The Foster Family (40 page)

“It’s over now,” I said. “I mean, you never have to worry about him again. I did finally tell him no, and he freaked, and yeah, if I’d had any idea he’d do that if I’d said no before that, I might have been more afraid, but I didn’t know, and it never happened. The emergency visit was a one-off, and I haven’t seen or spoken to him since, and I don’t intend to.”

Nash grunted.

We listened to the night songs a little while longer.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” I whispered when eternity had come and gone and he’d said nothing.

“Charlie and Caleb,” he said gruffly.

“Malcolm. Charlie and Malcolm.”

“Malcolm. Whatever. What is that?”

“Nash,” David said, warning lifting his voice almost like a question.

“Be quiet, David.”

That brought me out of my misery, that sharp tone and David’s intake of breath.

“Malcolm and Charlie. Tell me.”

“What do you want me to say?” I watched him, his stony glare, the uncompromising expression, the way his laugh lines turned chiseled and hard and deep in a frown. “If it isn’t them, it will be someone else.” I shrugged helplessly. “I am what I am. I like what I like.” God, let him understand. Let that not be the place where he drew his line, because this time, it wouldn’t be him against the things in the world that could hurt me. If he drew it, he and I would be on opposite sides of it. God, please let him understand.

“I want to meet them,” he said thickly.

“Nash, be reasonable,” David interjected, so gently it hurt.

“I’m a grown man,” I added. “And I can make this decision. I learned from the last one, I promise.” I straightened from my hunch and dropped my feet to the floor. “I learned a lot from the last one, in fact. I learned what I am, and I know what I want, and I am not making the same mistake. Charlie and Malcolm are good, honest people.” I drew a breath and managed a small smile. “And they care about me. Maybe even love me, and I want to know for sure about that. I have to know. Before I cross the bridge and burn it behind me, I have to know for sure.”

“Do I at least get to reserve the right to be the one you run to if it doesn’t work out?” Nash asked, that same gruff, hurting tone in his voice.

I laughed a laugh that ended in a messy sniffle. “You earned that right, Papa Nash. It will always be yours. I hope the next time I come home it’s in triumph, though, and not with my tail between my legs.”

“Either way,” David said, taking Nash’s hand and curling his long, elegant fingers between Nash’s sturdy, calloused ones, “you’re more than welcome.”

I knew that. It was nice to hear anyway, but I felt that truth deep down, under my skin and inside my bones in the same way I knew I was gay, and that green and growing things gave me peace. Here, in this house, with these people, was where my roots had finally dug in to stay.

P
ERHAPS
KNOWING
that was what made it easy—or at least, easier—to contact Officer Karl and tell him my theory about Jenny, and to listen to his interpretation of what few facts he had. He agreed my idea was plausible. He also informed me there was nothing he could do if she chose to park her candy-blue Mustang—which she did indeed drive, he’d discovered—across the street from Lissa’s shop or house or cruise daily past Malcolm’s house. She wasn’t breaking any laws by making a nuisance of herself, and there was no way to prove she didn’t have legitimate business in the middle of downtown, or that the street past Malcolm’s wasn’t a perfectly viable route for her to travel whenever the hell she wanted to.

Until she did something illegal, the law’s hands were tied. They’d not found a single iota of evidence to link her either to the trashed house or the rocks through the window. None of the items the police had taken from Matt’s house the night of the break-in had yielded so much as a smudged fingerprint.

As for Andrew, he’d disappeared off the radar completely, but since I’d left town and time had passed without further incident, the restraining order had expired. There was no reason for the police to even care where he was or what he was doing.

“The only thing he would have to do is inform us if he decided to cross state lines, and that is only because until you formally decide to drop the matter, we need to be able to find him. And that is going to happen only if he actually follows the absolute letter of the law.”

“Which I’m guessing few people in his situation do.”

“There isn’t really much we can do to make them, I’m afraid.”

“I know. I understand that.”

“All I can suggest is that you call me if you come back, so I know you’re here. Again, not that I can actually do anything, but I’d like to know. For my own peace of mind.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Just doing my job.”

I smiled at that. “Not exactly to the letter of the law,” I guessed.

“I have my reasons.”

“I’ll keep in touch, Officer.”

“Good. If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

We ended the call after that, and I set the phone down on the table beside my evening coffee.

“So?” Nash asked.

“You know the legal system as well as anyone. He’s done everything he can. No arrests on the break-in, no investigation on the rocks through Mal’s windows. It’s been called a hate crime, but they have to have some sort of evidence or hint as to who did it to be able to do anything at all about it. And there’s nothing he can do about Jenny being a psycho bitch unless she breaks a law.”

“So what?” David asked. “We have to wait until she hurts one of your friends before they’ll do anything?”

“She hasn’t done anything wrong that anyone can prove. Maybe now that Andrew and I are completely through, she’ll just go away. She’s got what she wants. If it’s an asshole boyfriend she’s been after, she can have him. They deserve each other.”

And that’s where I left it. Because nobody could do anything about any of it, so I put it out of my head and finished revamping Nash and David’s garden. A week later I was in the middle of that, working in the front with Grey, when a strange car pulled into the drive.

I should have been shocked to see Andrew get out, but somehow, I wasn’t. I stood from where I was kneeling, hand rake tight in one fist and Grey’s hand in the other.

“What the hell do you want?” I asked as goose bumps raced over my back and shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

The screen door slammed, and suddenly David was there, picking Grey up, and Nash, on my other side, set his hand on my shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” I asked again, aware of the edge of hysteria in my voice.

“My hometown too, remember?” Andrew mumbled.

“What do you want?” Nash asked, his voice icy, his face that stone mask of frightening resolve.

Andrew held up both hands in front of him, palms out. “Nothing.”

“Then get back in your car and drive away. There’s nothing for you here.” Nash’s words were clipped, pointed shards of anger because that was all we had.

Andrew ignored him for a moment, staring at me, face pale and eyes dull. “You should get blood tests,” he said. And then did exactly as Nash had told him and got back in his car.

It took a moment for what he had said to sink in. His car roared to life.

“Wait!” I ran, grabbed the door handle, and hung on. “What?”

But he didn’t answer me. He just gunned his engine, and the sound was deafening, making me jump back. He backed hurriedly out of the drive and squealed away down the street. I stood there, numb, staring after him.

“What? What did he say?” I asked.

“Come inside.” Nash’s hands were on my shoulders. “Kerry, come in the house.”

I let him turn me and prod me toward the front door. David preceded me in and went to his office. He came back a moment later, still carrying Grey on one hip, his phone to his ear.

“No,” he was saying into it. “I’m fine. I just want to make an appointment for blood tests for my… son.” He shook his head. “Not Grey. Nash’s son. Kerry Grey. Can you squeeze him as soon as possible?” He waited a few moments, then nodded. “Thanks, Nancy, that’s perfect. We’ll be there.”

He hung up and sat on the couch on the other side of me from Nash.

“Done,” he said softly. “Nancy slotted you in tomorrow morning. This is the quickest way to get results. She said to bring urine samples. I have the stuff for that. They’ll take swabs and blood. We’re on top of this, Kerry.”

I nodded. “I have to talk to him.”

“Kerry.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“How do you know that isn’t exactly what he wants, for you to go looking for him on your own?”

I looked at Nash and smiled, but it was a terrified expression, I was sure. “He’s not that bright, Nash.”

“You can’t.”

“You can’t actually tell me what I can and can’t do,” I reminded him.

“Let us handle this.”

“No.” I stood. “Whatever he wants, you can’t handle it. I have to talk to him and find out what the fuck he’s talking about.” And as I said it, I realized that was the first swear to come out of my mouth in weeks. “I have to do this.” I looked from Nash to David. “Someone give me car keys, because I am going to go talk to him.”

“Let one of us come with you at least.”

I smiled down at the kindest, most generous man I’d ever known and shook my head. “I’m all grown up now, Papa,” I reminded him. “I made this bed.”

He sighed, but conceded. “Keep your phone on.”

I thought he was making too big a deal out of things. Andrew really wasn’t clever enough to make the sort of play Nash worried about, luring me from the house to do something bad. It would never occur to him. Besides. I’d seen his expression and heard his voice when had said it, and it wasn’t a trap. Not the kind of trap Nash worried about, anyway.

“I’ll get the tests,” I told them. “And it’ll be fine. I was careful.”

“And always in a position to make sure he was?” Nash asked.

I set my jaw and headed for my room to change. “I’ll get the tests,” I muttered again as I went in and closed the door.

As soon as the latch clicked, I allowed the collapse, sinking to the floor against the door. For a moment, I buried my face in my hands and succumbed to the utter panic induced by a former lover telling you in that kind of flat voice to get blood tests. Oh God. Fuck. Andrew was a cunt-eating, fuck-faced bastard. What had he done to me? We’d always used protection. Hadn’t we? I was sure. Mostly. God, could I even remember every time we’d been together? Had there ever been a time I was out of it enough not to notice if he hadn’t put a condom on?

“Fuck!”

I pulled out my phone and dialed Lissa, though I had no idea what I would say to her. She answered and immediately launched into excited babble about Charlie getting his photos into a local gallery despite his old bitch of a boss trying to turn the other gallery owners against him and having an opening in three weeks. I let her talk. I made the appropriate grunting noises, and eventually, she stopped.

Silence crept over the line.

“What?” I asked, realizing she must have been waiting for me to make some sort of more elaborate reply.

“Will you come, jerkwad?” she said.

“Come?”

“To Charlie’s opening. Say you’ll come. He’s so excited, and I know he’ll want you to be there. You’re the one who inspired him to start shooting again. I swear to God he tells me that six times a day. Come to his opening, Kerry. I mean it. Do this for him.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll come.”

“Good.” There was a grin as wide as Texas in her voice. “Oh shit! I had grilled cheese under the broiler.”

I could hear the scream of a smoke detector in the background.

“Go,” I told her. “I’ll call later.” What was I going to tell her anyway? That Andrew had…? Had what? There was no point telling her anything until I knew what it was I had to say.

“Love ya!”

“Yeah I—” The line went dead. “—love you too, babe.” I thumped my head against the door and stared across the room at the posters on the closet and the pile of clean laundry on the bed and tried once more to convince myself I had nothing to worry about.

When I emerged, finally, in clean jeans and T-shirt, Nash handed me the keys and told me again to keep my phone turned on. I assured him I would be fine.

Andrew’s parent’s house wasn’t hard to find. It wasn’t actually all that far from Nash’s. Funny how we’d ended up back in the same neighborhood after all was said and done. I pulled into the drive behind his all-American muscle car and was headed up to the front door when he called me.

“I’m over here,” he said, not loudly, from a small bench in a side garden. “Took you long enough.”

“You fucking tell me what you meant by that, asshole,” I said, keeping his car between us. “What the fuck was that?”

“I’m sorry, all right?”

“Not fucking all right, Andrew! What did you give me?”

“Nothing. Probably nothing.”

“Andrew!”

“Gonorrhea, okay?”

“Fuck!”

“But we were safe.”

“All the time?” I glared, dared him to lie to me. We both knew I hadn’t always been coherent enough to insist. “Because you didn’t wear anything when I sucked you off. Ever.”

He stared at me, and for the first time in a hundred years, I saw the kid I’d first met when we were young staring back at me. “With you? Every time, Kerry. I swear to God. Every time.”

“But not with Jenny,” I guessed.

He shook his head.

“Is that where you got it?”

Again, he shook his head. “Where I found out I gave it to her.”

“You didn’t get it from me.”

One more shake of his miserable head.

“Who?”

He said nothing.

“For fuck sakes, Andrew! If someone gave you one STD, they could have given you… anything. Fucking anything! And they don’t use blood tests for gonorrhea.”

“I know!”

The sounds of summer in suburban America could be a very big thing, taken all together and tossed into that kind of void.

“So?” I said at last. “Are you?”

He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Really? That’s all you’ve got for me?”