Forever Promised (15 page)

Deacon raised his eyebrows and swallowed his next bite of sandwich. “So you already know she’s a flaming twat?”

Crick spit his sandwich out, and Deacon grunted a little, appreciating his discomfiture. Remorse set in almost immediately, of course. It really wasn’t in him to speak so badly of people. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Crick sighed, “I’m sure that was accurate. She… I mean, she was a burden on everyone, you know? On me, then Benny—didn’t give us a lot of time to foster a personality.”

Deacon’s remorse hit him a little harder. “You were so young, Carrick. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been… cruel.”

“Yeah. You should have been Saint Deacon when you were in pain and dealing with an obnoxious teenager.” Crick took another bite and chewed morosely. “Besides. She was a flaming twat when she was eight. She used to tattle on me to Bob—or better yet, break shit and then blame it on me. I mean, I’m sure there’s some deep heartbreaking psychological reason for it, but it didn’t make it any more of a thrill to live there, you know?”

“God—what a fucking waste,” Deacon muttered. “You and Benny—there’s so much good in you. I hate to think… man, so many ways to fuck up a kid.”

Crick grunted. “And so many ways you wouldn’t. See, you keep worrying about
your
gene pool. Benny’s got alcoholism too—I don’t hear you bitching about
that.
And we both have Melanie…. God, I have no idea what you’d call that. Codependency? Passive-aggressive chromosomal clusterfuck? Doormat syndrome? Whatever—it’s not pretty. But I’m betting with you for a father, this baby’s got a chance to grow up happy.”

“
This
baby?” Deacon argued. He was about done with this sandwich. God, what he’d give for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and bacon. “You’re talking like it’s a done deal.”

“It is,” Crick said, and he sounded like a man who had made up his mind.

“I’m sorry, don’t I have something to contribute to this?”

“Yeah, but when I get you naked, you’ll do that on your own. I just need to get your head in the right place.”

Deacon sighed. “If I promise to listen to this next bit quietly and with an open mind, can we have red meat for dinner?”

“No. That’s how people who are a little bit chubby get really overweight. They reward themselves with their addictions. You can’t give yourself an ice cream sundae for not eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and you can’t give yourself a Quarter Pounder with Cheese for not being a righteous stinking pessimist.”

“That’s an addiction?” Deacon said, honestly surprised. “I thought it was just a personality defect. And there. You can add another to the list.”

Crick’s eyes narrowed. “We will eat nothing but soy cake for a week. Or I will beat the smart out of your ass. Make your choice, but if you don’t hear me out, it’s going to be dire.”

Deacon was abruptly tired of the bait and chase. “I’m all ears,” he said after a moment. He looked up and down the corridor, but apparently a sprain didn’t lend itself to anything that urgent, because no one was coming. Deacon reached out across from him and tapped Crick on the knee. “Please, Carrick. Say what you were going to say. I promise I’ll behave.”

“Your father, bless him, was not a great planner. You are.” Crick waited a moment, probably to see if Deacon was going to be okay with that. Deacon was. Parrish had a vision for The Pulpit, but he hadn’t been great at fitting his wife or his son into that. He’d changed after Deacon’s mother had died, but still, he’d dropped dead of a heart attack when there
must
have been symptoms. There had been for Deacon. And he’d left The Pulpit in a precarious financial situation, so when things got rough, Deacon had no safety blanket. No. Parrish had been a wonderful father and a good, good man—but he hadn’t been a planner.

“That’s real,” Deacon said levelly. Nothing was going to hurt the memory of Parrish Winters.

“Yeah, it is. And part of the upshot is that you’re
always
thinking about the future, and our past has been rough, and I know it. So you’re basing your future on what you know of the past. But you’re not looking at the
recent
past. Sure, you’re looking at two young heart attack victims, you and your dad. But you’re
not
looking at all the science we have to deal with that—and it’s more than that. You’re looking at two alcoholics, you and your mom. But you’re not looking at all the things you can give a child that will help that not happen, including some love and support through things like grief and some warning about how bad it can get. You’re looking at this baby being raised by one parent—you or me—but you’re not looking at the fact that I haven’t done anything stupid in over five years, and your doctor promises that you have a very good chance at a long life. So you’re planning for the future based on a bad past, but you need to be planning it based on a whole lot of blessings.”

Crick closed his eyes and swallowed before he stood and crumpled his sandwich paper in one hand. That done, he moved a little closer to Deacon’s chair. His game leg wouldn’t let him squat, but he reached down for Deacon’s hand and Deacon gave it, because it was Crick.

“Please, Deacon? I get that you need time to think, and I promise to give you some space, but… just stop fighting this, okay? If I can get everybody to get off your back, would you
think
about it and stop fighting it?”

Deacon nodded and smiled a little. “Yeah, Carrick James. Hell, if you could stop fighting the world, anything’s possible.”

Crick smiled at him, looking like the boy Deacon had fallen in love with. The smile deepened, widened, crinkled his eyes, cut grooves into his cheeks, and settled quietly all over his body.

That easily, Crick was the man who had come back from the war and who had stood solidly at Deacon’s side for the last five and a half years.

Deacon swallowed and squeezed Crick’s hand.

Yeah, Crick had earned better than Deacon’s eternal pessimism. Deacon would try to live up to that.

Mikhail
:
Sweetie
,
Bitchy
,
Grumpy
,
Doc
,
and Slutty

M
IKHAIL
sat at the little kitchen table, drinking more coffee than he knew what to do with in order to wake up. He’d eaten breakfast with the children in the larger dining room and overseen cleanup, and the coffee was his reward to himself—the Faire had been too hot and too crowded, and he was nearing thirty, and his body didn’t react to that big clot of dancing in the marrow-boiling heat the way it had when his cop had first seen him five years before. The kitchen was pristine—clean, with new white tile and a stainless steel refrigerator and countertops. All of the appliances were big, shiny, and impersonal, and the floor was easy to clean. The plastic red-checked tablecloth was too, but the color at least was warm, and a big window opened up to the front lawn, with an epic view beyond of the absolute nothing that was
Levee Oaks when it went unwatered in the summer, and that was warm too. All things considered, it could have been worse. So there he was, enjoying just a clear mirror fragment of peace, when even
that
was shattered.

“I don’t give a
damn
what you
think
the little man said, you don’t just shove your shit at me and tell me to wash it! That machine don’t have a black people only sign and I ain’t your nigger, bitch!”

Sweetie had made a name for herself at Promise House. She worked hard, kept quiet, and kept her nose clean. She’d do about anything to be able to go to Deacon’s and pet the horses. Of course, she did all the other things too—everything from shoveling shit to washing out the troughs—as long as she got to ride Crick’s horse at the end.

So, for Sweetie, chores, yes.

People, no.

People she didn’t talk to much. Yeah, she’d been on the streets. Yeah, her moms had kicked her out ’cause her boyfriend wouldn’t stop hitting on her. Yeah, sure, her grandmother had died and she’d ended up on the street before social services could do jack. So she’d put out for men, but hell, she ate, she was alive, who gave a flying fuck? Just let her do that thing, that quiet thing, that made people leave her the hell alone, and she would do whatever the hell she needed to. (She offered to put out for Shane, but since he revoked her Pulpit privilege for two days after that, she never put her body on the line again.)

So whatever was wiggling its gnarled claw up her ass at the moment, it had to be sharp, bony, and unwelcome.

Mikhail was afraid he knew exactly what it was.

“Sweetie, Missy, in here right now!” he snapped. His first dance instructor had been an old-school Russian, the kind who regarded children as chattel until they proved they could dance for him, and even then they were only as good as the muscles and sinews that bore them up. Mikhail had taught small children for much of his adult life, and he had never, not once, invoked his old dance master when teaching them how to point tiny feet and pudgy ankles.

But every now and then, as he dealt with the damaged adolescents at Promise House, he found the lessons his old dance master taught him had one useful application after all.

He could make these ungratefully tall children shake in their pretty sneakers should they need the voice of God to thunder in their ears.

Missy stalked in with squared shoulders and a fearsome scowl, her eyes shifting left and right as though she were looking for an angle. In general, she looked angry and sneaky and all of the things Mikhail had come to loathe about the girl in the past few days.

Sweetie slunk in with her arms crossed, looking at him from under lowered brows, her long body collapsed and slouching bonelessly in on itself as she waited for the verdict of the most feared authority figure at Promise House.

“Missy, I said you were to
ask
her how to use the washer and drier. If that was not the message you relayed, that is considered a lie.”

Missy rolled her eyes. “I misunderstood.”

“You lied,” Mikhail said unequivocally. “You lied, and you tried to get another to do your work for you. You were scheduled to leave today and join in the shopping expedition to Wal-Mart, since you have no clothes of your own, but you will need to give your sizes to Kimmy, and she will shop for you.”

“You can’t do that!” Missy gasped, horrified. “That bitch don’t know what I’m gonna wanna wear—”

“That ‘bitch’ is a friend of mine and my sister-in-law. You keep a civil tongue in your head while you are speaking to her.” Mikhail frequently called her “cow woman,” but Kimmy knew it for his own prickly way of saying “I love you.” Missy did
not
mean the same thing Mikhail did. “And before,” he cautioned, holding up a hand, “before you protest, asking me what I’m going to do about it, you may remember, upon your first night here, you signed a contract to obey the rules as we have set down. Part of that contract was no lying. Part of that contract was to be respectful of your roommates and the staff. So far, you have done swimmingly, no? Do you remember that contract?”

Missy swallowed, and her pale face—she had a hint of ginger in her hair and one of those redheaded complexions that blotched, as opposed to Benny’s more sallow complexion that tanned nicely—grew patchy and flushed as she remembered what had been put in big letters, in case the more hardened of the children were not grateful for room, board, and a hand up in the world.

“It says you can place me in foster care or juvie or a homeless shelter or back home if you don’t think we’ll work out here,” she said, and she did not look happy about that. Well, good. It was the first sense she had shown since she’d arrived.

“Do you remember some of the other things that could get you removed from Promise House?” he asked, implacable and angry.

“Fighting, drinking, smoking, tricking, drugs, sex, stealing, hurting the animals, destroying shit, skipping our counseling appointments….” She trailed off, and for the first time, Mikhail saw some meekness in the girl, which was good, since she’d shown nothing but hubris to date. “Generally not getting along.” She swallowed, and Mikhail took his first real breath around her since her first day.

Her first day, she had arrived and demanded to see Kimmy or Mickey or whoever the fuck could give her a bed.

She had been left to sit outside on the porch until they could gather the contract and the appropriate documents. Most of the children were taken inside to where it was air-conditioned, but when Mikhail found out she’d been cautioned by Deacon not to call him Mickey, he made his own rule. (The fact that Shane had
told
her to call him Mickey was almost code. Mikhail could read his lover by now. This child needed not to be coddled and needed to be taught respect. Well, that was Mikhail’s job. He was good at it.)

In the time it had taken to gather her paperwork, start a file, and activate the computer tablet to get her in their system, she had almost set the porch on fire by neglecting to put out her cigarette properly in the fulminating August heat.