All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page A

checked out when I was…Hell, it was before third grade. I was, what? Nine?”
    â€œI don’t remember a time when she wasn’t drinking,” Robin confessed. “I mean, I try, but I just don’t remember. She must’ve, you know, been okay enough to take care of me back when I was a baby. I mean, obviously she fed me—I didn’t starve to death.” Then again, he could remember getting his own dinner when he was in nursery school, so…
    â€œI remember having corn flakes for dinner,” Sam drawled. “I knew when the breakfast cereal came out, I was in for a bad week or so.”
    â€œYeah.” Robin had been there, done that. “I think I learned to read so I could use the microwave and have something hot for a change.”
    â€œAnother sign that she was on a binge,” Sam said, “was the empty lunchbox. It’d be out on the kitchen counter, and I’d grab it and go and then…I still remember the feeling in my stomach when I opened it in the school cafeteria and realized it was empty…That sucked—that sense of unavoidable doom.”
    Robin nodded. He could relate. “She hit you?” he asked.
    â€œNah,” Sam said. “That was my father’s job. He traveled a lot, though.” He looked at Robin, and his blue eyes were actually warm. Sympathetic, but without pity, which was pretty remarkable.
    Jesus, they had way more in common than Robin had ever dreamed.
    â€œDid your mom hit you?” Sam asked him quietly.
    Robin looked down at his sandwich, lying there on a piece of white deli paper.
    â€œMine used to just go upstairs into her bedroom and close the door,” Sam continued, “while my father was kicking the shit out of me. She never stood up to him. Parents are supposed to protect their kids—not the other way around.” He sighed. “Then, when I got a little older, I used to beat
myself
up for not being able to get her sober. It took me a long time to learn that not only was I a kid—what could I do?—but that
she
was the only one who could make herself stop drinking.”
    Robin nodded. “That was one of the bonuses of rehab for me,” he told Sam. “I let go of a lot of guilt I was carrying about my mother. I should have been able to save her. Stuff like that.” He met Sam’s gaze. “And yes, sometimes she hit me.”
    His mother hadn’t hit him often—just enough. And more damaging than the actual blows had been her inconsistency. Robin had never known when she might scream at him and knock him across the room. And then cradle him in her arms afterward, weeping and apologetic.
    â€œI haven’t, um, told anyone that before,” Robin continued. “Not outside of therapy.”
    â€œNot even Jules?” Sam asked.
    â€œNo,” Robin admitted. He looked down at his sandwich again. His appetite was definitely gone, so he wrapped it back up. This was beyond strange.
    â€œYou should tell him.”
    â€œYeah,” Robin said. “It’s just…That part of my life is over, you know?”
    â€œI hear you, but…” Sam didn’t sound convinced that it could be that easy. “It’s still part of who you are.”
    â€œIt’s just that Jules…He’s so…” Robin struggled to find the right words. “Unbroken.”
    â€œSo…what? You don’t want him to know how broken
you
are?” Sam was starting to look less friendly again.
    â€œI don’t want to ruin his day,” Robin corrected him. “He knows I’m crazy-glued together. He knows exactly who I am and…If you want to know the truth, I’m too busy being happy to dredge up old crap like that, okay?” He forced himself to meet the SEAL’s gaze. “For the record, I like making Jules happy. And I do. I make him very,
very
happy.”
    And now it was Sam who looked away. “I bet you