by Elle Keaton
“Hey, Jasper,” Rod softly called out as he approached the table.
Jasper turned toward the sound of Rod’s voice. Rod watched recognition flood across his face just before he burst into tears. Jasper bolted toward him, and Rod steeled himself for impact, hoping his leg could take it. Gloria grabbed the back of Jasper’s jacket, stopping him in his tracks.
“Hang on a second, young man, you’ll put your friend back in the hospital. Let him sit down first.” She turned to the security guard. “We’ve got this, thank you.”
Whether it was her tone of voice, the majestic sweep of her hand, or because her reputation preceded her, the guard aimed one last suspicious glance at the three of them and ambled off, his attention caught by two high school–aged kids with skateboards.
Rod lowered himself into the uncomfortable plastic chair as Gloria released her grip on Jasper’s jacket, allowing him to continue on his trajectory to Rod’s side. Jasper sagged against him, sobbing into the front of Rod’s shirt, his small body shaking with the force of his tears. Jasper was trying to say something, but Rod couldn’t understand what it was through the snot.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay, whatever happened, it’s okay. Can you calm down and tell me and Gloria what’s going on? Come on, take a breath.” Rod rocked the boy back and forth, whispering promises he hoped he would be able to keep into Jasper’s ear. Rod tried not to breathe in too deeply; Jasper hadn’t bathed in a while.
Rod kept rocking back and forth, automatically crooning nonsense words to the little boy, while Gloria watched with concern. Finally Jasper’s gasping sobs slowed enough for Rod to ask, “Hey little guy, where’s your—” It occurred to Rod he didn’t know who Jasper lived with, and he’d never heard Jasper mention an adult. He forged ahead anyway. “—your mom or dad?”
This caused a fresh round of tears, and Gloria shot him another look full of worry. The mall stores were starting to open up. There was a steady stream of people entering now, and Rod felt exposed and uncertain of what to do next. He didn’t know anything about Jasper, not really. And Gloria knew even less. He recalled his long-ago conversation with the Yew Elementary secretary and the lunch lady and sighed. He hated being right. Something was going on with Jasper, and dammit, Rod was going to figure out what it was.
Not knowing who else to call, Rod called Travis to come get them. “Them” included Gloria, who claimed they needed her along and there was nothing to look forward to at the assisted living home except chicken piccata for lunch, “and it’s bound to be dry because the ‘chef’ is on vacation and his replacement can’t cook his way out of a wet paper bag.”
With a little twisting around, Rod was able to pull Jasper up onto his lap. He was probably violating all sorts of rules and regulations about lost children, but who the fuck cared? Jasper felt small under his arm, and Rod wondered when he had last had a good meal. The world was a fucked-up place for a nine-year-old kid to be wandering around hungry, no one paying any attention except to chase him away. He recognized he was furious and made a conscious effort to shove his feelings aside; Jasper didn’t need Rod’s anger right now.
After what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was the fifteen minutes it took to make the trip from their house to the mall, Rod spotted Travis’s truck pulling up into the loading zone outside the food court doors.
“Come on.” He lifted Jasper off his lap. “Our ride’s here.”
“Young man, how on earth am I supposed to get up into that thing?” Gloria glared at Travis’s monster truck. She shifted her glare to Travis himself.
“Same way I’ve been getting in, a Travis Walker assist,” Rod answered.
Travis rolled his eyes. “Rod knows perfectly well,” Travis demonstrated by first opening the front passenger cab door and then the back passenger door, “that there is a step that automatically comes out, see? Who’s sitting where?”
Rod allowed Travis to half lift him into the back seat. Jasper insisted on sitting next to Rod. Travis helped Gloria into the front seat.
“So, pretty lady, where are we taking you today?” Travis made sure Gloria’s seat belt was fastened. Rod did the same for Jasper.
“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Gloria waggled her eyebrows and gave Travis a pat on the shoulder. “I’m part of the A-team today. Our friend here may need a helping hand, and that is something I have connections for.”
16
Travis herded everyone into the house. Rod guided the little boy—Jasper, he’d called him—to the couch where he leaned his crutches against the wall before sitting down. Jasper whispered something Travis couldn’t hear.
Rod looked over at Travis, pointing with his chin toward the kitchen. “We have a hungry kid here; do you think you could rustle up something?”
“I could probably do that. Jasper?”
The little boy looked at him warily, his face filthy and smeared with god knew what. Travis wanted to toss him in the bathtub. He had nothing against dirt, having been a small boy himself once, but the couch was new, and he had plans for it. Plans that didn’t involve a great deal of dirt and grime.
“Are we talking cowboy breakfast hungry, or will mac and cheese do?”
Travis hoped Jasper would pick mac and cheese, because he had no idea what a cowboy breakfast would be. He’d been making things out of the cookbook and watching videos online, but the learning curve was steep when most everything he’d cooked until recently was sandwiches and chili from a can. He kept getting thrown off by terms he’d never heard of like “al dente” and “blanch.”
Jasper mumbled something again and Rod repeated, louder, “Mac and cheese.”
Mac and cheese couldn’t be that hard. Of course, the kind he’d made before came out of a box, and they didn’t have that. A quick recipe search was overwhelming. Apparently mac and cheese was a thing. Whatever. He grabbed a package of pasta from the cabinet and filled a pot with water. There was some cheddar cheese in the fridge; he grated a hefty pile while he waited for the water to boil.
When he reemerged from the kitchen, Gloria was on the phone and Rod was trying to convince Jasper to take a bath.
“Little man, you need to clean up.”
Jasper wore a mulish expression that did not bode well. Looked like Rod the Kid Whisperer had his hands full.
Gloria put her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Honey, we’ll let Maureen worry about that.” Then she went back to giving someone instructions to the house.
“Who’s Maureen?”
“A friend of Gloria’s who has an emergency foster care license.” Rod put an arm around Jasper’s shoulders and hugged him tightly. “Jasper’s had a hard time and been doing a great job taking care of himself, but now he’s going to let us help. Except for a bath.”
“I want to stay here!” Jasper wailed, tears making tracks down his grubby cheeks.
Rod smiled down at his small friend. “I know you do, buddy. Maybe we can make that happen, but first let’s go through the right people, okay? It sounds like Gloria’s friend is a cool person who can take care of you.”
“Will you go with me and make sure?”
“We’ll all go with you, okay? And I’ll make sure Maureen has my phone number. And since I’m still healing up, I’m free to come and visit and stuff.”
“I’m hungry.”
Travis put the bowl of pasta with melted cheese on the table in the eating area. Jasper slid off the couch but waited for Rod to join him instead of coming right over.
“Have you ever made mac and cheese before?” Rod asked Travis.
“Only the kind that’s bright orange.” Travis shrugged.
Jasper sat down and pulled the bowl close to the edge of the table to peer into it. “This doesn’t look like mac and cheese.” He poked at it with his fork. “I guess it looks kind of like it. My mom’s friend makes really good mac and cheese,” he said sadly as he forked a bite into his mouth, making a face. Who knew that a nine-year-old could be so opinionated about pasta and
cheese?
“Yeah? Who’s your mom’s friend?” Rod asked.
While Travis eavesdropped from the kitchen, Rod and Gloria pieced together a timeline from what Jasper told them, although it was a somewhat fractured account. Jasper and his mom had moved “sort of” recently from the place where Rod used to pick him up to a new place, and he was supposed to start school there, but he hadn’t. The house had a lot of people living in it. Jasper and his mom shared a room until she’d gone somewhere and hadn’t come back. How long ago that was, Jasper didn’t really know, but one of the other people told Jasper that his mom didn’t pay rent or buy food for him, so he wasn’t allowed to stay. Jasper had snuck food from the fridge and stayed in their room until the other people had gotten angry with him. He’d run out of the house and ended up at the mall; the smell of all the food there had made him so hungry.
“He’s a friend of Mommy’s from work.” Another bite, followed by another. Travis must have missed who “he” was, but Jasper’s statement seemed to make sense to Rod.
“Where did your mom work?” Rod asked.
“Mlkfaln,” Jasper mumbled around an enormous bite.
“Let the kid eat, Rod, obviously he’s decided it isn’t poisonous.”
“Not as good as Dany’s,” Jasper said, shoveling pasta into his mouth.
Travis wanted to know what this Dany person did to have a nine-year-old raving about his cooking.
“All right, Maureen, we’ll see you and the rest of the posse in a few minutes.” Gloria ended her phone conversation and turned to the three of them. “Maureen James and a coworker of hers are on their way. They are going to need to ask Jasper some questions. Jasper is lucky; she has space right now and is looking forward to meeting him. Also, a police detective will be coming to hear what you have to say.” Now she was speaking directly to Jasper. “Maureen is the best. She has helped a lot of boys and girls like you.”
Jasper lost it again, throwing the fork down and attaching himself to Rod. “No,” he sobbed, “no, no, no. I want my mom.”
Rod did his singsong talk, rocking Jasper back and forth as he cried.
Travis frowned, meeting Gloria’s concerned gaze and not liking her expression: there was something else here. This wasn’t just a case of a kid who’d run away. She shook her head at him, mouthing “Later.”
“Hey,” Rod said, “while we’re waiting, let’s think of what Todd Toad and Phabian Frog would do. Do you remember them?”
A muffled “Yeah.”
“Well? What would they do?”
“They’re not real.”
“No, they’re not real, but sometimes telling stories helps people solve problems, and sometimes it’s just for fun. Come on, we can call this one the ‘Macaroni Mission.’”
Jasper sat up, looking from Rod to Travis to the half-eaten bowl of what Travis had thought was acceptable mac and cheese. It had pasta and it had cheese.
“They learn to make macaroni?” Jasper used his fork to pick through the remaining food in the bowl.
“That’s exactly what they do. What do you think happens?”
As Rod kept Jasper occupied playing food critic, Travis went to talk to Gloria.
“You know something,” he said quietly.
Gloria shook her head again, but this time it was in sadness. Her eyes filled with tears. “Early this morning, or late last night, the body of a young woman was discovered under the pier. Police are only just beginning the investigation, but I have a bad feeling. Maureen says a few days ago someone reported Belinda Ransom missing; she hadn’t shown up for work in several days, and a coworker became concerned,” Gloria was whispering, “because she’s a single mother and he saw her car parked only a few blocks from work.”
“The pier where the Waterline is?” Travis hadn’t been there yet, but the Waterline was a high-end (for Skagit) restaurant that locals and visitors alike flocked to. “Shi—oot.”
From across the room, he and Gloria listened to Rod and Jasper as they concocted an adventure for the amphibious explorers involving much better macaroni than Travis had made, but they got so dirty making it they had to take a bath. Travis thought adding the bath element was pushing it, but Jasper didn’t object.
A knock on their front door signaled the arrival of several people Travis didn’t know.
One was a hulking blond police detective; his badge said S. Jorgensen. An older woman who made herself known as Maureen James was accompanied by a young boy named Kon who was, and Travis was confused about this, her assistant. And a big black wolflike dog that obeyed every command Kon gave.
Maureen held her hand out to Travis. “Hello, you must be one of the young men who helped Jasper. Gloria told me that Jasper might need a little convincing. Kon does great PR. And so does Xena.” Xena wagged her tail but stayed sitting where she was.
Maureen and Detective Jorgensen introduced themselves to Jasper and Rod. Travis suspected Jorgensen was one of those big guys who looked tough but was really a teddy bear. Something in his demeanor told Travis that Jorgensen did not use his size as a weapon.
Rod and Maureen explained to Jasper that the detective and the still-to-arrive social worker wanted to hear what had happened, how he’d come to be at the mall. Jorgensen sat down next to Jasper. Before anything else, he pulled a bright-orange stuffed tiger out of a bag and offered it to Jasper.
“This is my special tiger. I don’t usually bring him with me, but I thought maybe you’d like to meet him.”
Jasper took the small stuffed animal and looked at it, turning it over in his hands. “What’s his name?”
Jorgensen frowned. “Hmmm, he doesn’t have a name. Would you like to give him one? He’d probably like that.”
It seemed there was more than one child whisperer in the house.
“Umm…” Jasper fiddled with the tiger’s soft ears and petted it. “Stripey?”
Jorgensen regarded the tiger seriously before answering, “I think he likes that. Stripey it is.”
The social worker arrived a few minutes later. The next hour was controlled chaos with so many people in the house. After reams of paperwork had been signed and signed again, Jasper left a little less reluctantly than Travis had feared, accompanied by Maureen, Kon, and Xena. Rod promised over and over that he would come visit as soon as he could, and that Jasper could call him, because Maureen had his number. Travis wondered how much of this was actually going to happen, but the social worker didn’t say it couldn’t.
Finally Travis shut the door behind everyone and leaned back against it. The house was eerily quiet with everyone gone. Detective Jorgensen had kindly offered to take Gloria home; they knew each other, it seemed, and the detective said it would be easy for him to give her a ride.
On the way out the door he’d thanked Rod for acting as he had, for stepping up in a difficult situation. “Not everyone does. I’d hate to think if Jasper had been found by someone else or had to spend the night outside.” Then he turned and assisted Gloria to his vehicle.
Gloria had kissed both Rod and Travis on the cheek, promising to see them soon. “I’ll teach you to cook, young man; I don’t know what the two of you have been living on. If you’re not busy Saturday morning, there’s a social I’d like to miss, and we can go grocery shopping.” Travis nodded. It seemed arguing with her would be futile.
Rod was still standing at the front window staring out at the street, though all the cars were gone. A lone neighbor was walking their dog, waiting patiently while the dog happily stopped at every hedge, clump of grass, and lamppost to gather (and leave) scents to dream about. Travis wondered if Rod would want a dog. Rod caught Travis watching him.
“What?” Rod asked.
“What, what?”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because every single day I discover something else amazing about you. I thought I knew you, since we’ve been best friends forever, but I didn’t know how amazing you really are.” It seemed like all his life he’
d been looking at Rod from a very specific angle. Now the view had changed, and all the things he’d taken for granted were fresh and new with different meanings than they’d had before.
Rod blushed, and Travis found it adorable. It made him want to kiss him. There was no reason he couldn’t and every reason to do it. Decision made.
Travis crossed to where Rod was standing in front of the window. As much as he wanted to press him up against the wall and kiss him senseless, Travis restrained himself. Instead he stroked Rod’s cheek with one hand before leaning in and pressing his lips softly against Rod’s.
The low half sigh, half groan was all Travis needed to continue. He’d been good, waited, slept out on the couch because he knew himself: sleep would not hold him back from needing Rod. “Put your arms around my neck,” he whispered against the lips he’d been fantasizing about.
The crutches clattered to the floor as Rod let go and wrapped his arms around Travis’s neck. Rod wasn’t a small man, but Travis was bigger. Lifting Rod, he walked them both to the couch before releasing his hold to let Rod slip onto the cushions.
Instead of sitting down, Rod tightened his grip on Travis, wrapping his good leg around him. “Bedroom.”
“Bedroom?” Please, please, let him not have misheard. At the same time, his stomach clenched with nerves.
“We are going to have sex, right? The bedroom is both of ours?”
Travis tried not to overthink as he carried Rod into their bedroom. He hadn’t gone this long without sex in years, but he would wait as long as Rod needed; he didn’t want to hurt him, but—Jesus, his brain was freezing up. If someone asked him up or down he would have gotten the answer wrong.
“Quit thinking. Trust me. I asked Dana, she said it was okay.”