The Foster Family (41 page)

“My first tests were negative.”

That was something. Not enough, but something.

“And I swear, Kerry, I never did you without a glove. I promise.”

“Your promises mean shit, asshole.”

He looked pained. “I know. But this is real, and I wouldn’t lie about it.”

“Why me? Why every time with me, but not whatever chick you were banging besides Jenny? Not with her? You think I was going to give you something? Or that you couldn’t get shit from girls?”

He turned honest-to-God red at that. “I wasn’t with any girl but Jenny.”

I stared at him. “Oh, Jesus, I am one fucked-up idiot. Here I thought…. Jesus fucking Ch— You know what? You don’t get to know what I was thinking. Thanks for nothing, asshole.” I turned to leave. There was nothing else to say to him. I’d got what I came for anyway.

“Kerry—” He jogged after me and was close enough to reach out when I spun, and for once, clocked him, all my weight and fury behind it. It fucking hurt, but he went down and I hurried to my car.

He had to have bounced back up because he caught the door before I could close it.

“You thought you were special?” he asked.

“Get the fuck away from me.”

“Ever think maybe you were the only one I used a condom with because the rubber was about you? I’m not an idiot. I know I took chances, but not with you. Never, ever with you, I swear.”

“You expect me to believe you used a condom to protect me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t expect you to believe it. But it is true. And I am sorry.” He backed off then, and I closed the door and started the car.

“Why me?” I asked again, not sure, exactly, what I was asking.

His voice was very small when he answered. “You let me.”

“Asshole!”

“I know.”

God, why couldn’t I make the car move?

“We were kids together, Kerry. You were nice to me when I was the fuck with no dad, and you were
nice
. And I was such a shit.”

“Yeah, well.” What was I supposed to say to that?

“You weren’t the first guy I’d been with. The first one who….” There was a heavy sigh, and I glanced at his distorted reflection in the car’s window. “I didn’t always have a choice about condoms with the other guys. They wanted to bareback and I wanted… something. I was stupid and that’s on me, but I never, ever did that to you, I swear to God.”

And there it was. The truth about him I’d felt, even when we were kids and I’d never been able to think about it, and the fact he’d turned it around on me because I’d let him. I couldn’t feel vindication about any of it. I could only feel sorry for him, and hurt and such out-of-control anger it was impossible to look at him.

“Don’t ever come near me or my family again,” I told him. “And call off your psycho girlfriend.”

He shook his head again. “Not with her anymore. What was the point?”

“Just keep her away from my friends.”

He sighed and shrugged, but I was finally putting the car in gear. I needed to be anywhere but near him. I backed out of the drive and got the hell away from there. There was no way in hell that now, after all the shit, I was going to let him try and tell me any part of anything between us had been about me. That was bullshit.

D
AVID
’
S
CLINIC
was a clean and bright and friendly enough place to get poked at with needles and swabbed in uncomfortable places.

“You’ll have the results in a few days,” I was told by the nice, friendly middle-aged… whatever-title-he-had guy who did the tests. He had a lisp and a limp wrist and a kind smile. “I’ll put a rush on it.”

“You can do that?”

His smile twinkled, and for an old guy, it was almost cute. “For David and Nash’s boy? You betcha.”

I nodded my thanks, and he patted my shoulder. “I know, baby,” he said quietly, sotto voce so no one else could hear. “I can’t even believe I was ever your age, but I was once, and I remember how scary this is.” He glanced to the wall between the room where we sat and where David was probably reading to Grey in the waiting room. “David and Nash, they’re good people. Be happy you have someone to talk to about it. It helps.”

I nodded again. I was not going to lose my shit in front of a perfect stranger, no matter how nice he was. I hated myself for the way my eyes welled up, and I hated him for the small, sympathetic sound he made and the gentle pat on the shoulder.

“We’ll call when the results are in. Then you come back in three weeks, three months, and six months.”

“I don’t live around here.”

“Come visit your dads,” he said as he turned to dispose of the used needle. “Or give your address and zip to the receptionist. We’ll find you a nice clinic where you live.”

“There are plenty of clinics,” I said.

“Suit yourself, of course.” He turned back and pressed a finger to the cotton ball on my elbow, checked I wasn’t bleeding anymore, and stuck a small round Band-Aid in its place. “But this right here is what families are for. If you’ve got one, let them be there.”

“Why are you being so nice?” I sniffled, and he handed me a tissue. “I was an idiot to let this happen. Maybe I don’t deserve nice.”

“Honey, I work in a field where people die all the time. I get attached to them, and then the heart doesn’t work, or the cancer gets them, or some other stupid thing, like a fucking cold, and when they
don’t
die, when they go on to bigger and better things, like lovers and babies, it makes me believe the world isn’t complete shit. So I take care of the ones who live, because that’s what I do.”

I nodded at him. What was I supposed to say to that?

“We’ll be in touch,” he said.

“Thanks.”

His smile was pretty brilliant, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

“And thanks for taking care of David. He’s really lucky.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he just?”

He made me laugh as I hopped down and headed for the door, and for that, I had to concede, he was damn good at his job.

“All set?” David asked as I emerged.

“Yeah. They’ll call with the results. And I have to come back in three weeks, three months and six months, as long as the tests are negative. If not….”

“Come on,” David said, patting my back and guiding me toward the door. “One thing at a time.”

The three days waiting for those results brought me back to the afternoon I worked my sexual frustration out in Malcolm’s yard, which felt like a lifetime ago. I was too exhausted to do anything but eat and sleep in the evenings. No energy to think was a good thing. The results, when they came, gave me a glimmering of hope that maybe Andrew hadn’t lied about the condoms. We celebrated with barbecue and ice cream, and I finally told them about Charlie’s opening and broke the news that I wanted to go.

“Will you stay there?” Nash asked.

“I guess it will depend. If they’re happy to see me, then yeah. I’ll give it a try. If not, then no. I’ll just get my stuff and come home. I’ll find work here or go back to school or something.”

“Whatever you decide, Kerry, you know we support you.”

“Even if I stay with them?” I asked him. “Even knowing what that means about me?” I studied his expression. Searched for the line, waited for him to draw it.

“If they’re good to you and you’re happy,” Nash said, though I could see the worry in his eyes as he said it, “then that is what matters. And you have this Lissa person. She sounds reliable.”

I grinned. “She’s awesome. You’ll love her and Marcus both.”

“You’re a grown man,” Nash finally conceded. “Doesn’t make me less your father, does it?”

“God, no.” I hugged him this time, and realized, as I did, that we’d both been firmly on the same side all along. That he didn’t have to understand my lifestyle to love me or care what happened to me, and all he’d ever wanted was to know that I understood that.

S
O
,
YEAH
.
I crashed Charlie’s party. I had no idea if he wanted me there, but I walked in with Lissa on my arm and Marcus at my back and took the chance. I actually had time to look around at his work before I saw him.
Lissa said we’d come early so I could see the art in case things with
Charlie went badly.

This wasn’t what I had looked at in his old photo albums. That stuff had been beautiful. Vibrant and exciting to look at, but this, what I saw on the soft-gray walls of that gallery in groups of five or six at a time or off in small alcoves immersed in the colors of Charlie’s work, or, occasionally, hanging, one piece alone on a broad, otherwise empty wall, was something else.

The natural world was still his focus, but gone were the tamed, controlled gardens of his backyard. And it wasn’t anything so cliché as the wild sand, sea, and stone beach at the foot of their cliff either.

I recognized the uneven stone steps up to their yard from the beach in the first picture I looked at and the glimmer of the golf course clubhouse in the next shot, off in the distance, looking like fairy lights and dreams except for the rubble of uprooted trees and dying vegetation that had been ripped out and discarded to make room for a new green. That ugly pile appeared in sharp, detailed focus in the foreground of the picture and made the rest look fake and unreal by comparison.

There were pictures of their own property in one room. Not the neat flower beds and exotic imports, either, but of the wild end. He’d taken pictures of the whole thing in gray-and-white, nebulous and indistinct, and of bits of it, close-up and finely focused on a single juniper berry or ash leaf, or a last, fuzzy dandelion gamely clinging to its puff of seeds as the stalk bent in the breeze.

That one, titled
Not Quite Ready Yet
made me smile, because I totally identified with that hardy little flower, clinging to the seeds of its new life until they were ready to take root and grow.

One image caught my breath. It was just black earth, his grandfather’s old snips stuck point-first into it, and white shards of ceramic littered around. A single, tiny purple-and-blue forget-me-not was the only point of color. It was so simple a composition that the title
Chaos
wouldn’t make any sense at all to anyone but the three of us.

“Isn’t it weird,” Lissa asked from my side, “how the ones that don’t seem to make any sense in your head are the ones that hit you hardest in the gut?”

I nodded. This one made perfect sense to me, as did the one next to it. That was an image of that same juniper bush he’d been hacking away at that day. It had gaping holes in it where he’d lopped off fine, living branches, and it was left an awkward, windswept, but somehow utterly beautiful shape. It
should
have been ugly, and to someone expecting the fanned-out, clean silhouette of a normal juniper bush, I supposed it would be ugly.

But to me, it was beautiful, and aptly titled
My Beauty
.

Between them was a very small, very detailed photo of their gazebo. The outdoor shower was on, easy to see against the white sky because the water droplets glimmered in the sun, and the deck was darker where the water fell and splashed. It had no title at all.

By far, it was the most powerful piece, and it was difficult to tell why. Certainly, it was a pretty picture, and a stranger seeing that on the wall would think it was a beautifully executed photo of a stunning view, a peaceful spot capturing an old-fashioned, idyllic moment in time.

“That one’s pretty, isn’t it?” Lissa asked. “I think it’s my favorite.”

I agreed with her and stepped back, realizing, as I looked around the room as a whole, that Charlie had told a story. Our story. His, mine, and Malcolm’s, in pictures the rest of the world could never really understand. And that last, haunting triptych was us, in all our lonely, broken glory, only not a soul would ever see that truth but us.

“I should….” I looked around. The place was crowded full of people I didn’t know. Strangers who’d come to see Charlie’s work and judge it.

“Liss, I should….”

“What?” she asked, looping her hand through my elbow. “Go? You think you should go without saying hello?”

I brought the small champagne flute I was holding to my lips and sipped. The liquid was tasteless on my tongue, and my hand shook as I drank. My heart wibbled pathetically. Go before they saw I’d come? I looked around again, past the milling people to the pictures. To Charlie’s heart, nailed to the wall, displayed so all these strangers could pass judgment on him.

“I should find him.” I downed the last of the champagne, like that small sip would be enough to fortify me, and loosed myself from her grip.

When I brought the glass down, he was there, across the room, Malcolm at his side, and they watched me.

I held my breath. In that instant, I was back at a dance, looking across the dance floor, waiting for Andrew to acknowledge my existence. Some part of me expected them to turn and face the young woman trying to get Charlie’s attention, but he ignored her and took Malcolm’s hand, plowing through the crowd in his haste to come to me.