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She backed away from him, right against the edge of the bed, which took out her knees. She sat down abruptly, and a grenade of pain detonated in her side. She braced a hand on the bed as stars streaked across her vision.

James whipped around and strode away from her. “I just need you to leave me alone, all right? I’m never going to be perfect like you. I’m never going to be the perfect father. I’m never going to be the perfect brother. So just let it go.”

She got it then, and realization made her heart clench. Oh, Austin. “It was you, wasn’t it?
You
scared him. What did you do?”

“Nothing!” He swung around to face her, but just as quickly as the anger exploded out of him, it fizzled.
 

Deflated, he sat next to her on the bed. He braced his elbows on his knees and lowered his head over his clasped hands. “You should take him for a few days, Bay. Go out of town. Take vacation or something.”

The suggestion stunned her. He hadn’t offered her much more than an evening during the week and an occasional weekend since Austin had moved back with him. Not because he didn’t want her around his son, but because he’d wanted every instant with Austin he could get. He had four years to make up for.
 

Now, as much as she wanted to snatch the opportunity he offered, she knew it was impossible. She barely had the strength to climb stairs, let alone entertain a six-year-old for a few days. Plus, she’d need all the energy she could get just to make it through the rest of the day. With the paper’s only other photographer recovering from an appendectomy, calling in sick herself was a last resort.
 

“I can’t right now,” she said. “And I won’t be able to stay at my place for at least a few days. It’s a wreck.”

James sighed. “Then take him to his grandparents’. He’ll be safer there.”

Her breath caught. “What do you mean ‘safer’?”

He raised his head and looked at her, his expression desolate. “He’ll be safe from me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

She curled her fingers into the balled-up comforter at her back. Oh, God, why did everything have to hurt so much? “I want him to be where he belongs.”

“With you.”

The emotion she’d been holding back almost snapped free. Yes, she wanted Austin to be with her, to be
hers
. But he wasn’t. “He belongs with his father.”

“I’m only going to screw him up. You know that. You’ve known it all along.”

“One missed bath and an all-nighter in front of the TV aren’t going to scar him for life.”

He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. “This is your shot, Bay. Why aren’t you taking it? Why aren’t you taking him?”

Oh, she wanted to. More than anything, she wanted to scoop up her nephew and whisk him away, to a clean house and a stable life free of the myriad threats that lingered in her brother’s life. But she couldn’t. As much as it killed her to say it, to know it was the truth, she did anyway: “He’s not mine to take.”

Chapter 12

When he heard the bedroom door open, Cole looked up from the video game. His stomach jumped at the absolute whiteness of Bailey’s features.

He hopped up and went to her. “Hey.”

Austin protested. “Look out! The frog is going to jump on you and kiss you!”

Cole had heard bits and pieces of her argument with her brother, though the video game and the closed door had prevented him from getting the gist. All he knew was that she had been rough around the edges before, but now she really looked like hell. Misery swam in her shadowed green eyes, and she leaned against the door she’d closed behind her. He imagined that if she had been alone, she would have slid right down it.
 

“Aw, man, you’re a goner,” Austin said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you through this part.”

“Great, thanks,” Cole murmured.
 

Bailey raised her hand to brush hair out of her eyes, and he caught her cold, trembling fingers in his. “Your hands are like ice.”
 

She let out an unsteady breath. “Think I need that peanut butter sandwich now.”

Austin jumped up. “I’ll get it.” He scampered out of the room, game forgotten.

Cole led her to the sofa. “What were you two fighting about?”
 

“It doesn’t matter.”

He began to chafe her chilled hand between both of his. “It obviously does or you wouldn’t be so shaky.”
 

She stared at their joined hands for a moment before gently pulling free and making her way to the sofa. “I hate to ask you this. You’ve already done so much.”

“Whatever you need.” He would have done anything to get the haunted, unhappy look out of her eyes.
 

After she sat, she looked up at him and searched his face. “I don’t know why you’re even still here.”

He gave her a small smile. “The deal was you were supposed to eat before I left.”

“Right.” She winced as though the thought of food made her feel sick.

As if on cue, Austin returned with a sandwich balanced on a paper towel, a glass a quarter full of milk grasped in his free hand. “This is all the milk we have,” he said.

“Thanks, kiddo.” She accepted the food and glass. “You’re the best.”

Cole saw how her hands still shook, and his stomach churned. “What do you need me to do?”

“Can you help me clean up? If James gets caught with the apartment looking like this …”

Cleaning up someone else’s mess was not his idea of a good time, especially if it meant washing dishes. And … caught by whom?
 

She must have seen the question in his expression. “The social worker has a tendency to show up unannounced.”

He prevented his eyebrows from winging up. Social worker? WTF? But then Bailey leaned back against the sofa cushions with a pained hiss, and he decided he had no problem washing someone else’s dishes. For her.

He nodded at the plate resting on her thigh. “Eat.” Then he rose and clapped his hands once, as if with relish. “How are you at cleaning up, buddy?”

Austin shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
 

“Well, I’m going to need some lessons, because I’m not good at it at all.”

“Bailey’s really good at it,” Austin said.

“I bet she is, but she’s going to watch to see how good we are.”

She bit into her sandwich and chewed. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll help.”

“Nope,” Cole said. “That’s not how we’re going to play the game this time.”

Austin’s eyebrows rose with interest. “Game?”

Cole nodded. “See, you start in here, and I start in the kitchen, and the first one who finishes wins.”

Bailey laughed softly behind him. “I don’t think he’s going to fall for that one, neophyte.”

“Yeah, that’s not a game,” Austin said. “You’re just trying to make it sound like one. And I bet you do know how to clean up. It’s not hard.” He glanced at Bailey. “What’s a knee-fight?”

“Busted.” Cole bent to stack the magazines scattered across the floor. As he rose, he saw Bailey about to sip her milk. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

She must have smelled the sour milk right then, because she lowered the glass with a frown. “How were your Froot Loops this morning, Austin?”

“Okay, I guess. They had a funny taste.”

She set aside the glass. “I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Nothing.”

He turned to Cole. “What’s a knee-fight?”

“It’s someone who doesn’t know how to get little boys to do housework,” Cole said.

“Oh. Well, all you have to do is ask. That’s what Bailey does. She says please and everything.”

Laughing, Cole chucked him under the chin. “I guess I could learn a lot from your Aunt Bailey, couldn’t I?”

“Oh, yeah. She taught me how to add and subtract. I used to couldn’t do nines, but she told me this way that’s really easy. Want to hear it?”

“Heck, yeah. I’ll wash and you can dry while you explain it to me.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s get your aunt some water before we get started, okay?”

* * *

After swallowing the pain pill Cole brought her and watching him return to the kitchen, Bailey tilted her head back. She’d thought yesterday had been trying, but today was shaping up to be just as challenging. It wasn’t even eight a.m. yet, and she was already exhausted.
 

She closed her eyes and listened to Cole and Austin discuss video games as they washed dishes in the other room.

Austin: “You can’t just stand there. You have to keep going. They come and get you if you stand still.”
 

Cole: “Shouldn’t you think about how to get where you’re going before taking off?”

Austin: “No, ‘cause then they’ll jump on you and you’re dead. You have to keep moving. You’re washing that wrong.”

Cole: “What’s wrong with the way I’m washing it?”

Austin: “It’s just wrong. Let me show you the way Bailey does it.”

The shower came on in the other room, and Bailey let her thoughts turn to her brother. Obviously, something had happened to shove him over the edge.
 

He’d been doing so well. He was due to start a new job next week, at the same time that classes at the technical school began. The two were related, so he’d work and go to classes at the same location until he had the degree he needed to either start his own business or move on to the next, higher-paying, level.
 

She’d been nearly bursting with pride at his progress, like a mother whose repeatedly truant teen was about to graduate from high school with honors. He’d impressed her in the year since he’d been out of prison. Somehow, perhaps by the sheer force of Chase will, he’d regained control and come out of the nose-dive.
 

She told herself he’d fly through the turbulence he’d run into. Perhaps in a few days. He’d certainly snapped back often enough before the accident.

Squeezing her eyes more tightly closed, she wished she could hold the memories at bay. But she was weak right now, and when she was weak, and missing her father’s expert guidance, holding them off wasn’t possible.

The day of the accident—five years ago—rain had fallen for the first time in weeks. Winter had been brutally dry, and the local weather people were using the D-word—drought.

The visit had started out friendly enough. James had picked her up, then driven to their father’s, to show off his fancy new sports car—red with black leather interior, a monster stereo system and, James said, “an engine that roared.” He’d been giddy in a way that was very much not like her brother, especially since his wife had passed away.

He’d given Bailey and their father a tour, demonstrating the power seats and iPod dock. He was especially proud of the seat warmers, and their father had gotten a chuckle out of that. “You don’t need seat warmers in Florida,” Elliott had said. “Seat coolers, now that’d be fancy.”

Ordinarily, James might have gotten defensive, and Bailey had tensed. Her father and brother usually didn’t get along well for more than a few minutes. Inevitably, Elliott made some derogatory comment, and James would bite back, which led to enough energetic yelling and swearing that, if harnessed, could have powered a small city. Sometimes, punches were thrown, though it had been a long time since an encounter of that magnitude.

Instead of being upset at his father’s joke, James smiled and invited Elliott on a ride. Bailey relaxed. Maybe this time it would be different. Maybe, finally, they were reaching an understanding. Maybe from now on they would get along. She climbed into the cramped back seat and buckled up.
 

As soon as James pulled out of their father’s neighborhood, and the first, fat drops of rain spattered the windshield, Elliott asked, “How does a college dropout afford a car like this anyway?”

Bailey saw the flush creep out of her brother’s collar, and her earlier dread returned in triplicate.

“That’s all I’ll ever be to you.” James’ calm tone belied the white knuckles curved around the leather-wrapped steering wheel. “A dropout.”
 

“All I’m asking is how you can make payments on a car like this when you can’t be making much more than twenty grand driving a delivery van for your Uncle Payne.”

Peering out at the rain drenching the pink stucco of a bank they were passing, Bailey thought that a root canal might have been preferable to where she was now. She’d never had a root canal, but she would have been willing to make the trade and take her chances. At least a root canal would come with nerve-numbing drugs and would, eventually, be over. She didn’t imagine her brother and her father would ever get along, so the pain of their endless clashing was destined to go on forever.

“Hey, wouldn’t Ben & Jerry’s be good?” she asked, straining her seat belt as she leaned forward. Distraction had never worked in the past, but she wasn’t so jaded that she had stopped trying.

“You’ve got a kid to think about,” Elliott went on when James remained uncharacteristically silent. “You have to feed him and clothe him. One of these days, you’re not going to be able to dump him off at his grandmother’s or aunt’s every time you get the urge to go joyriding. And, eventually, that baby is going to want to go to college. Yet here you are blowing every cent you don’t have on a car. What would Theresa think about that if she were here?”