Summer Son (18 page)

S
INCE
H
ARRISON
had started walking, his ability to move seemingly huge distances in a very short space of time was taking us by surprise. For that reason, when there was a knock on the door Zane picked him up, meaning Harrison couldn’t escape out into the hall, before answering it.

I leaned over the back of the sofa to see who it was—we had to buzz visitors into the building, so it was rare anyone knocked.

Two police officers waited, stony-faced and official.

“Can I help you?” Zane asked.

“Are you Zane Al-Jazari?”

“Oh, God. Who died?”

I sprang to my feet and raced to the door.

“Excuse me?” one of the officers asked.

“Who’s dead?”

I gently lifted Harrison out of his arms and balanced him on my hip, then wrapped my arm around Zane’s waist.

“No one’s dead, Mr. Al-Jazari.”

“That’s your dad’s name, right?” I asked. I’d never heard it before, only ever known him as Zane Hadlin, but remembered the conversation when he said he’d adopted his mom’s name when he moved back to New York.

“Yeah.”

“Sir, we wanted to ask you some questions about the murder of Sabri Al-Jazari.”

His eyes hardened. “That was years ago now. Why are you here? The guy who did it is inside. What else are you going to do?”

“The man who was convicted of your brother’s murder was recently released from prison after an appeal. It was decided there was insufficient evidence.”

I could feel him sag against me and wanted nothing more than to hold him up.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” I demanded.

“We’ve found it difficult to track Mr. Al-Jazari down,” the second officer said. “He’s moved a number of times since returning to New York.”

“What do I need to do?” Zane asked. “I want this done and gone again.”

“We’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Okay.”

I opened the door wider to let the two men in, not wanting to bring this into my home, not with Harrison around. It wasn’t like I had a choice.

Zane put his hand on my arm and squeezed it. “Take him into our room. Please, El.”

“I want to be there….”

“I don’t want him to be around this.”

I nodded and gave him a look that communicated all I was feeling:
if you need me, shout for me, please don’t cut me out, don’t let them intimidate you.

I shut the bedroom door softly behind us and settled on the bed with Harrison on my lap. He was irritable, probably feeding off the horrible atmosphere, and I submitted to the inevitability of cartoons and stuck a Disney movie on to distract him.

Within moments he settled down.

It took nearly an hour for the police to go through whatever it was with Zane. No matter how much I strained to hear what was being said, there were no raised voices, no sounds of distress from the living room.

I heard the front door shut again, and then Zane crept into our room and curled into my side. I ran my fingers through his hair, hopefully soothing him, and felt him sigh.

“Tell me?” I asked. “Please?”

“During the appeal the defense lawyer picked apart everything I’d said in the original trial. They decided it was more important to keep me safe and hidden than to get me back into the courtroom as an adult, so that’s why I wasn’t called up. They let the bastard go on time served, since they couldn’t prove it was a premeditated murder or gang-related.”

“But it clearly was?”

“Yeah.”

“What happens now?”

“Not much,” he said with a halfhearted shrug. “I keep my head down, hope he doesn’t find me, hope even more that I’m not on his radar. There’s no way of knowing.”

The idea struck me as absurdly horrific, that this was the life Zane and his brothers had been leading before their mom shipped them out to Vermont. There was no chance of him going back to that life—I was sure of that much—although I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about him.

“Do you want to put in a civil case against this guy?” I asked. “We could probably do it.”

Zane shook his head. “That would just put a target on my back. Plus, you’re already fighting a case against Oliver. The last thing we need is to pile another one on top of that.”

I’d forgotten about Oliver.

“I hope he doesn’t get hold of this,” I murmured, unthinking. Zane stiffened next to me. “You know what I mean,” I qualified. “He doesn’t need any extra ammunition.”

“I suppose not.”

“Don’t you dare leave me,” I said, only half joking.

He buried his face in my side, throwing an arm over both Harrison and me. “I don’t even think that’s an option anymore.”

T
HE
NEXT
time I had an appointment with Linda, I took Zane with me. His confidence had been knocked since the police visit, and he deserved to know what was going on. He was an integral part of our family, and I needed him to know that.

Leo offered to babysit, so I took him up on that and dropped my son off at the house he shared with Reid. I was surprised to see the doctor there—he was so often at the hospital—and gave him a brotherly hug before I left. The guy had saved Leo’s life, and I loved him for that.

We drove across town, Zane’s bare feet on the dashboard as he fiddled with his phone. When I asked, he said he was texting Cass, and I left it at that. I guessed his brother knew what had been going on, although Zane hadn’t told me anything explicitly, other than that his mom knew Sab’s murderer had been released.

I tended to agree with him on one point—Vermont was the best place for his mother right now.

Linda greeted both Zane and me with warm smiles and ushered us through to her office.

“So, the bad news is that Oliver has reopened the custody case,” she said with her painful frankness. “The good news is, he’s talking utter bullshit.”

The way Zane’s jaw dropped was more than a little amusing to me, but I kept the giggle inside.

“Okay,” I said, the gravity of the situation soon wiping away any residual humor. “Do you think we’ll be able to settle this out of court?”

Linda didn’t meet my eyes but messed around with some papers on her desk for a moment, then leaned back in her chair with a sigh.

“I hope so,” she said. “Instinct is telling me probably not, though. The bottom line is that Oliver’s trying to tell you who you’re allowed to date and who’s allowed access to your son. Obviously he can’t do that. Zane isn’t putting Harrison in any type of danger.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’m sorry, excuse me?”

“I am,” Zane repeated, looking from me to Linda and back again. “With that guy out, who knows what will happen now. He could come after me.”

“Okay, I’m going to need full disclosure here, boys,” Linda said. Her grim expression made me nervous.

“I was the only witness when my brother was shot dead in a gang-motivated murder,” Zane said in a rush. “His killer has just been released on appeal on time served.”

“Oh, fuck,” Linda sighed. “Witness protection?”

“They haven’t offered it to me,” Zane said. “I was a minor when I testified—this was eight years ago. So technically, they don’t know who I am.”

“Technically… all right. In practice?”

“It wouldn’t be difficult for them to figure it out,” he admitted.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Linda muttered, running her hands over her face so the words were muffled. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“We only found this out a few days ago,” I added. “So we’re still trying to figure out what it all means, in real terms.”

“Don’t go into witness protection, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “That puts a big red flag on what’s going on with Oliver.”

“Will this mean Harrison gets taken away?” Zane asked. “Because I’m serious—if that’s a risk, I’ll go back to Vermont. School finishes soon anyway. I can go back and live with my mom.”

I was about to protest—to say there was no way I was going to let him go, to point out that he’d promised he wouldn’t leave us—but Linda held up a hand to stop me.

“That’s an option. Ah, Ellis, an option. We have to consider all of them.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I said, then turned to Linda. “I don’t want him to go.”

Linda exhaled noisily. “Okay. Let’s keep this out of the custody argument as much as humanly fucking possible. I can’t imagine any judge in the state deciding that the best place for Harrison would be with the parent who abandoned him only a few months ago, so we definitely have the upper hand. I’m going to get in contact with Oliver’s lawyer and see if we can settle this out of court, quickly, so we can deal with Zane’s problem.”

“Does Zane have a problem?” I asked.

“I’d fucking say so. But not for long. I’m going to find out why the hell a fucking murderer is walking free on the streets of my fucking city after eight years served.”

Zane reached out and squeezed my hand. “Ms. McKey, I’m an art student. I can’t afford to pay you for something like this.”

Linda rolled her eyes. “Fuck a duck, Zane. I’ll do it pro bono. What’s money, after all?”

“Thank you. I just… thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said darkly. “It’s nowhere near over.”

L
EO
AND
Reid invited us to stay for dinner, and we ordered in from the Japanese place that did really good vegan food, according to Zane. Reid seemed quietly amused by Zane’s enthusiasm and was happy to let my boyfriend pick the dishes.

Leo had moved into Reid’s place a few months before Harrison was born, not long after he was discharged from the doctor’s care. They’d kept their relationship secret from the hospital for a long time, since Reid had been concerned about the possible repercussions on his career. They were out and proud now, though, and I silently guessed there might be more commitment in their future.

The house was nice, a three-story brownstone with views over Prospect Park. For Leo, the subway was only a few minutes away, meaning he could get to his clients in most parts of the city with relative ease.

Not long after Leo moved in, Reid had told me that my brother had taken over all of the third floor with his work stuff, and sure enough, the two rooms at the top of the house were full of parts and the skeletons of long-dead computers.

The rest of the house, thankfully, had more of Reid’s influence. The living room was decorated with rich wooden floors and dark leather sofas. Very masculine.

I was worried that Zane would be funny about the leather, but when I mentioned it to him he leaned over and whispered in my ear that it was fake, and he was too polite to say anything. I couldn’t hold in my giggles at that and pulled him onto my lap to bury my face in his neck. Even when I’d gotten past my amusement, he stayed on my lap. I liked him there.

Watching Reid with Harrison was what made me think the good doctor was getting broody. He was older than me and had made no secret of the fact he wanted children in the future. I guessed he was also well placed to arrange all of the medical stuff that came with surrogacy. Oliver and I had hired a company who did all of that for us, but it could be done without one.

Zane went quiet and still, and I rubbed my hand over his back in what I hoped was a comforting gesture.

“Did you do this with Oliver? Dinner parties, I mean,” Zane asked, and I tried not to bristle at my ex-husband’s name.

“Yeah,” I said, because we did. “He never got on that well with Leo, though. I’m not really sure why.”

“Sorry,” he said immediately, probably feeling my discomfort. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. I’m just curious. You must have loved him at one time.”

“I did, yeah.”

For some strange reason, being in Leo’s house rather than my own made it easier to talk about Oliver. Maybe because it didn’t feel like he was intruding on the new life I’d built without him.

“El?” Zane said gently.

I arranged him into a more comfortable position on my lap, not because he was heavy, just so I could look at him.

“They used to call us the ‘old married couple.’ That was within a few months of us dating. We got old really quickly, settled into this relationship where it was easier to be together than be apart, so we were together.”

“That’s… really sad.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Or it was just easy, you know? We were the perfect politically correct gay couple. We wanted to look like straight people and have the traditional nuclear family, just with two men rather than a man and a woman.”

“TV gays,” Zane said wisely.

“What?” I asked, laughing.

“You were TV gays. You know, those picture-perfect gay couples you see on TV, who definitely don’t do rimming or bondage or swinging or drugs or the White Party.”

“We’re not a TV gay couple, are we?”

“Nope,” he said and ran his fingers gently through my hair. “You’ve got a messed-up relationship history, and I’m Egyptian. They wouldn’t dream of putting us on TV.”

I laughed and kissed him. “Your brother, however,” he said in a low voice.

“Hey.” I dug my fingers into his sides in a hard tickle.

“Oh, come on,” he protested, squirming. “He’s pretty, and dating a doctor, for fuck’s sake. A handsome doctor.”

“Um, I’m right here, Zane.”

He stuck his tongue out at me. Then I was distracted for a few minutes by Harrison and Reid stopping to wave at us on their way to the kitchen, where Uncle Leo was making drinks.

“Oo?” Harrison asked.

“Go see Uncle Leo,” I said, pointing to the kitchen.

“Oo?”

“Yeah. Leo. Go on.”

He waved again, clenching and unclenching his little fists.

“Does he actually mean Leo?” Zane asked as Harrison found Reid’s hand again and toddled off toward his (recently relegated) second favorite playmate.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Sometimes I just pretend to understand him to humor him.”

“I can’t decide if that’s really cute or really mean.”

“Me either.”

Zane was quiet for a moment, then resumed stroking my hair. “I’m really different from Oliver,” he said.

“I’m divorced from him for a reason. Actually, a number of reasons. I’m with you for a lot more.”