Beneath the Stain - Part 7 (6 page)

“Mom, Dad, I know you have been waiting for me to date, because it’s age appropriate, but you should know that there’s something about me—”

“You’re gay,” his mom interrupted practically. “Travis, we’ve been waiting for you to tell us—it’s one of the reasons we were so opposed to the military!”

He stared at them, all of the wind flown from his sails. “But—but isn’t this going to be a thing?”

“No,” his father said grimly, shaking Splenda on his oatmeal and bananas. “It should never be a thing. The only reason people should worry about telling their parents is so their parents know who they’re bringing home. That’s polite. Gender expectations may be antiquated, but sometimes they’re all we have.”

Trav’s dad—graying curly hair, stooped shoulders, graying red beard, and horn-rimmed glasses—gave the closest approximation to a growl Trav had ever heard. And suddenly his family was talking politics, which they did all the time anyway, and Trav ate oatmeal and bananas before he went to find his job—and his first lover, the musician on the corner.

Grant’s family was nothing like his family.

Nothing.

“Now, Mr. Ford, you surely know we don’t plan on letting our son do this to his wife and baby girl.”

Travis looked at the paperwork in his hands and at the lawyer who’d handed it to him. “I’m going to scan this with my phone and send it to the boys’ lawyer. Then we’ll talk.”

“It should be airtight,” Mr. Reeves said, and Trav nodded.

Harold Reeves was a dapper little man about Mackey’s height, with an aesthetic, slightly built body, a brown tweed suit, and a bow tie. He was the epitome of the middle-aged gay bachelor, and Trav wondered if Grant had chosen him with that in mind.

He’d certainly done Grant Adams proud with what he’d planned.

On the one hand, Trav was appalled, because Grant was giving partial custody of his baby girl to a bunch of feckless rock stars who, this time last year, could barely take a dump on their own without missing the bowl.

On the other hand, he was pleased—pleased and honored—because his boys were grown-up, and they were ready. The baby would be an impetus to stay straight. These boys loved each other like brothers—their brother’s child would be sacred.

It wasn’t full custody, which would have been madness, but just enough. Just enough to make them part of the little girl’s life. Just enough to keep Grant Adams alive for them. Just enough to want to be better men for her.

Just enough to remind the boys where they came from, and how far they’d come.

This, he thought as he scanned the documents, could be a very good thing.

There were only three really ugly things in the way.

“I think it’s disgusting,” Samantha Adams spat. “He did those disgusting things with that Sanders kid when they were in school, and it’s one thing when you’re kids at school, but it’s another when—”

“How did you know?” Trav asked, frowning. “You just said he came out a month ago—how do you know they were together when they were in school? Did Grant tell you that?”

It seemed unlikely. He could see Grant coming out about the affair and even about the little girl’s name—which had seemed like a particularly cruel joke until Trav walked into this lovely cream-colored brocaded room with stark green silk bamboo plants on the maple end tables. There wasn’t any dust, which Trav was used to in LA, but here, with the horses and the entire backyard being devoted to a farm, the thought of keeping everything free from cloying red dust was terrifying. For the freedom to get dirty alone, that little girl deserved to get the hell out of Tyson, and she deserved a namesake who could be strong enough to carry her away if she wished it.

So he could see Grant telling his family he was gay, and that he wanted his daughter to know Mackey, and to know Kell and the boys he’d called his brothers.

But he couldn’t see Grant telling any of them—not his blonde helmet-coiffed mother, his good-ol’-boy father, or his bitter small-town bride—that he and Mackey had fucked away their high school years like too many kids to count.

“He must have,” Sam said, looking away. She was wearing a blue turtleneck and dark blue jeans. Besides fake plants and the playpen in the corner filled with toys, he couldn’t see any other color in the entire house. The living room was supposed to be arranged into a conversation pit. The effect was ruined by the giant hospital bed placed under the window. The window itself was in a vaulted turret, and it shined down into the room. The light made the bones of the place easy to see. Trav’s gaze lingered on that bed in the sunshine, and he swallowed.

“Mr. Reeves, can I see those papers again?”

He took the sheaf and looked through them, looking for Katy’s birth date, and his eyes widened. “She was born on the first of June?” he said, to make sure.

“Says so on the papers,” Mr. Reeves confirmed. “Why?”

“Because Outbreak Monkey signed with Tailpipe Productions at the end of August.”

“I’m sorry?” Reeves looked puzzled, but as Trav looked around the room, Sam glared at him and walked toward the window, folding her arms and turning her back on them all.

Grant’s mother, Loretta, didn’t meet his eyes.

“Right,” Trav muttered, shaking his head in disgust.

“Right what? What sort of judgments are you passing, faggot?” Casper Adams, Grant’s father, was a real prize. Trav raked him over, top to bottom, leather cowboy hat, matching shiny boots, and all.

“Nothing you would understand,” he said after a moment. “And to answer your question, yes. Yes, I can and I will insist that you honor Grant’s last will and testament. I’ll get Mackey and the boys to sign that they accept.”

“You can’t do that!” Loretta said, fidgeting. Trav could smell the old smoke in the living room, and her fingers were nicotine stained. A smoker—not reformed, maybe, but perhaps forced to smoke outside the house. She was dressed elegantly in a daytime outfit of a burnt-orange pantsuit and pearls that would give any woman in Beverly Hills a run for her money—and Trav knew enough executives, male and female, to know this was fact. She’d used enough hairspray to lock a semi into place on the tarmac, and her boobs, butt, and face had all been done with the same X-Acto knife.

Trav’s mom was probably the same age. She’d had her eyes done, and she dyed her hair brown like it had been in her youth, but the brittle quality, the so-perfect-it-can-snap thing—that was missing in comfortable, kind Linda Ford, who had always wanted to hug Trav as he was growing up and too old for such things.

“I can,” Trav said, looking at the paperwork. “I mean, Grant’s wife can withhold Katy from us, but that would mean that the royalty percentage Grant gets from the band would no longer be going to support Samantha but would, in fact, be divided between Katy’s college fund and an LGBTQ homeless shelter. Now, you two could take them both into your home and Sam wouldn’t have to work to support the baby, and that would be your choice, but you’d never see a penny of that money for support. And Katy can only claim the college money by coming to visit the members of the band. That’s a proviso. One way or another, your daughter is going to know the Sanders kids. You can do it this way, let their gifts into your home, let their mother come visit, let them take her for a few weeks a year, or you can spring them on her all at once, when she’s eighteen and you don’t have a say in her life. It is
all
up to you.”

“I can’t believe he did this to me,” Sam muttered, still not looking at any of them.

“After what you did to him?” Trav snapped, trying to control the aching in his chest. June. The baby had been born in June. He knew the story: Grant couldn’t come with the band because he’d knocked his girlfriend up. But the band signed in August. And he knew Grant had instilled the condom habit in Mackey pretty darned securely—probably because he’d been practicing it himself with Sam.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Casper Adams asked, glaring at him. Well, he’d been glaring at Trav and Mr. Reeves the entire visit. Trav was starting to think of it like a sunlamp. He could close his eyes and tan his skin in the joules from that faggot-hating glare.

“That means you should ask your wife,” Trav said shortly, and then bathed himself in the glacier that was Loretta Adams.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” she said and fixed heavily mascaraed eyes on his face, daring him to contradict her.

“Of course you don’t,” he sneered. “But even if you did, it wouldn’t change that my guys are going to be this baby’s godparents—”

“This is
bullshit
!” Oh, oh yeah. Casper was going to try to intimidate him. He stumped forward—he was shorter than Trav by about five inches—and thrust out his chest. “Those Sanders boys are nothing but trash, just like their whoring mother, and if you think we’re letting my boy’s baby into the hands of drug-addicted, cock-sucking faggots, you got another thing coming!”

“You can do what you wish,” Trav said, looking down at him. Of course he’d take the money. Of
course
he’d take the money. “You can keep her here and kiss most of her royalties good-bye to a LGBTQ cause, or you can let her see fresh air and sunlight and honor your son’s last request. It is
completely
up to you.”

“That money is my boy’s!” Casper snarled.

Trav let his temper show. “That money is his because the Sanders kids are generous as
fuck
,” Trav hissed. “Their manager and producer both tried to talk them out of that royalty cut, but they said Grant had been there for the beginning—he should see that money too. So this? This is Grant standing up for himself. This is the one thing Grant Adams has ever asked from any of you, and you can either honor it or shit on it, but whatever you choose, it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with my boys. They are
good
boys. They are kind and generous and smart. They’ve been getting their degrees online as we’ve toured, and adopting causes, and generally improving the hell out of a world that didn’t give a fuck about them one way or another—and
your
boy never had a chance to do that himself. And every person in this room is to blame. So you do what you think is right, but you ask yourself: When this is over and they put that kid in the ground, who are they going to be burying? The kid you tried to lock away in this fucking house, or the kid my boys love? ’Cause I'm saying, I’ve listened to their CDs for the last year, in and out, and I can tell you which boy is going to live forever in music.”

That stopped Grant’s dad. His mouth opened and closed and his tongue appeared, wetting his thick lips. He closed his eyes and breathed hard.

“I don’t listen to rock music,” he said after a moment.

“You should,” Trav said, relenting a little. “It’s as close to your son as you may ever get.” He sighed, tired of this place, and he’d only been in there for twenty minutes. “Mr. Reeves, do you have anything to add?”

The lawyer nodded. “Yes, sir, but if I may talk to you privately?”

“God, yeah,” Trav said, looking around the living room at the three adults who couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. “You people deserve each other. I hope it’s true what they say—that when you die, you move on to a better place. Because your son deserves a better place than this.” They all turned to him, surprised, and Samantha’s face twisted. She might be the only person here who would cry for Grant Adams, and she was crying from anger, not from love.

For a scant second, Trav hoped Grant and Mackey were making out, mouths open, tongues down each other’s throats, groin to groin. Mackey was usually ferocious, but he could be gentle too. Trav hoped Mackey was giving Grant a gentle blow job, lots of little breaths, lots of reverence.

Suddenly Trav hoped Grant Adams had a little bit of happy, just a little, before he died. “I’ve got to get out of here. Mr. Reeves, can we step outside?”

“Certainly.”

Trav walked into the sunlight on the back porch and let out a sigh of relief. The porch was surrounded by planters, all of them filled with bright off-season flowers that made Trav feel like he was at a gas station instead of someone’s home.

“Those people,” Reeves said, blowing out a breath and shaking his head. He grimaced when Trav glanced his way. “I’m sorry—that was unprofessional of me.”

“But
very
understandable,” Trav answered. “What did you need to talk about?”

Mr. Reeves sighed and looked out across the yard. Stevie had the little girl in his arms, but Jefferson and Blake were right over his shoulder, and they were all petting one of the horses. “They look like good kids,” he said quietly. “I mean, I follow the papers”—he shot Trav a shy smile—“I own both their CDs, but you hear things.”

Trav nodded. “Yeah,” he said frankly. “They were a mess a year ago.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about.” Reeves had brought another folder out, and he handed it to Trav as they stood. “I’ve got another copy of this—Grant asked that I not show this to his parents, and I agreed. They would use it to make your lives miserable, but it’s something your guys need to agree to.”

“What is it?” Trav frowned, leafing through the documents. “Is this a—?”

“A drug-free clause,” Reeves confirmed. “Grant felt bad about it, but he knew some of the boys had problems in the past, and—”

“It’s his baby,” Trav said with a tight throat. “It’s his baby, and he wants to make sure she’s taken care of. And he’s not stupid.”

“Not at all,” Reeves answered.

Trav glanced at him and then took a closer look. Reeves was gazing out, far away, sadness etched in the corners of his eyes.

“You fell for him?” he asked gently, and the lawyer shrugged.

“A little bit. It will hurt when he’s gone.”

“Tell him,” Trav said, closing his eyes against the sun—the real sun, and not the toxic sun of the Adams house. “It will make him happy, I think. His life will feel bigger.”

“Yeah,” Reeves said before swallowing. “Anyway—are your guys going to balk at peeing in a cup before the little girl comes to visit?”

“For Grant?” Trav half laughed. “They’d bleed in a cup if you asked them. Even Blake, and he just met the guy. That’s who they are.”