Sea Swept (19 page)

Last he sketched in himself, trying to see what others would see. His shoulders were too thin and bony, he thought with some disappointment. But they wouldn’t always be. His face was too thin for his eyes, but it would fill out too. One day he’d be taller, and stronger, and he wouldn’t look like such a puny kid.

But he’d kept his head up, hadn’t he? He hadn’t been afraid of anything. And he didn’t look like he’d just wandered into the picture. He looked—almost—like he belonged there.

Mess with one Quinn, mess with them all. That’s what Cam had said—and he must have meant it. But he wasn’t a Quinn, Seth thought, frowning as he held up the sketch to study details. Or maybe he was, he just didn’t know. It hadn’t mattered to him if Ray Quinn had been his father like some people said. All that had mattered was that he was away from
her
.

It hadn’t mattered who his father was. Still didn’t, he assured himself. He just didn’t give a rat’s ass. All he wanted was to stay here, right here.

Nobody had used the back of their hand or their fists on him for months now. Nobody got blitzed out on drugs and laid around so long and so still he thought they were dead. Secretly hoped they were. No flabby guys with sweaty hands tried to grope him.

He wasn’t even going to think about that.

Eating crabs had been pretty cool, too. Good and messy, he remembered with a grin. You got to eat them with your hands. The social worker didn’t act all prim and girly about it either. She just took off her jacket and rolled up her
sleeves. It didn’t seem like she was watching to see if he burped or scratched his butt or anything.

She’d laughed a lot, he remembered. He wasn’t used to women laughing a lot when they weren’t coked up. And that was a different kind of laughing, Seth knew. Miss Spinelli’s wasn’t wild and hard and desperate. It was low and, well, smooth, he supposed.

Nobody’d told him he couldn’t have more, either. Man, he’d bet he ate a hundred of those ugly suckers. He didn’t even mind eating the salad, though he pretended he did.

He hadn’t had that gnawing, sick feeling in his stomach that was desperate hunger for a long time now, so long he might have forgotten the sensation. But he hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t forgotten anything.

He’d worried some that the social worker would want to pull him back in, but she seemed pretty okay to him. And he saw her sneaking little bits of crab and bread to Foolish, so she couldn’t be all bad.

But he’d have liked her better if she was a waitress or something like Grace.

When the light knock sounded on his door, Seth slapped the notebook closed on his sketches and quickly opened another, where the first dozen words of his five-hundred-word essay were scrawled.

“Yeah?”

Anna poked her head in. “Hi. Can I come in a minute?”

It was weird being asked, and he wondered if she would just turn around and go if he said no. But he shrugged. “I guess.”

“I have to leave soon,” she began, taking a quick survey of the room. A twin bed, inexpertly made, a sturdy dresser and desk, a wall of shelves that held a few books, a portable stereo that looked very new, and a pair of binoculars that didn’t. There were white miniblinds at the windows and a pale-green paint on the walls.

It needed junk, she thought. A boy’s junk. Ancient broken toys, posters tacked to the walls. But the puppy snoring in the corner was a very good start.

“This is nice.” She wandered to the window. “You’ve got a good view, water and trees. You get to watch the birds. I bought a book on local waterfowl when I moved here from D.C. so I could figure out what was what. It must be nice to see egrets every day.”

“I guess.”

“I like it here. It’s hard not to, huh?”

He shrugged his shoulders, took the cautious route. “It’s okay. I got no problems with it.”

She turned, glanced down at his notebook. “The dreaded essay?”

“I started it.” Defensively, he pulled the notebook closer—and knocked the other one to the floor. Before he could snatch it up, Anna crouched to pick it up herself.

“Oh, look at this!” It had fallen open to a sketch of the puppy, just his face, straight on, and she thought the artist had captured that sweet and silly expression perfectly. “Did you sketch this?”

“It’s no big deal. I’m working on the damn essay, aren’t I?”

She might have sighed over his response, but she was too charmed by the sketch. “It’s wonderful. It looks just like him.” Her fingers itched to turn the pages, to see who else Seth might have drawn. But she resisted and set the notebook down. “I can’t draw a decent stick man.”

“It’s nothing. Just fooling around.”

“Well, if you don’t want it, maybe I could have it?”

He thought it might be a trick. After all, she had her jacket back on, was carrying her briefcase. She looked like Social Services again rather than the woman who’d rolled up her sleeves and laughed over steamed crabs. “What for?”

“I can’t have pets in my apartment. Just as well,” she added. “It wouldn’t be fair to keep one closed in all day while I’m at work, but . . .” Then she smiled and glanced over at the sleeping puppy. “I really like dogs. When I can afford a house and a yard, I’m going to have a couple
of them. But until then, I have to play with other people’s pets.”

It seemed odd to him. In Seth’s mind adults ruled—often with an iron hand. Did what they wanted when they wanted. “Why don’t you just move someplace else?”

“The place I’ve got is close to work, the rent’s reasonable.” She looked toward the window again, to the stretch of land and water. Both were deep with shadows as night moved in. “It has to do until I can manage to get the house and yard.” She wandered to the window, drawn to that quiet view. The first star winked to life in the eastern sky. She nearly made a wish. “Somewhere near the water. Like this. Anyway . . .”

She turned back and sat on the side of the bed facing him. “I just wanted to come up before I left, see if there’s anything you wanted to talk about, or any questions you wanted to ask me.”

“No. Nothing.”

“Okay.” She hadn’t really expected him to talk to her freely. Yet. “Maybe you’d like to know what I see here, what I think.” She took his shoulder jerk as assent. “I see a houseful of guys who are trying to figure out how to live with each other and make it work. Four very different men who are bumping up against each other. And I think they’re going to make some mistakes, and most certainly irritate each other and disagree. But I also think they’ll work it out—eventually. Because they all want to,” she added with an easy smile. “In their own ways they all want the same thing.”

She rose and took a card out of her briefcase. “You can call me whenever you want. I put my home number on the back. I don’t see any reason for me to come back—in an official capacity—for a while. But I may come back for a puppy fix. Good luck with the essay.”

When she started for the door, Seth went with impulse and tore the sketch of Foolish out of his notebook. “You can have this if you want.”

“Really?” She took the page, beamed at it. “God, he’s
cute. Thanks.” He jerked back when she bent to kiss his cheek, but she brushed her lips across it lightly, then straightened. She stepped back, ordering herself to keep an emotional distance. “Say good night to Foolish for me.”

Anna slipped the sketch in her briefcase as she walked downstairs. Phillip was noodling at the piano, his fingers carelessly picking out some bluesy number. It was another skill she envied. It was a constant disappointment to her that she had no talent.

Ethan was nowhere to be seen, and Cam was restlessly pacing the living room.

She thought that might be a very typical overview of all three men. Phillip elegantly whiling away the time, Ethan off on some solitary pursuit. And Cam working off excess energy.

With the boy up in his room, drawing his pictures and thinking his thoughts.

Cam glanced up, and when their eyes locked, the ball of heat slammed into her gut.

“Gentlemen, thank you for a wonderful meal.”

Phillip rose and held out a hand to take hers. “We have to thank you. It’s been too long since we had a beautiful woman to dinner. I hope you’ll come back.”

Oh, he’s a smooth one, she decided. “I’d like that. Tell Ethan he’s a genius with a crab. Good night, Cam.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

She’d counted on it. “First thing,” she said when they stepped outside. “From what I can see, Seth’s welfare is being seen to. He has proper supervision, a good home, support with his school life. He could certainly use some new shoes, but I don’t imagine there’s a boy of ten who couldn’t.”

“Shoes? What’s wrong with his shoes?”

“Regardless,” she said, turning to him when they reached her car. “All of you still have adjustments to make, and there’s no doubt he’s a very troubled child. I suspect he was abused, physically and perhaps sexually.”

“I figured that out for myself,” Cam said shortly. “It won’t happen here.”

“I know that.” She laid a hand on his arm. “If I had a single doubt in that area he wouldn’t be here. Cam, he needs professional counseling. You all do.”

“Counseling? That’s crap. We don’t need to pour our guts out to some underpaid county shrink.”

“Many underpaid county shrinks are very good at their job,” she said dryly. “Since I have a degree in psychology myself, I could be considered an underpaid county shrink, and I’m good at mine.”

“Fine. You’re talking to him, you’re talking to me. We’ve been counseled.”

“Don’t be difficult.” Her voice was deliberately mild because she knew it would spark a flash of annoyance in his eyes. It was only fair, she thought, as he’d annoyed her.

“I’m not being difficult. I’ve cooperated with you from the get-go.”

More or less, she mused, and continuing to be fair, admitted it was more than she’d expected. “You’ve made a solid start here, but a professional counselor will help all of you get beneath the surface and deal with the root of the problems.”

“We don’t have any problems.”

She hadn’t expected such hard-line resistance to such a basic step, but realized she should have. “Of course you do. Seth’s afraid to be touched.”

“He’s not afraid to let Grace touch him.”

“Grace?” Anna pursed her lips in thought. “Grace Monroe, from the list you gave me?”

“Yeah, she’s doing the housework now, and the kid’s nuts about her. Might even have a little crush.”

“That’s good, that’s healthy. But it’s only a start. When a child’s been abused, it leaves scars.”

What the hell were they talking about this for? he thought impatiently. Why were they talking about shrinks and digging at old wounds when all he’d wanted was a
few minutes of easy flirtation with a pretty woman?

“My old man beat the hell out of me. So what? I survived.” He hated remembering it, hated standing in the shadow of the house that had been his sanctuary and remembering. “The kid’s mother knocked him around. Well, she’s not going to get the chance to do it again. That chapter’s closed.”

“It’s never closed,” Anna said patiently. “Whatever new chapter you start always has some basis in the one that came before. I’m recommending counseling to you now, and I’m going to recommend it in my report.”

“Go ahead.” He couldn’t explain why it infuriated him even to think about it. He only knew he’d be damned if he would ask himself or any of his brothers to open those long-locked doors again. “You recommend whatever you want. Doesn’t mean we have to do it.”

“You have to do what’s best for Seth.”

“How the hell do you know what’s best?”

“It’s my job,” she said coolly now, because her blood was starting to boil.

“Your job? You got a college degree and a bunch of forms. We’re the ones who lived it, who are living it. You haven’t been there. You don’t know anything about it, what it’s like to get your face smashed in and not be able to stop it. To have some bureaucratic jerk from the county who doesn’t know dick decide what happens to your life.”

Didn’t know? She thought of the dark, deserted road, the terror. The pain and the screams. Can’t be personal, she reminded herself, though her stomach clutched and fluttered. “Your opinion of my profession has been crystal-clear since our first meeting.”

“That’s right, but I cooperated. I filled you in, and all of us took steps to make this work.” His thumbs went into his front pockets in a gesture Seth would have recognized. “It’s never quite enough, though. There’s always something else.”

“If there weren’t something else,” she returned, “you wouldn’t be so angry.”

“Of course I’m angry. We’ve been working our butts off here. I just turned down the biggest race of my career. I’ve got a kid on my hands who looks at me one minute as if I’m the enemy and the next as if I’m his salvation. Jesus Christ.”

“And it’s harder to be his salvation than his enemy.”

Bull’s-eye, he thought with growing resentment. How the hell did she know so much? “I’m telling you, the best thing for the kid, for all of us, is to be left alone. He needs shoes, I’ll get him goddamn shoes.”

“And what are you going to do about the fact that he’s afraid to be touched, even in the most casual way, by you or your brothers? Are you going to buy his fear away?”

“He’ll get over it.” Cam was dug in now and refused to allow her to pry him out.

“Get over it?” A sudden fury had her almost stuttering out the words. Then they poured out in a hot stream that made the flash of pain in her eyes all the more poignant. “Because you want him to? Because you tell him to? Do you know what it’s like to live with that kind of terror? That kind of shame? To have it bottled up inside you and have little drops of that poison spill out even when someone you love wants to hold you?”

She ripped open her car door, tossed her briefcase in. “I do. I know exactly.” He grabbed her arm before she could get into the car. “Get your hand off me.”

“Wait a minute.”

“I said get your hand off me.”

Because she was trembling, he did. Somewhere during the argument she’d gone from being professionally irritated to being personally enraged. He hadn’t seen the shift.

“Anna, I’m not going to let you get behind the wheel of this car when you’re this churned up. I lost someone I cared about recently, and I’m not going to let it happen again.”