So the reason this chapter took three days to arrive is not because I simply couldn't be bothered writing. No, you see, in order for my brain to allow me to write the next chapter (seen below) I had to first bow down to it's will. And it's will wanted me to create Brodie's crossword. So I did. And Shreek decided that my clues were way to obvious, so we are currently in the process of changing the regular clues to cryptic clues, because they're way more fun! We have two left, but have hit a dead end. Never fear though, we'll get there eventually, and when we do, I shall post it on my deviantART page and put a link to it in my profile so you can play along! YAY!

Chapter 3

I knew it was a useless exercise when I started it, but I had to try. Once the groceries were away, the boys were playing quietly in their room and Carlos was busy with preparations for dinner, I wheeled myself into the home office and fired up my laptop to see if I could locate Brodie. The search programs we had at home were fairly limited, really only useful for basic and local searches, but it was enough to let me feel like I was doing something. Once I had entered all the information I had on him, which in itself was incredibly limited, I turned my attention back to the crossword he'd asked me to have a look at. There was absolutely no way I could help him with these clues; it didn't appear to be a regular crossword. Only the first clue was solved: "Trent arrived on time in the city." Apparently, that meant Trenton.

As I continued to stare at it, I started to wonder if solving that clue was the reason he had come to America. If so, what was so important about this crossword? Were the clues actually clues to finding something? Someone? I glanced down the list of clues, but nothing seemed to jump out at me. The clues didn't make any sense. I mean, seriously, "My dear little darling was mistaken for a pig"? Something tells me Brodie's father wasn't exactly in his right mind when he came up with these things.

"Babe, what are you doing?" Carlos's voice startled me out of my confusion as he entered the office.

I folded up the crossword and used it to gesture to the screen. "I'm trying to find the guy whose car blew up with mine this afternoon. He asked for help with a crossword and I didn't realise I still had it until we were almost home."

He took a seat in the office chair I'd pushed away from the desk and rolled it over to sit beside me. "It's just a crossword," he pointed out. "I'm sure he'll be okay without it." Gently moving my hands out of the way, he moved the laptop so he could see the search results, which, just so you know, were pretty dismal. There's only so much you can do with a first name a presumed nationality, a basic physical description, and the deceased status of the father. "This list is almost infinite," Carlos observed, scrolling down the page. "Did you really hope to find him in a basic search?"

Suddenly feeling inadequate, I shrugged my shoulders and leaned back. "I had to try," I told him. "The crossword is important to him. His dad made it for him." I paused, waiting for a reaction I was pretty sure wasn't going to happen – which it didn't – before adding, "His dad is dead."

Carlos nodded like he understood and pulled me out of my chair and into his lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck to anchor myself and laid my head on his shoulder, waiting for him to tell me it would be alright. "I'll get Zero to hack into the police database to find a full name and contact details," he promised, which was as good as telling me everything would be fine when you understand the way his mind works. He can't just give me random affirmations that mean absolutely nothing. He has to do something about what's upsetting or annoying me. So he stated what he would do about it. The system works.

"Can you help him with the crossword?" he asked after a moment, and I knew that he was teasing me. He knew how bad I was at word puzzles. My well worded response to that was to punch him in the shoulder, which of course made my hand hurt. "Let me take a look."

"Mom!" Edi's voice rang out through the house interrupting the moment.

"Mommy!" came Mat's immediate counter call.

Great, here we go.

The twins came skittering into the room, one after the other, pointing fingers and making accusations. As usual, they were speaking over top of each other, so neither their father, nor I could understand what they were saying. I caught the words grenade, ninja star and sword and immediately knew the gist of the argument: They'd been playing and someone got hurt. Judging by the distressed look on Edi's face, he was the one with the boo-boo. While the boys continued simultaneously pleading their cases, Carlos returned me to my chair and raised his hand, palm facing the boys. The silence was instantaneous.

Slowly and deliberately, my husband looked between the boys' faces, before settling on Mat. "What did you do?" he asked at the same moment Mat said, "I didn't do anything!" A barely perceptible head shake was all that Carlos gave him, turning to his brother. "Eduardo, tell me what happened."

"He pushed me off the bed and I hit my head on the dresser!" Edi cried, getting worked up again. I laid a hand on the top of his head, gently stroking to see if he had a bump while Carlos returned his attention to Mat.

He leaned down, bracing his elbows on his knees, so that their faces were level. "Matias," he stated firmly. "Did you push your brother?"

"He stole my grenade!" he defended, which would not sit well. We had two rules in this family. Number 1: Stay in sight when we're out. Number 2: Answer the question you're asked. There were a bunch of others, but they weren't pulled out for reminders nearly as much as these two. The amount of times we'd been at the park and I'd had a panic attack because I'd lost sight of the boys when I looked away for two seconds had to be in the hundreds. More recently, we – by which I mean, mainly Carlos, given my absence – had been teaching them that if they were asked a yes or no question they answered with yes or no. Not okay. Not I guess. Not I suppose. Not an irrelevant statement. Yes. Or. No.

Carlos gave him a look. That was all it took. "Yes," Mat sighed. Can you tell they'd been reminded of that rule a heck of a lot?

"Blue thinking mat," my husband stated and Matias left the room, headed for one of two thinking mats we had positioned at opposite ends of the house. The green one was in the kitchen, while the blue was in the laundry. We tried to choose locations with the least amount of stimulation to encourage less frequent visits, because at the end of the day, we really didn't like punishing them. It was for their own good and our sanity.

Once Mat was out of the room, Carlo's attention was once again on Edi. "Were you playing fair?" he asked.

Edi looked down at his sock covered feet. "No," he mumbled, rubbing his forehead.

Carlos, brushed his hair out of the way, examining the apparent place of dresser impact carefully. "Grab an ice pack and go to the green thinking mat." Edi looked like he was going to protest. "You did the wrong thing, Eduardo. Just because you're injured doesn't mean you're free to go." There was no arguing with Dad. That was an unspoken rule, we didn't have to remind them of that rule anymore. After suffering the consequences a few times they'd learned to bite their tongues pretty quickly.

*o*

It was close to ten o'clock when Carlos and I arrived at Haywood after dropping the twins at school the next day – we'd been held up talking to some of the other parents... and by 'we' I mean 'me'. We rode the lift together to the fifth floor where he kissed me and headed for his office, leaving me to be confronted by the most secretive of Merry Men in existence. Zero stood before me, his short, white-blonde hair standing on end as usual. Not a word left his lips as he handed me a post-it note, bowed his head briefly in either respect or greeting, and promptly walked away.

"Good talk!" I called after him, rolling my eyes. Hal chuckled from a nearby desk as I made my way to my cubicle. "He has a voice box, right? He can speak?"

"Yes, ma'am," he responded.

"Well then, is it me?" I questioned, pausing by his desk.

"No," Hal assured me. "He's just a little ferrety."

I nodded. The man certainly looked ferrety. White-blond hair. Skinny when compared to the buffness of the rest of the guys. Twitchy nose. Okay, so the nose thing may not be true. Just take my word for it. If you saw him, your first thought would be ferret. "Pass me your desk phone," I requested and it was in my hand almost before I'd finished speaking. Sometimes I love efficiency, just not when it's forced upon me. I thanked him and started dialling the number on my post-it note. Dial tone. No ringing. That was odd, the Merry Men never make mistakes. They wouldn't have given me a number without double and triple checking it. I put the phone down, frowning between it and the post-it note.

"Something wrong?" Hal asked, moving the phone back to its usual space.

I looked up and gave him a smile. "No, everything's fine."

"Great!" came Bobby's overly chipper voice from behind me. "I have a surprise for you."

My stomach dropped all the way to my feet at that statement. I'd been expecting Bobby to nab me since I returned. He'd assured the carers and doctors at the facility that he would personally continue with my formal physio. I'd just like to mention that physio is the most frustrating thing in the world mainly because it does nothing for me. At least it hasn't done anything for me yet. I mean, if it was doing something for me, helping in any way, I'd probably be a little closer to walking, right? I turned to face his grinning, Cheshire cat face with a countering glare of my own. "Let me guess," I said, "The gym?"

His grin grew wider. "We can do it in the open gym if you like, or we can go to my office," he informed me. "But I've set it up in the gym. I think it'd do you good to have the guys around you. Don't worry though, no one will be paying attention to you." He was really doing a hard sell on this, so I couldn't very well dash his hope and efforts.

"Lead the way," I sighed, gesturing to the elevators not more than ten feet away.

"I thought we'd take the stairs," he teased. "You know, get a head start on things."

"Not until I can walk on flat ground," I countered seriously.

He narrowed his eyes to match my seriousness, which would have worked if he weren't still smiling. "The moment you can take three steps on flat ground I'll have you up and down those stairs," he promised. Without waiting for my reaction he made his way to the open elevator, calling over his shoulder, "I'm not holding the door for you, so you better hurry up or you'll have to take the stairs."

When we got down to the gym, there was a folding card table set up in the middle of a cleared area. Bobby positioned me on one side and took a seat on the adjacent side. He set his right elbow on the table between us wriggling the fingers of his hand in invitation.

"What is this?" I asked. "I thought you brought me down here for physio."

He gave me a sly grin. "I did," he agreed. "We'll get to it. Ranger tells me you've been working on your upper body strength. I wanna test it out."

I rolled my eyes. Of course I'd been working on my upper body strength, how else was I supposed to heft myself around? "You brought me down here for an arm wrestle?"

With a quick look around the room he replied, "No, I brought you down here for potentially four arm wrestles and then some physio." And so I engaged in an arm wrestle with Bobby. I didn't win, but I held my own for a few minutes before giving in. Apparently he used that as a diagnostic tool, because the moment my hand hit the table top he informed me that I needed to work on my endurance if I wanted to walk again.

And so for the next half an hour, he made me stand. He wheeled me up to the special frame, told me to pull myself up, took the chair away and told me if I dropped to the ground we'd start again until I could stay upright for five minutes. It seemed simple enough, but it took me four tries to reach the full five minutes. And he wasn't interested in lending a hand when I fell down. I had to drag myself back up on the frame and give him the nod that I was ready to go again. It was hell on my entire body, and I left that gym aching all over, drenched in sweat, but with a certain sense of accomplishment. The physio therapists at the facility hadn't pushed me that hard in the entire time I'd been there, they were all about going at a steady pace. I swear to God, he was viewing the task of getting me walking again as a personal challenge. And/or he'd been ordered by the boss man himself. He was going to be the death of me if I didn't walk soon.

After the session - which ended in whoops and cheers from the guys working out, go figure, I have my own cheer squad – I went up to seven to freshen up before making my way to my cubicle to finally get down to business. As usual, Rodriguez had piled up my in tray in my absence, so I started on a couple of his searches before picking up the post-it note from Zero. I tried the number again glad to hear that it was actually ringing this time, but there was no answer. I checked that the searches were still running smoothly and tried again. Finally, just as I was about to give up, he answered.

"Aye?" he greeted. The sudden voice in my ear made me freeze, I'd been so prepared to fail again that I hadn't thought of how to say what I needed to say. "Hello?" he tried again.

"Hi," I said, cringing at the awkwardness of the moment. "I'm calling for Brodie McKenna?"

"This is he," he informed me, and it amazed me anew at how the most mundane phrases sounded almost exotic in a foreign accent. I got the same feeling whenever I had a conversation with Hector. "Who's speaking, please?"

"My name is Stephanie. We met at the car explosion yesterday? You asked for help with your father's crossword?" Why was I stating these facts as questions?

"Stephanie," he acknowledged. "How are ye?"

Oh pleasantries. There's something I don't get a lot of in my everyday phone calls. Of course, most of the phone calls I make are within the company and despite the fact that I had trained the guys to say goodbye before hanging up, we weren't quite up to paint-your-nails-and-talk-about-the-weather gabbing conversations. "I'm fine, thank you," I replied dutifully, stretching my left arm out. "And you?"

"I'm well," he conceded. "But I'll be even better if you tell me you haven't lost the puzzle."

"It's in my handbag," I informed him, and heard him let out a long breath that he'd obviously been holding. "I'm tied to my desk for most of the day, but if you're free around half past three this afternoon we could meet and I'll return it to you. I understand how important something like this would be." We set up to meet at the cafe just down the street from the boys' school at three-thirty. That allowed me time to get most of Rodriguez's searches done, pick up the boys and potentially be drawn into a quick post school conversation with the other mothers before afternoon tea with Brodie and my little men.

And so the wheels are in motion. Don't forget to review, pretty please? Oh, and I apologise for any medical/physio inaccuracies, most what happens come straight from my head and is rarely fact checked.