“My girls ain’t at that center,” Logan cut in tersely. “They’re livin’ with their mom.”
“Yes, I know that, dear, but the trip would be open to any children who’ve been through… what your girls have. I can make the arrangements with your wife, I’m sure she’ll be agreeable. All of the kids always have such a good time.”
As much to shut the woman up as for his daughters’ sake, Logan agreed to the suggestion and was relieved to see Ciera start to make her way to the door. She shook his hand, promising once again to clear things with Linda, and tripped gaily up the steps.
Logan figured he was home free until she turned around on the third step. “I hope you don’t mind—I know you’re not a religious man, but I am praying for you, Logan. It can’t hurt, right?”
“Nope, can’t hurt.” He squinted up into the glare of the sun setting behind her. “Can’t see that it’s helped much either.”
“Oh, I’m sure it has. In some way we can’t even see yet. God’s mercy is often hard to recognize at first. Mysterious ways and all that.”
And finally she was gone, leaving Logan to wonder about those mysterious ways. He concluded that if God was trying to hide a recent act of mercy, He was doing a bang-up job of it.
Chapter 5:
Half Reveal and Half Conceal
Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
THAT SUNDAY, Nick was feeling in desperate need of his planned diversion. With Agnes having had two good days in a row, Nick felt relatively secure in leaving her alone for a short while. He dashed over to Adam’s place, wondering if his assessment of his mom’s condition was more blind hope than reality. He shrugged that concern off, figuring that if Agnes got worried or confused, she’d just ring his cell phone. Of all the things his mom habitually forgot, his number was never one of them—a fact that was equal parts blessing and curse.
When forty-five minutes of energetic sex didn’t entirely quiet his restless mind, and with his cell phone resolutely silent, Nick gladly accepted Adam’s invitation to cap off their afternoon with a beer at Sully’s, Adam’s favorite sports bar. An hour later, his gambit for distraction proved worthless. Nick was staring into his beer mug, his mind running over Norah’s last session while the room around him exploded with joy.
Adam punched him in the arm, exclaiming, “Hey, what the fuck! Wake up, dude. Doumit just hit a triple. The Pirates might actually win a game, and you’re missin’ it!”
Nick glanced up at the score flashing on the screen. “Wow, when did they grab the lead?”
“Last inning, where the hell were you?”
With a guilty shrug, Nick admitted, “A million miles away.”
“Why?” Adam settled back onto his barstool. “Is it somethin’ with your mom?”
“Not really. It’s work.” He shifted to face Adam directly, saying, “See, I’m worried about how I’m handling something with Norah.”
“Your boss?” Adam asked distractedly, his attention back on the TV where the Pirate hitter was striking out to end the inning. “Fuck! Sure could’a used ’nother insurance run—the Reds have the top of the order coming up.” As the players trotted off the field, he refocused on Nick. “Sorry, you were sayin’ somethin about your boss….”
“No, you idiot,” Nick laughed fondly. “Trudy is my boss. Norah is a client of mine. The one I picked up—”
Polishing his beer off with total unconcern, Adam wiped his mouth on the side of his hand before interrupting, “Trudy, Norah…. Chick names all sound the same to me.” He signaled the bartender to bring two more beers before saying, “Come on, don’t waste a great afternoon worryin’ ’bout work. Lighten up. You just had a seriously good fuck.” He paused to look in Nick’s eyes as he murmured, “It was good, wasn’t it?”
“You know it, ” Nick confirmed.
“Of course,” Adam crowed. “Though if you were still ‘itchy’,” he drawled, elbowing Nick slightly and nodding towards the very end of the bar, “I could recommend some time with that guy.”
Nick studied the muscular black man Adam had discreetly indicated, asking, “One of your many conquests?”
With a saucy wink, Adam answered, “Oh, yeah. Guy can suck like a Hoover in heat.”
Trying not to seem ungrateful for the suggestion, Nick laughed slightly and said, “No, I’m good. Or… we were.”
“Okay, then. So your itch is fully scratched, and now our perpetually awful baseball team is about to beat the Reds. What more could you ask for?”
Expelling a sigh, Nick answered, “Confirmation that I’m getting through to Norah?”
Adam pointed to Nick’s beer, saying, “How ’bout confirming that you’ll have that finished before that next one gets here?” Nick gave his head a bemused shake but did drain his mug while Adam continued, “I’m sure you’re doin’ the right thing—whatever it is. And even if it ain’t, geez, you give enough to that place. Don’t be worryin’ about it on your day off. I see guys at the gym yakkin’ on their cells to work while they’re tryin’ to do the Stairmaster or somethin’, and it ain’t healthy. Ya know?”
“Yeah, I see what you’re sayin’, but I’m not tryin’ to close a merger or make a million dollars; I’m dealin’ with a person. I know Trudy says I’m coddling Norah, but I can’t help but think—”
“Whatever it is, it can wait ’til tomorrow.” Adam accepted their beers from the bartender, adroitly flipping him a twenty and saying, “Keep ’em coming.” Then he pointed at the TV, saying to Nick, “Do yourself a favor. Worry about Dickerson coming up with one on and no outs and forget about ACC for one fucking afternoon. Deal?”
Knowing it was useless to argue with Adam in this instance, Nick nodded and resolutely fastened his attention back onto the game. Besides, whatever the impulse of the moment, he had never intended to pour out his doubts and misgivings about Norah to his friend. After all, it wasn’t Adam’s job to be that kind of sounding board.
AT CLASS that Thursday, Nick began to think Trudy and Adam were right. Norah seemed, if anything, cheerful to the point of effervescence. She even volunteered to drive Tish and Cheryl back to ACC again. Nick tried to hide his eagerness as he asked, “You sure?”
Norah shrugged. “Yeah, why not? It’s a lot closer to my place than yours, right?”
“Thanks.” Nick wasn’t sorry to forgo the drive that tacked forty minutes onto the end of a long day.
Tish jumped into the front seat, saying, “I’m gonna be getting my own car soon’s I get that job at The Carlton. Then I won’t need the ‘Nick and Norah’ taxi service.”
“Hey,” Cheryl interjected as she took her place in the back, “Nick and Norah—just like in them old-time movies.”
A grinning Norah slid into the driver’s seat. “Except she wasn’t blonde,” she said while fluffing her hair in a pose of mock glamour.
“And he sure wasn’t gay,” countered Nick, thumping the car’s roof in a farewell gesture. When he swung back to the shop’s entrance, intending to firm up plans for working on the car that Sunday, he saw Logan already standing there, still holding a ratchet wrench, with a guarded frown marring his handsome face.
Oh, not this shit again. He was mentally preparing a tirade about Logan getting over himself about “the gay thing” when their eyes met and Nick was stopped dead—again—by the blue-fire ache he found there. “Somethin’ wrong?” When the only answer was Logan’s sudden interest in the wrench he was toying with, Nick grimly offered, “If you can’t make it on Sunday—”
Logan looked up sharply. “No, I’ll be here.” He reseated his baseball cap more firmly before adding, “Anyways, I was thinkin’ ’bout this Kennywood trip of yours—”
“How did you know about that?”
“That Sister Ciera—she told me. She arranged for my girls to go on it.”
“Oh.” Until that moment, Nick hadn’t realized that the last-minute additions belonged to Logan. “I didn’
t know…. I guess I forgot you even had kids.”
“Yep—Krista and Meghan.”
As he scratched at his stubbled chin in puzzlement, Nick said, “Ciera left me a note, said the kids were twelve and ten.”
“Uh huh, that’s right.”
Nick tried to remember a birth date from the quick look he’d had at Logan’s file Could’a swore we were born the same year. “Aren’t you kinda young to have kids that old?”
Logan tucked the wrench into his back pocket while saying, “Me and Linda was both twenty when our first was born.”
“Huh, that’s the same age I finally picked a major,” Nick muttered while his thoughts flew to his cousins in Kittanning and Freeport, most of whom had also married soon after high school. For the first time ever, he wondered whether—gay or not—only his escape to a college in Pittsburgh had “protected” him from a similar fate. Figuring the time wasn’t opportune for that kind of introspection, Nick decided to bring the original subject back around. “You were saying, about the Kennywood trip?”
“Yeah, so I was thinking,” Logan said while pulling a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket. He kept his eyes on the money as he extended it towards Nick, continuing, “You could get ’em an ice cream cone or somethin’.” He finally looked up from under his lashes, finishing, “Tell ’em it’s from their dad.”
At that moment, Nick felt a chunk of the ice wall he’d doggedly erected against this man melt away—and no stern self-reminders had the power to halt the thaw. He reluctantly waved the money off, saying, “They won’t need it. We give all the kids food vouchers,” adding with a laugh, “Plenty enough to make sure one or two of ’em throws up on the way home.”
Clearly crestfallen, Logan tucked the money away, mumbling, “Uh. Okay.”
Pressed by a sudden need to offer consolation, Nick blurted, “Why don’t you come with us? Tracy, one of the other chaperones, dropped out yesterday, and twenty kids’s a lot for me an’ Ciera to handle alone.”
“I don’t think I could….” Logan’s gaze was fixed on a spot over Nick’s shoulder.
The man’s obvious discomfort jogged Nick’s memory as to his situation; he immediately surmised that Logan was restricted to supervised visitation. “It’s not like you’d be alone with ’em. I mean, I could clear it with Trudy, see what she says.”
The faintest smile lifted the corner of Logan’s mouth. “Ya think?”
“Sure.” Nick’s own smile turned mischievous. “But you an’ Ciera’re getting stuck with the ‘Kiddieland crowd’.”
TRUDY NOT only approved of the idea, she steamrolled over any objections of the visitation mediator. So it was that on Saturday morning, Logan found himself nervously studying the gaudy carousel horse perched in the middle of a fountain at Kennywood’s entrance. Nick had told him that the group would be taking one of the city buses to the park; Logan had driven there and wasn’t sure where the bus shelter was, but he figured he’d spot them easily from his current vantage point.
However, when the group finally arrived, it was his younger daughter who spotted him. She started shrieking “Daddy!” from fifty feet away and was dragging Sister Ciera, who was only slightly taller than Meghan, by the hand towards him, with Krista close behind. Logan reveled in his daughters’ hugs and smiles and drew solace from their company that had previously been dimmed by Marie’s frowning presence.
Logan looked up from Meghan to find another smiling face directed his way—Nick Zales’s. He tried to ignore the surge of blood in his veins by gruffly introducing him to the girls. “Hey, girls, this is Mr. Zales.” He put one hand on each girl’s shoulder as he continued, “Nick, these are my daughters, Krista and Meghan.”
After exchanging a quiet hello with the girls, Nick turned to Logan. “Good to see you here. I’m glad it all worked out for you.”
“Yeah, me too.” Only after Nick was pulled away by two other ebullient kids did Logan think that he should have thanked the man for championing his participation in the outing. For a second, Logan felt a flush of shame at his apparent show of ingratitude but shrugged it off, figuring he’d catch up with Nick sometime during the day.
Twenty minutes later, the group was inside the park, with Ciera herding the younger children and Nick efficiently barking orders at the older crew. The plan was for Nick to take all the teenagers on the roller coasters and other teeth-jarring attractions while Logan and Sister Ciera did the tamer rides with the younger crowd. At two p.m. the whole group would meet for a late lunch at the Parkside Café before splitting off again.
Logan wondered how Nick was going to handle nine rowdy teenagers but fast observed that they took his directions seriously; even the boys quieted down to a low rumble while Nick laid out the day’s plans. Logan noticed Krista looking wistfully at the older group that was milling around at Nick’s right. He leaned over, saying, “If you wanta go with them, it’s all right by me.”
Krista shook her head decisively, saying, “No, I’ll help you and Sister Ciera with the little kids.” Logan was glad that he’d have both his daughters with him for the morning but was equally glad her sister hadn’t heard that label. Especially since one of the older boys, Jesse, was teasing his younger sister, Darcy, about going on “the baby rides.”
The little firebrand stuck her tongue out at her sibling, defiantly saying, “We’re goin’ on the Phantom’s Revenge, too!”
“Yeah, the sucky one,” Jesse taunted back.
Suddenly Nick appeared at Jesse’s side, slinging a friendly arm around his shoulder. “Sounds like you don’t wanta go see the Pirates with me next month, after all.”
Sheepishly, Jesse asked, “Is your friend gettin’ us those great seats again?”
Another boy piped up, “Hey Nick, I’ll take his ticket!”
Nick threw a glance over his shoulder, saying, “I already said you could come, Ben.”
“Yeah, but I could scalp his ticket.”
Shaking his head with evident amusement, Nick retorted, “It’s the Pirates, I don’t think you’re gonna make much money.” He turned back to Jesse, saying, “But I’m sure we could find someone who wants Jesse’s ticket. Maybe Darcy….”
Jesse gave the matter exactly three seconds of thought before turning to his sister and mumbling an apology of doubtful sincerity. But it satisfied Darcy, and the two groups parted peaceably.
Two hours later, Logan and Sister Ciera were lounging on a bench while their charges stood in line at the famous Potato Patch, waiting for a serving of the legendary fries. Logan looked at the vouchers all the kids were clutching and wondered how the center could afford to splurge like this. “All of this must cost a lotta money, huh?”
“Oh, yes, but so worth it. Nick raises money for months—organizing a car wash and dozens of raffles. Plus he always gets the park to donate most of the admission fee.” A smile lit her dark eyes and olive-skinned face as she commented, “All in all, Nick is a commendable young man.”
Pondering the qualifier, Logan cleared his throat and murmured, “Ya mean even though… even with him bein’… gay?”
It took Ciera a second to parse the last word, as low as it had been uttered, but finally comprehension dawned, and she trilled, “Oh, there is that, too.” Rolling her eyes slightly, she said, “No, I was thinking more…. Well, let’s just say Nick and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on matters of rehabilitation.”
That word currently had only unhappy associations for Logan, so he was glad when Ciera veered into tales of trips from years past and talked nonstop as the kids wended their way up to the French fry counter.
There was no opportunity for Logan to speak to Nick at lunch, since his daughters insisted their dad sit with them and a couple of their new friends. Nick seemed fully occupied with monitoring the kids anyway, stepping in to prevent what seemed to be an impending food fight between Jesse and one of the older boys.
At the end of the day, Logan walked his daughters to the bus stop and looked around for Nick. Once again, the
re was no chance for a private exchange; Nick was busy handing out bus tokens to the kids. Following in his wake were four of the teenagers, all peppering him with questions about the impending trip to PNC Park.
Feeling as exhausted as he usually did after a twelve-hour workday, Logan exchanged a weary wave with Nick as the group trooped past him and onto the bus. Though all three adults and the young children were clearly fatigued, the older kids seemed—if possible—more hyper. Logan didn’t envy Nick and Ciera their task of seeing them all safely home.
On the short drive back to North Braddock, Logan pondered the effort Nick expended to arrange these outings. He had to admit, the kids unquestionably seemed to appreciate it. Some even seemed to have a near case of hero worship for their benefactor. Suddenly, Logan wondered if those teenage boys hanging all over Nick knew that the counselor was a gay man. At first he thought it wasn’t possible, but then Logan remembered that big mouth Tish. He couldn’t imagine she left anyone at ACC in the dark about any information she possessed.
His tired mind couldn’t reconcile the incongruous notions, so he followed his usual procedure of shoving it all behind a heavily bolted mental door that blocked off a dark corner of his brain. Unfortunately for Logan, that corner was getting pretty crowded these days, and that door was becoming ever more difficult to close.
THE NEXT day, Logan arrived at Acken’s shop at nine a.m. to find a yawning Nick lounging on the desk, downing a super-sized cup of coffee. Feeling a pang of sympathy, he asked, “When’d you get to bed?”
Nick gave a weary shake of his head, answering “Don’t ask” around the rim of his cup. A second later, after he’d drained the cup, he leapt up, announcing, “Let’s get to work.”
That sounded good to Logan, so they fell to; the initial work was more painless than he could have imagined. First, the car was in better shape than he had feared; they sailed through the drivetrain inspection, wherein he was relieved to note that the clutch and pressure plate were in tolerable shape. The next step was to take the car out for a spin so that he could see if there were any problems with shifting or grinding during gear changes.
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