“Thanks for helping my son,” came a voice. Tom looked up, and fell hard.
Melissa Kellogg was beautiful, all long black hair and blue eyes. Twenty when she had Charlie, thirty now, single. “His father is a rat-bastard,” she confided in a whisper, “but I try not to let Charlie know.” She worked as a paralegal, loved her kid, had a flowery tattoo on her neck that flirted with the edge of her blouse.
By the end of the picnic, she’d asked Tom if he wanted to have dinner with the two of them.
He did.
He had dinner with them on Monday as well, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and on Friday, the elder Kelloggs took Charlie for the night, and Tom took Melissa to bed.
He never did get to those national parks.
By September, Tom had a work visa and a TA position at a small college, a step down from his post at University of Manchester, but it seemed like a small price to pay. He moved in with Melissa and Charlie in their duplex in a worn but respectable part of Philadelphia, totally smitten with both of them.
The kid never shut up; he was interested in everything, made obscure references to Jedis and Dr. Who—right up Tom’s alley, in other words. Melissa often used to comment that they were the same mental age. Charlie asked if Tom would build him a tree house, sought his advice on making a car for the soapbox derby and made so many paper airplanes that Melissa complained about not even being able to find a piece of paper for a grocery list.
For a while, it was perfect. A beautiful woman, a great kid, a not-bad job. Incredible sex. His teaching career, which had started off with him beating out thirty-seven other candidates for a fast-track tenure position back in England, didn’t matter so much anymore. For extra money, Tom did a bit of consulting for a guy who made custom airplanes for the wealthy, so it was all good. No, it seemed like Tom had walked straight into a perfect little family.
He’d been in love quite a few times before, starting out with Emily Anne Cartright, his next-door neighbor who broke up with him when they were six. But Melissa...she was special. Amazing in bed—no man would underrate that. Fiery and funny, too. She seemed to like to fight over little things, but given what happened after those spats, Tom grew to love fighting.
And she was a good mum, even if she relied a bit too much on the orange macaroni and cheese that came from a box, even if she let Charlie watch too much television and play violent video games. But she loved him, it was obvious. Fussed over his hair, cooed over his Lego creations, laughed with him at bedtime.
At first, Tom couldn’t quite believe his luck. Why this beautiful woman would be so available was a mystery. She seemed to be the entire package. She seemed...perfect.
She wasn’t, of course.
After the initial blush wore off, Tom started to see that Melissa was a bit of a malcontent. She didn’t like their house, though Tom thought it was pleasant enough. She wanted a different job. Hated her coworkers, felt the company’s policies on sick time, lunch hour and vacation were unfair. In seven years, she’d held eleven jobs, everything from a waitress to a shampooer at a posh salon to a medical assistant. When he suggested she look into something else, she’d snap that she didn’t know what she wanted, then go on to name rather ridiculous ideas, Tom thought—veterinarian or restaurant owner or architect...jobs for which she had no skills or schooling, and no willingness to get them.
And then, after a few months, he felt her discontent latch on to him. It was a terrifying spotlight to be in. She had a way of looking at him, as if calculating just when she’d ask him to move out. If he talked about kids in his classes, she often sighed or started doodling, her boredom clear. Whereas Tom loved the normalcy of their lives, of watching movies with Charlie on Friday nights and taking a bike ride through the city on Sundays, Melissa wanted to go out, hear a band, party, that American word for get pissed. Their first big fight came when her parents couldn’t babysit, and she wanted to leave Charlie home alone.
“We can’t do that,” Tom had said. “He’s too young.”
“I think I can make up my own mind about my son,” she said icily. “He’s almost eleven.”
“It’s the law,” Tom answered.
“Fine. Stay home, then. You like him better than me, anyway. I’m not just gonna sit around and grow mold.” And she had gone out, and hadn’t come back till 4:00 a.m., when Tom had been debating whether to call the police. But she’d been apologetic and sweet, took him to bed, then said she was sorry about staying out so late; she’d just had a lot of stress lately and needed to blow off steam.
Which, it became apparent, she had to do quite often.
By Christmas, Tom was aware that he probably should’ve taken things a bit more slowly with Melissa. The problem was, he was crazy about her kid, and Charlie adored him right back. And that, it seemed, was becoming a reason for Melissa to break up with him.
She was jealous.
One day, when Melissa had called out sick from work (again), Charlie burst through the door after school, yelling, “Tom! Tom! Tomtomtom!” a paper clutched in his hand.
“Don’t you mean, Mom, Mom, Mommommom?” Melissa said in a nasty voice. “Or is Tom your mommy now?” It didn’t register to her that Tom, with his teacher’s schedule, had been the adult who’d greeted him at home for months now. Nor did she ask about the paper, which had been Charlie’s spelling test: an A+, the first time he’d gotten all his words right, thanks in large part to Tom helping him study.
Another time, she said, “Charlie, honey, let’s go out for ice cream, just you and me.” She cut Tom a glance. “Just family.” But that night, when they got back, and Charlie was sticky with marshmallow, she’d given Tom a kiss and handed him a half-melted hot-fudge sundae, the ice cream oozing down the sides of the Styrofoam container.
And that was the problem. If she’d been beastly all the time, he would’ve left...probably. But those moments, he wanted very much to believe, showed the true Melissa, the one who didn’t complain, trash-talk her coworkers and parents, didn’t flare up in temper for no apparent reason. She’d been a single mother since twenty, lived at home with her parents until just two years ago...she was still adjusting, maybe. She was smart. Sharply funny. When she was nice, she was utterly fantastic.
When she wasn’t, she went for days without speaking to him, bending over backward to be supersweet to Charlie, almost as if proving who the real parent was.
So, being a man, and therefore idiotic about matters of the heart, Tom figured he should propose.
Right.
That went right up there in the Great Decisions of Tom’s Life along with the time he’d tried to skateboard down a metal railing, ending up with a bruised scrotum that hurt for three weeks.
But propose he did. He bought a ring, got a dozen red roses, dressed in his one and only suit and went to her workplace, figuring she’d like a big fuss. Got down on one knee and asked the big question, and when she said, “Holy shit, Tom,” he took that as a yes. So did everyone else, because they laughed and cheered and congratulated her, and she did seem happy, blushing and looking at the ring.
And that worked, for a while. She liked going dress shopping and tasting cakes and crossing people off the guest list when they irritated her, then putting them back on later (or not).
But, Tom noticed, she was also growing more distant. They had sex less often. She went out more with the girls, and stayed out later. And then came the phone calls, when she’d leap to answer and then say, “Hold on a minute,” before dashing to the loo to talk, always locking the door behind her.
By the time April rolled around, Tom was fairly positive she was having an affair. “Melissa, are you sure you want to marry me?” he said one night as they lay in the dark, not touching.
“Oh, great.” She sighed. “Yes, Tom, I want to marry you. I said I did, didn’t I? Can you not be an old woman about this?”
/> He almost broke up with her a dozen times. But who was he fooling? If he ended things, he’d lose Charlie, and that was an intolerable thought. Maybe it was why she stayed with him as well—she might make snide references to the boys’ club, but her son adored Tom, and for the first time, Charlie had a steady male influence in his life, and Melissa, in one of her nicer moments, acknowledged that Tom was good for her boy.
But those moments were becoming more and more rare.
Then came the Friday that Tom came home to find her throwing some clothes into an overnight bag. “I’m going away for the weekend with a friend,” she said with a quick glance. “You’ll be around, right? Charlie hates staying with my parents.”
“Where are you going?” he asked. “Which friend?”
“Can you not interrogate me, please?” she snapped.
“Melissa,” he began, “I think I have a right to know where you’re going.”
She sighed. Stopped folding her clothes. He couldn’t help notice that her trashiest underwear was in the suitcase. “Look, Tom,” she said slowly. “I need a little thinking time. Okay? So don’t ask too many questions, because I just need some space, and I’ll see you Sunday.”
“Can I come, Mom?” asked Charlie from the doorway.
“Not this time, baby,” she said, hefting her bag off the bed. “I’ll bring you a present, though, okay? Now smooch me.” Charlie obliged, and the two of them went out on the porch to watch her leave.
“Go back inside,” she ordered. “It’s chilly out here. Bye! See you Sunday.”
They obeyed. “What should we do tonight?” Charlie asked. “Can we go to the movies?”
“Yeah, sure, mate,” Tom said. “Let me, uh, let me just get the paper to check the times, all right?”
He went outside, into the little yard, scrubbing his hand across the back of his neck.
There she was, four houses down, pulling her suitcase behind her. At the intersection sat a blue muscle car, one of those growling Detroit monsters. A man got out, opened the door for her, tossed her bag in the back, then got in the driver’s seat, and they were gone.
Tom closed his mouth, tasting bile.
So she was having an affair. He’d known it in his heart, but seeing it was the equivalent to a left hook to the kidneys.
“He didn’t even come in,” came Charlie’s voice. Tom turned. The boy’s face was pale, his funny little eyebrows knit together.
“Who, mate?” he asked, his voice hollow.
“My dad.”
* * *
MELISSA DIDN’T ANSWER her phone, though Tom left eleven messages, telling her Charlie had seen them and wanted to know very badly why his parents hadn’t taken him along. The bitterness in Tom’s own voice was shocking. One thing to be a bit of a whore, right? Another to be whoring around with your son’s father and not even bother having the man come in and say hello to the lad. Oh, and let’s not forget, asking your fiancé to babysit your kid while you were busy shagging someone else.
But when she didn’t come home on Sunday, he waited till Charlie was watching the telly, then bit the bullet and called Janice Kellogg.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said when he told her what Charlie had said. “Will she ever learn?”
Ever since she’d first met Mitchell DeLuca, Janice said, he’d been like crack. On again, off again, on again, off again, the man waltzing into Charlie’s life, then disappearing for another year, sometimes more. Just enough to really screw the kid up.
“Any idea where she might be? Charlie’s worried. Not eating, either.”
“I have no idea,” Janice said, sounding irritated rather than concerned. “Tom, if I could tell you how often this happens... We almost said something to you, Walter and I. I’m sure she’ll come back, though. She’s never left for more than a few days before those two have another huge fight and decide they hate each other again. Until they decide they can’t live without each other, that is.”
Bloody great. “Thanks.” He hung up and glanced in the living room, where some show with a loud laugh track was playing. Charlie was staring straight ahead. The little guy hadn’t said much since he’d seen his parents together. Tom started pushing in the numbers of Melissa’s friends, bleeding a little more dignity with every call.
Melissa never did come back.
According to Mitchell DeLuca, and the police report, they’d had a big fight, yelling loudly enough for the people in the next motel room to hear. Melissa had a few drinks. Took a walk. Decided to send Tom a text.
Tom, you won’t be
That was when the car hit her, killing her instantly.
Awkward, being the cuckolded fiancé at the wake, standing next to the casket of the woman you thought you’d marry, right next to her parents and lover/ex-husband. Going home to her white-faced child, feeling like your throat was clenched in God’s fist. Utterly fucking helpless.
Mitchell DeLuca came over after the funeral. “I’d like to talk to my son,” he told Tom amiably.
And Tom, who had once knocked out Great Britain’s top-ranked middle-weight fighter with one punch, stood aside and let him come in.
Charlie seemed to have shrunk since his mother left, but his face lit up at the sight of his father, and Tom’s heart lost another healthy chunk. “I’ll, um, I’ll start supper,” he said, going into the kitchen. That way he could eavesdrop from amid the casseroles left by the nice women from Aunt Candy’s church.
“Am I gonna live with you now, Dad?” Charlie asked, and damn it all if tears didn’t come to Tom’s eyes. Say yes, you bastard, he ordered Mitchell.
“Buddy, I wish you could,” and Tom could practically feel the boy’s heart break for the second time that week.
His lifestyle, Mitchell told his son, wasn’t right for a kid. He traveled too much. He was sorry, though. Told Charlie to study hard in school, then ruffled his hair, stood up and simply left.
Tom gave it two seconds, then went into the living room. “You all right, mate?”
“He’s really sad he can’t take me,” Charlie whispered, and Tom had to fight not to run after the guy and beat him to a bloody pulp.
“Absolutely,” he said instead. “You can tell he loves you a lot, though.”
“I know,” Charlie said, and it was the first time Tom heard the hatred in the little sweet voice he’d come to love.
Tom asked the Kelloggs if he could adopt Charlie. They said no. After all, Tom hadn’t even known Charlie a year. What would a twenty-nine-year-old man want with a ten-year-old boy, anyway? He could come visit, if he wanted to.
So Charlie moved in with his grandparents, and as they walked out of the little duplex for the last time, Charlie turned to him. For a second, Tom thought the boy might hug him.
He was wrong. “Why were you so mean to her?” he screamed, throwing himself on Tom, punching him, scratching his face. “You made her leave! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”
Charlie got grief counseling. It didn’t seem to work. Living in a different part of town meant he went to a different school, which didn’t make matters easier—a dead mum, an idiot father and now separated from his classmates. Tom kept visiting doggedly, watching as the little boy he loved became more and more withdrawn. Charlie seemed to be disappearing, not to mention aging overnight. No longer did he want to watch sci-fi movies or make model airplanes or kick around a soccer ball. His mother was dead, his father didn’t want him, his grandparents were doing only their duty and Tom...Tom was the reason for this whole mess.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A WEEK AFTER she’d moved into Tom Barlow’s house, Honor was thinking that she must’ve been insane (possible), drunk (improbable) or really, really pathetic (bingo) to have agreed to the whole idea.
For seven days now, she and Tom had spent evenings together.
Mostly silent evenings. She came home from work, he came home from work. They exchanged the politest of pleasantries. They took turns making dinner. She would have a glass of wine. Tom would have a beer...or a glass of whiskey. Sometimes more than one (she tried not to count). They’d eat. Conversation was sparse; Tom seemed tense, and Honor definitely was. Then they’d go hide in opposite corners, Honor working on the details for the Black and White Ball, Tom correcting papers or making up lesson plans.
Household chores were shared, and Honor was pleased to find that Tom was tidy, even if he made his bed crookedly (hers looked like a magazine photo, thank you very much). He rinsed the sink out after shaving and owned a vacuum cleaner.
They watched a movie one night, but each of them appeared to be the polite type who didn’t talk during movies, so it hadn’t exactly been a bonding experience. “Good film” had been Tom’s comment, and Honor had agreed with “Yes. It was.”
On Tuesday, Charlie came over, and Tom had been manically cheerful, ignoring the fact that Charlie didn’t answer questions, eat dinner or make eye contact. “How’s school going?” Honor asked. He grunted in response. “Do you have Mrs. Parrish for English?” He sighed and nodded once. “She was my teacher, too.” Charlie dragged his eyes to her face as if to say, And why would I care? “Does she still smell like menthol?” A shrug.
“Charlie. Answer, mate,” Tom said.
“Yes. Mrs. Parrish still smells.”
“How about some grape pie?” she offered. She’d baked it in honor of this painful evening, hoping it would go better than it had thus far.
“He hasn’t finished his dinner,” said Tom.
She looked at the kid. “Well, it’s a special occasion. Your first dinner with us. So maybe we can bend the rules, Tom.”
Blue Heron [2] The Perfect Match Page 17