by Snow, Nicole
Stealing. How do I deal with this?
I can practically feel Cory and Juno's ghosts hanging over me. Judging. Sad. Frustrated.
If he was anyone else, it'd be easier. I could skin them with little more than words.
I still could do that to him, sure, but that must be what he’d expected.
What he'd been afraid of. The reason he’d asked her to be here.
He's never had a tyrant as a father, and I'm not about to turn into one now.
“I am disappointed, Ben. Very disappointed.” I turn around. “Not only in you, but in myself. For letting this happen.”
My son blinks, the same blue eyes we share filling with a fresh horror.
“Huh? Dad, no! It wasn’t your fault. It was...I...” Ben’s shoulders slump. “God. I don’t even know why I did it.”
A thousand possibilities from philosophers and theologians and child psychologists suddenly tear through my brain. None of them offering answers.
“Tell him everything,” Wendy says quietly. “Please.”
There's real concern in her eyes. Empathy.
She’s asking me to have that, too. I can read it on her face, and her silent plea goes deeper than I’ve felt from anyone before.
I don’t have to say anything. Not with the way she slightly bows her head and lets me know she understands I have even more concern and compassion for Ben than anyone.
“Tell me everything, Ben.” I take a step closer to them. “From the start.”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Dad. The other kids were saying that Mr. Murray, the guy who owns the store, is half-blind. Said we could walk away with whatever we wanted and...and he’ll never catch us. I know I shouldn’t have listened to them. I took a stupid bet, a dare, really, and I wish I hadn't. Shouldn’t have believed them.” He swipes at his eyes. Here come the tears, and damn if it isn't like lead injected into my thudding heart.
Wendy looks at me. “Peer pressure is a real thing. I remember how bad it could be.”
I nod. It can be downright dangerous, too.
A danger I know we've talked about on several occasions. Too bad words don't always stick, however well intentioned.
I’ve been afraid that with some of his old friends out of the picture, he might end up with the wrong crowd. “Did the other kids steal, too? Did Tommy?”
I swear, if that little fucking punk put him up to this, I'll have his old man up against a wall.
“No! No way. Tommy tried to talk me out of it and...and I was the idiot. I didn't listen.”
My eyes search his, wondering if he's covering his only friend's ass. But his words are too honest. Too real.
Ben hangs his head. Doesn’t say more. Doesn’t have to.
I get the entire story from Wendy with one look. The other kids were wanting him to get in trouble, apparently. He'd told her Tommy was the only one who stuck up for him.
I’m instantly furious, wanting to know their names and addresses so I can hunt down their parents and demand to know how they ever raised such little shits. Wendy knows that and shakes her head.
I have to hold my breath to keep the fury inside. Not let it show. Not let it consume me.
“Ben took the game back today,” Wendy says.
“You did?”
“Yes.” Ben glances at her then back at me. “I did, and Mr. Murray said he won’t press charges, but that he wants to talk to you.”
Good. One more way I'll find out the names of those other kids. “Let’s go.”
Wendy shoots around the coffee table and grasps my arm. Her hands are so small, it's almost like Jingles trying to hug the trunk of a tree.
Somehow, her touch soothes.
Somehow, her touch restores.
Somehow, her touch softens the need to roar in someone's face. Or worse.
“The store's closed now. I told Mr. Murray you'd be over to talk to him tomorrow. Around ten, when the store opens.”
Dumbfounded twice in the same hour has to be a record for me. “You’ve talked to him?”
“Yes.” She glances at Ben as he sinks down on the sofa. “Ben sent me a text this morning, asking me to call him. He just wanted to know how bad it would be.”
Realization strikes. “That was the text you received while I was at your cake shop? Before...”
“Yup. Before I ran off like a crazy woman.” Deviancy once again flashes in her eyes.
Neither of us mention the reason for that. Not in the middle of this.
His text is the reason she hadn’t followed me out of her decorating room. “How'd he get your number?” For some reason, that’s the most important question flashing in my mind.
She looks at Ben.
“Off her website.” He frowns then. “You were at her cake shop? Why?”
“We’ll discuss that later.” Getting to the critical part, I ask, “Why did you contact her and not me?”
Ben hangs his head lower. “Mr. Murray wants to talk to my mother, so...I called Wendy to see if she’d talk to him.”
My jaw tightens. My fists clench at my sides. How I manage not to lose my shit then and there might be the first miracle I've seen in eons. Maybe they're real after all.
“That’s the deal you made with him?” I growl, raging blood rushing to my face. “To pretend to be his mother?”
5
Salvage Job (Wendy)
For the umpteenth time since getting Ben’s text, I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing.
This house is like something out of a designer magazine, complete with staging, but it’s not a freaking stage. This is where they live.
In a historic mansion on the most exclusive street in Saint Paul. If I hadn’t just discovered that my mother coerced Hunter into being my date for Rochelle’s wedding, I would've told Ben to call his father.
Or maybe not. He’d sounded afraid. Sincerely frightened to have his father talk to the game shop owner. For some reason, I could relate.
“No,” I say to Hunter. “I didn't agree to pretend to be his mother, but I did agree to be here for moral support when he told you about it.”
“Why?”
I hold the urge to argue with him. Or smack that sharp anger right out of his scary blue eyes.
He’s been pissed since I walked through the door. At first, he was shocked, that was plain to see, but then there was just this nuclear, slow burning anger.
I should tell him Ben said he was afraid because his father had become a full-time grouch the past couple of years, spending most of his time in his office, which also doubles as a library.
I can’t imagine any room in this house doubling.
The place is huge and gorgeous, history seeping out of every wooden pore. I’ve only seen the front lawn, with the brick walkway lined with stone planters holding an array of colorful mums still thriving despite the weather, the front foyer with its grandiose double staircase, and this, the formal living room.
I’d give my eyeteeth to see the kitchen. I’ve taken tours of these old mansions built for railroad and shipping magnates at the turn of the nineteenth century, when they’ve been open to the public, and I adore everything about them.
“Let's try this again, Wendy,” he asks firmly. “Why?”
“Because Ben asked me to,” I answer before my mind drifts any further off point.
“Really? Is that what you do? Just go around being moral support for random kids on a regular basis?”
The way he’d made the quotation marks with both hands while saying moral support does more than irritate me.
“No!” I shrug. “Probably about as often you go around –” My turn to make quotation marks in the air – “Making deals to be a wedding date.”
“Didn’t have a choice. That was the only way your ma would agree to hire Ben.”
“We always have a choice,” I say.
“Did you say 'hire Ben?'” Ben asks. “Hire me for what?”
“A job,” Hunter snaps at Ben before telling me, “You had a
choice, too.”
Superiority, control, power oozes from him, and just steams me up more. “Not exactly. Ben was afraid.”
“Ben has nothing to be afraid of.”
“Yeah? Then why was he so afraid I’d already told you about the game?”
“A job?” Ben asks, as if still processing that quietly.
“Yeah,” Hunter answers. “A job.”
I’m holding my breath, having realized what I’d said, hoping he doesn’t catch on. The glare he casts at me tells me he has. Crap.
“What do you mean by already told me?” He points a finger my way. “When did you know about the game?”
“Yesterday,” I answer regrettably.
“Yesterday? And you didn’t bother telling me? You knew this morning and you didn’t bother telling me my son was a thief?”
“He’s not a thief.” I’m not sure who I’m defending, Ben or myself. “It was a mistake.”
Hunter nods, the inner fury and struggle clear in his expression.
“A job where?” Ben asks, clearly so astonished by the idea that nothing else is entering his mind. “Doing what? Why?”
“Working at the bakery!” Hunter answers. “So you can pay off the damages to Wendy's van and the cake that got ruined.”
My heart goes out to Ben, but I hold my tongue, mainly because something else doesn’t seem right.
A sense. A smell. A sixth sense, maybe.
Hunter throws his hands in the air, then lets them slap his sides hard. “That was before I knew about the game. They may not hire you now. Do you know what kind of a black mark that's going to leave? No one wants to hire someone who steals, no matter what kind of petty theft it is.”
I'm about to argue back, tell him that we've had several hires over the years with non-violent felonies on record, but I hold my hand up, catching Hunter’s attention. “Do you smell something...burning?”
He goes stock-still, and silent, then looks at Ben. “You did take that food out of the containers before it went in the oven...right?”
Ben doesn’t have time to respond before Hunter’s rushing past him as an alarm sounds.
“Damn it, Ben!”
I pat Ben’s arm, then follow Hunter. Something's definitely burning. Plastic. Cardboard, too, maybe.
Both have a distinct smell. He runs through the foyer and down a long hallway. I’m on his heels, and enter a kitchen where smoke rolls out of an oven door in thick gray puffs.
One of three oven doors, I should say.
Even in the midst of the stench and chaos, I can’t help but gaze around. I knew this room would be amazing, but holy Toledo, this is beyond a cook’s wildest dream.
It’s not only beautiful, it’s huge, with every modern convenience a person could think of.
Then Ben brushes past me again, furiously trying to help his father.
Snapped back to Earth, I move forward, toward where Hunter has dropped open the door and is waving aside the smoke to see into the oven. Having lived through a thousand kitchen disasters – the number of people who enter culinary school without simple kitchen knowledge is astronomical – I push him aside.
“The first thing you want to do is shut the oven off,” I say, while doing just that. “Go open some doors and windows and shut off the smoke detector!”
Once he’s out of the way, I check for live flames and find none. I open nearby drawers until I find a towel to wave aside enough smoke so I can see into the oven.
Take-out containers. Plastic ones that are melting through the oven grates and paper ones that would have caught flame in a few more seconds.
I pull open the drawer that I’d seen oven mitts in and grab several. “I need a baking sheet. A big one. Hurry!”
Hunter looks confused.
“A pizza pan? Cookie sheet?” I say.
He nods, and a second later, has one in hand. “Put it on top of the stove.” While he does that, I pull out the top grate, set it on the pan, and then pull out the second grate. “Where’s the closest outside door?”
“Down that hall. Right through the dining room.”
I grab the pan with both grates on top of it and bolt, keeping my head to the side because the melting plastic is burning my eyes. The door is open and I carry everything outside to a marble countertop. Holy crap, there’s an entire outdoor kitchen out here. As remarkable as the one inside.
Wishing I had more time to examine things, but knowing I don’t, I head back inside.
The smoke has cleared out considerably, but there are still pieces of plastic on the electric element and the bottom of the oven. “We have to wait for that to cool down a bit. It’ll come off easily enough then.”
“Why didn’t you take the food out of the containers?” Hunter asks Ben.
“We never do,” Ben replies.
“When we eat it right away, Ben!”
“We eat the leftovers out of the containers, too,” Ben says sheepishly.
Hunter sighs, pointing at the stove. “That’s not a microwave. It’s an oven. You could've burned the whole place down!”
“Sure. Then you would've been rid of me for good!” Ben shouts, anger flicking in his eyes. He points at me. “Just like my fake mother. Just like real mom. Fire took her easy. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
He turns, wiping at his face, storming out of the room.
“Ben, for fuck's sake...that’s not what I want. Can't you see I love you, son?” Hunter's words are too late to reach him.
That's when my heart almost breaks for this man. He's standing there, all alone, the stench of smoke in the air, hand against the wall like some dark, wounded beast.
His other hand goes to his head, rubbing one temple. He’d trailed Ben as far as the doorway and stopped. Confused. Defeated. Drained.
It's harrowing.
The compassion I feel right now, the ache inside me, is stronger than I’ve ever known. Just seeing this father and his son tearing each other up from enough mistakes to fill a tragic comedy. I don't even have kids. But it hurts just the same.
I walk up behind him and lay a hand gently on the back of his arm. “Go talk to him. I'll watch this mess.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t know what I’d say.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“No, I won’t. The boy needs space. Fire...it's like a family curse.” Hunter turns slowly, facing me with his gorgeous eyes a sea-dark shade of blue. “He was two when the bigger fire happened. Doesn’t even remember it.”
The pain in his eyes is so raw, so real, it nearly steals my breath away.
“But he’s heard about it,” I say.
He nods. “He was curious, of course. So I told him there'd been a fire, an accident. That his ma died. Nothing anyone could do. Juno just died and we moved here to Minnesota afterward, trying to put together a normal life. Trying like hell to give my son the kind of life Cory would've –”
He stops mid-sentence, his eyes widening like he's said too much.
Cory? It's at the tip of my tongue. But the look he gives me is all warning – Sugar, don't. So I listen.
“Where'd you move from?” I ask, a less dangerous question.
“California.”
I nod, unsure what else to say. I'm totally in over my head.
I shouldn't be so curious. I shouldn't be so concerned. I shouldn't physically ache with the need to help this crazy, clumsy beast put his happy broken family back together again.
“Well, it's your call, Hunter. But maybe...just maybe, you need to tell him more. He's not quite a child anymore. Kids need roots when they're his age. They need to know where they came from while they figure out where they're going.”
Sorrow covers his face like a shadow. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I hiss softly.
“Because I don’t fucking know more, Wendy. I never do.”
He walks past me then, clearly done with this, stopping near the large white marble-topped center island that wouldn't have been in
a kitchen built when this one was. But it looks like it's belonged here since day one.
It's funny how every piece of this house is perfect except for the two men in it.
“He'll ask questions. And I don’t have answers to anything he might ask. I've been looking my whole life.” He sighs heavily. “None.”
“Then that’s what you tell him. You don't know. It's okay not to know something, Hunter. It's human.”
He turns around, settling those lightning blue eyes on me that are full of pain, of uncertainty. I can only imagine what it's like in a man his size. With his brawn and bulk, how strong that turmoil inside him must be.
I don’t have any words of wisdom to give him, so go with my gut. “For him, knowing that you don’t know, it wouldn't be the worst. It's better than for him to think you don’t want him to know the truth, whatever it is.”
He contemplates for a moment, his sharp, chiseled jaw going tight. Then he nods. “That makes sense.”
“Go. Talk to Ben.” I point to the stove. “I’ll get the rest cleaned up. That's more important.”
“Leave it, I’ll –”
“No, it’ll come off now, while it’s still warm. Once it’s completely cold, it may never come off.”
“Sugar, I have cleaners. Three of them. They're professionals and they're perfectly capable of handling a mess like –”
“Then I'm saving them some work,” I say sharply, reaching for a dish towel.
Sensing he needs yet another nudge, I say, “Ben, Hunter. He needs you. He’s your concern right now.”
He nods finally. While he’s walking to the door, I move to the oven and grab two wooden spoons from a carousel utensil holder.
“Thanks, Wendy.”
I glance his way and nod. “No problem. Really.”
On the outside, I’m hoping I look calm and collected. Because on the inside, deep down, hearing him say my name is doing some really crazy things. My heart jackhammers, and butterflies swarm my stomach.
He nods again and then walks down the hall, his heavy footsteps echoing behind him.
I take a deep breath, which doesn’t help. So I just kneel down, wait a few minutes for things to cool down, and stick my head in the oven, concentrating on getting each and every piece of plastic out.