenhouse as an expansion to give her more room – once I could pour another cement pad to join up with the existing one where my granddad’s shed used to be.
I expected there to be a hiccup if the windows from the old greenhouse would be too few or too many to encompass my gramp’s old garden shed’s skeleton but the gods, or whatever, smiled upon us, it was almost a perfect fit. We got the fan up and centered first, because Serenity said that was one of the most important parts of a working greenhouse, and then it went together almost like magic from there.
It was dark by the time we slid her roughed-out workbenches of old timber and warped plywood in there, but it was enough to get her existing plants moved in by flashlight and the light of the fire from my old rusting hulk of a backyard firepit, while most of the brothers and old ladies enjoyed a cold one to cap off their job well done.
“You’ve really outdone yourself,” my little orchid murmured, her arms going around my waist as she leaned into my side. I put my arm around her and caressed her arm. She was beautiful in her favorite faded black hippy dress that she loved to wear around the house. I kissed the top of her head as we looked at her relocated little greenhouse.
“Excited to fill it again?” I asked.
“Yeah. The plants should be okay overnight in the back of the station wagon and Galahad said he could leave it parked here for a couple of days which will give me plenty of time to get everything sorted. I thought we were going to wait, though.”
“We were, but I couldn’t. I knew how much it was chewing you up not having your own space around here,” I said, and she glanced up sharply. She visibly flinched, just the look in her eyes and the expression on her face, and I chuckled.
“Don’t read more into it than what I just said,” I told her.
“I can’t believe everyone –”
“I told you,” I said gently, cutting her off, “this is what it is, being club, and belonging. I know you haven’t had much of this, that you’ve had a rough go of it, but those days are over, baby. Those days are gone. You belong now, and we take care of what’s ours, protect our own, and are here for each other no matter what. This is how it’s supposed to be, this is how it is.”
She let her eyes wander across the fire-lit backyard and over the faces of my crew gathered around the flames. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gazing at the little reclaimed window greenhouse with its solitary hanging lightbulb, dimly lighting the interior. That’s why I’d chosen to retrofit my granddad’s shed. It had power to it, no ugly orange extension cord running up a support pillar to an outlet on the porch like she’d had set up at her old place. I was planning on fitting her with something essentially state-of-the-art while keeping her rustic eclectic vibe alive and well.
It was the least I could do. Her feeling calm, feeling safe, having a place of her own to go was important. So said Marlin, and he was the expert when it came to anxiety-riddled abused women – at least among us. Charity and Galahad had had a lot to add, but it all amounted to the same.
Trauma was trauma, and Serenity had it in spades, even before the shooting at her school. All the years of bullying and mental abuse, all the emotional abuse, the systematic and intentional psychological chipping away at her self-worth and her psyche… it left her with a serious case of C-PTSD, PTSD’s insidious and harder-to-diagnose big ugly cousin. Often mishandled as depression with generalized anxiety disorder, it didn’t react the same to the general medication and treatment for the two.
I’d done some heavy talking, heavy thinking, and some solid research, and knew that this change of scenery, this new life with me, was just the beginning. Serenity didn’t know it yet, but I’d talked to my boss, we’d fudged some paperwork and we were getting her onto my insurance, and as soon as she was ready? We’d make her an appointment with the same shrink lady that’d been helping Faith. The one that specialized in trauma.
It was time for my little orchid to stop just living. It was high time for her to be transplanted to a place where she could thrive and I knew that she was ready for it. She’d said as much, told me how she wished that the doctor’s visits and physical therapy to deal with the aftermath of the car crash she’d been in could lead into more, for the other stuff.
Well, here we were, and I was going to make it happen, come hell or high water. I wanted her to do better, to be better, and I wanted to grow and be better, for her and with her.
“I love you,” she said finally, on a soft exhalation of breath, her eyes slightly unfocused as she stared over the new arrangement back here.
“I love you too,” I murmured, giving her a gentle squeeze. “Let me take you back in the house and show you just how much.”
She shook herself as if waking from a dream and looked up at me a bit stricken. “But we have guests!” she protested and I chuckled darkly.
“We have crew and my bandmates over; they’re family, and they know their way around the place and don’t need us. Come on.” I led her by the hand toward the back door.
“Have fun, you two!” Hossler called out, raising her bottle of beer in salute in our direction.
