by Kaje Harper
I glanced at Nate. He asked, “Did your friend get where he was going? The one in the store?”
“Leon? Yeah.” I’d gotten a text from him yesterday. “In time and all. His mom made it through surgery. She’s still sick.” I wasn’t saying the C-word in this house, although Leon hoped the surgeon might’ve got it all. “But he’s with her. It was important.”
“His mom?” Nate’s surprise reminded me I hadn’t given him an explanation, but he just said, “Okay.” He turned to Tommy. “Uncle Donnie’s that guy, who brought the dog.” His expression maybe said something about a truce or even regrets. I wasn’t sure what he saw in mine. “Go on. Give that to him.”
Tommy trotted over and held up the envelope.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks.” My fingers were too clumsy to rip it open and after a moment of fumbling, Adam took it from me and lifted the flap, then passed it back. It was a printout of some construction company’s webpage.
“The owner is a friend of a friend,” Mr. L said. “I asked him if he was willing to take you on if I vouched for you. He’s a good guy. He’s hired other people who needed a second chance. He said he’d give you a two-week trial starting in January, simple work like painting. If you work as hard as I said, he’ll keep you on and you can look into training or apprenticeship with him.”
“I—” I read it over again, the details blurring. “It’s in Minneapolis?”
“Yeah. That’s where you’re heading, isn’t it?”
I turned and looked at Adam. He had so damned much hope in his eyes, way too much to be riding on me. But I couldn’t turn that down. “Yeah. That’s my plan.”
“Well, then, you’ll need a job.”
Adam stage-whispered to his dad, “You’re totally upstaging me. All I bought him was a parka to keep him warm.”
I said, “You keeping me warm is real good.” Then flushed as everyone laughed. “I mean, thank you, Mr. L. I won’t let you down, I promise.”
Adam leaned against me. “Donnie always keeps his promises.”
Tommy tugged on my shirt, pointing at my arm. “You have a picture on you.”
I squatted, pushing my sleeve back. “I do. It’s a tattoo, see?” A couple of spots still had little scabs, but it looked pretty good.
The kid touched it with one finger. “A capperpill?”
“Caterpillar. Yeah. See, it’s coming out of the cage. One day it’ll grow wings.”
“Wings?”
“Caterpillars become butterflies,” Pam said.
“I like buffies.” Tommy patted my arm.
“Or it might be a moth,” I said. “Which is also cool, right, kid?” Because not everything in life got be a butterfly. Not everything wanted to. Adam gazed down at me, a soft smile curving his lips. I looked right back at him, hoping my own smile showed everything I wanted him to see.
Tommy tugged my sleeve, breaking the moment. “What’s a moth?”
I was never great with little kids, but this was Adam’s nephew, and he was kinda cute. I pulled out my phone and spent some megabyte bucks to get online for pictures. Then I sat on the floor, because the rugrat was damned short, and showed him one. “This, see, kind of like a butterfly, but they come out at night.”
“Furry?”
“Well, some are. Some not.” I flipped through. “Like this. See the pretty stripes?”
“Moth.” He put a sticky fingerprint on my screen.
Not like it was precious. I wiped it on my elbow and found another fancy one.
Adam squatted beside me, his thigh warm against my hip. “It’s a fun thing about caterpillars,” he said. “You don’t always know what will come out of them. But it’s usually something good.” He ran his hand over my arm, his fingertips winter-dry and gentle. I wanted to kiss him, but we had a kid and a parent watching, and a bunch of stuff still under the tree. Wrong moment. Instead I bumped him with my shoulder, hard enough he had to grab onto me for balance. And I vowed to hatch something good out of this unexpected future I’d been granted, even if it was just the best fucking brown and gray hawk moth the world had ever fucking seen.
Three Months Later
Adam
Donnie’s phone rang as we turned off the freeway onto the county road. I was driving, so he was free to answer it if he wanted to. He made a face, because the ringtone was Sixteen Tons, which he’d assigned to the guys from his support group. But he dug in his pocket and looked at the screen.
“Luke?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He answered the call. “This better be good.”
I listened with half an ear. Luke was one of the younger guys in Out, the gay ex-con group Donnie had chosen when his boss made him pick one. Several of the guys in it were young, late teens or just past, hiding fears behind cocky attitudes. Despite being a few months shy of twenty-five, Donnie had fallen into a mentor role, and I thought that was doing him even more good than the meetings.
“No,” he snapped. “Listen, you fuckhead, you do not need one of your brother’s Xanax… Yeah, it’s important not to screw up the interview, but you won’t get the job if you come over as a space cadet… Yeah, you do… Fuck that. You’ll nail it… I’m out of town for a couple days… Look, call me after, and keep your fucking paws off the drugs, right? …Yeah, good luck, man.” He tapped off.
“Job interview?”
“Yeah, he finally got a callback. Of course, he’s nervous as hell.”
I tapped his thigh. “He wants you to come hold his hand.” Luke was not just a member of the Donnie Is Awesome fan club, he was also president of the I Want to Get Into Donnie’s Pants chapter. I was more amused than worried, watching Donnie try to smack him down without hurting his ego too badly. “Or hold other things.”
“He’s out of luck.” Donnie wound his fingers through mine. “Only one guy I do shit like that with.” His phone chimed with a message. “What the fuck now?” He let go, glanced at it, then laughed.
“What?”
“Your Dad bought Willow another sweater. Jesus Christ, that dog has more clothes than I do. She looks like an Easter egg.”
I had to laugh. Dad still had his dark times, but he was running the nursery with Nate again, looking forward to spring. He’d put a pet section into the craft store, and it was doing surprisingly well. He was clearly not the only person in Tallbridge who got pleasure out of spoiling their dog. “She won’t care what she looks like.”
“True.”
I turned off the county road onto Fullcrest Drive. The road was packed with ridges of ice, and I slowed as the back end slipped a bit.
“Slower.”
I glanced over and saw Donnie’s fingers clenched white on his knee. The sight made me ache, though I tried to hide it. Donnie got his license back because he needed it for work, but the first time we got in the car with him in the driver’s seat and me beside him, he just held the wheel and shook. About the time I was going to suggest we switch, he put it in gear and drove off like a little old lady going to church, just far enough to say he’d done it. He still preferred me to drive, and he was the world’s worst backseat driver. I slowed a bit more and glanced at him.
He smiled, looking sheepish because he knew he was nagging me, just not ready to stop doing it.
“I’m doing thirty-five in a fifty zone,” I said. “Is that slow enough?”
He smacked my leg. “Eyes on the road.”
I turned in at the strip mall with Maggie’s tattoo parlor. The mounds of snow piled up in the parking lot were melting, but they were still higher than the car, and the lot was ice-ridged. I parked carefully up to the curb. “Watch when you get out. It’s slick.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Donnie popped the door and got out, stretching. I took a discreet moment to admire, before getting out myself. Few sights were finer than Donatello Kagan twisting and bending in the bright sunshine. Well, unless we were in our bedroom at the apartment and he was doing it naked. I swung out into the cold afternoon before I could get too far into that ima
ge.
“Ready?”
“Hell, yeah.” He led the way inside.
The same receptionist was there, sketching something on a thick pad. He looked up as we shut the door. “Hey. Kagan?”
“That’s me.” Donnie stripped off his hoodie.
“Got the forms for you.” The guy pushed a clipboard across the desk. “Just the one of you?”
“Yeah.” Donnie reached for a pen.
Maggie came through from the back as he was signing the sheet. “Hey, Donnie, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“And Adam. Good to see you back.” She grinned at me. “I told you you wouldn’t stop with just one.”
“I’m holding off this time.” Although just being there, with the framed art concepts on the wall, woke a little itch in me. Way, way too soon to tattoo something of Donnie on my skin, even if I was certain he was deep under that same skin and staying there. But maybe not too soon to start planning it.
“I want to finish mine,” Donnie said.
“Come on back.”
When we got to the back room, Lori was working on a leg tattoo for an older woman. She looked up enough to give us a nod, and then went back to her work.
“Have a seat,” Maggie said. “What did you decide on? I saved a good hawk moth picture, just in case.”
“Oh. Thanks! But I wanted something different.”
“Like what?”
Donnie reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an envelope. “You said I could get someone else to do the concept, if I had a signed release for the artwork, right?”
“Yeah.” Maggie sounded less than enthusiastic. “You need to know I can’t always execute someone else’s art the way they drew it. And some images don’t translate to a tattoo well.”
“How about this? The release is in there.”
I hovered close as she opened the envelope. I hadn’t seen the art yet either. One of the guys at Out was an amazing artist. From what Donnie said, the kid needed a lot more confidence. Donnie had asked him to come up with this mystery design. I was pretty sure the mystery part wasn’t because it had my initials or anything in it. Donnie still touched his arm absently sometimes, a cold look in his eyes. He still woke up some nights soaked in sweat or jolted if I touched him wrong in our bed, although he hadn’t rolled out to the floor in over a month now. I had a feeling the last set of initials he’d worn would be more than enough for a lifetime.
But if it wasn’t about me, I was drawing a blank.
Maggie pulled out the page and looked at it. I bumped her arm, trying to see, and she tipped it toward me. On the strip of paper, the existing cage and caterpillar had been rendered as close to life as a photograph. Beyond them, the new piece showed neither a chrysalis, nor a moth or butterfly emerging. Instead, faded olive shards of the caterpillar lay dry and discarded, and rising from them was a sleek, green dragon with the same horn on its head. Its ruby eyes glowed, and a curl of smoke rose from its flared nostrils, while damp-looking black wings unfurled from its back.
“Ooh,” I said. “I like that.”
Donnie turned to me. “Not too cliché?”
“Nope. The caterpillar makes the piece.”
The corner of his mouth turned up.
“I can work with this,” Maggie said. “Nice art. It’ll take me a little while. I want to start by making a stencil, to keep the proportions exact.”
“Got it. That’s fine. We have time.” Donnie sat in her chair.
Maggie raised the arm rest and pushed a stool toward me as she headed to a door at the back. I sat on Donnie’s other side. “Maybe I should get something too. Maybe a unicorn. We can match.”
He flicked my arm with the back of his fingers. “Smart ass.” His expression showed a little uncertainty. “You do like it?”
I grabbed his hand and kissed the back of his fingers. The old lady in the other chair wrinkled her nose, but I figured she was getting stabbed with needles by a lesbian, so she’d be unlikely to comment further. I kissed his hand again, for good measure. “I love it.”
We talked a little bit about Dad and Willow and whether we’d brought the right presents for Tommy’s third birthday. Donnie might pretend he didn’t like hanging around rugrats but he’d chosen more than half of our haul. “Tommy’s going to be excited to see your picture getting bigger.”
“Gonna screw up the kid’s understanding of biology.”
“He’ll survive.”
Maggie came back in the room with a stencil on her hand. Before starting, she lathered up Donnie’s arm to shave it. I was surprised when Donnie linked our fingers together. He didn’t look at me, just stared down at his tattoo, his face blank. I held his hand and tried to imagine what was going on in his mind. Donnie had shared a few bits and pieces of his time behind bars. I didn’t need to know more, as long as he was sharing with someone. His support group did seem to be helping, one way or another. But what did it mean to him, getting this tattoo done?
Maggie wiped his arm carefully and inspected the old ink. “My part came out good, if I do say so myself. We’ll get it done up right. Two hours, I figure. Where are you boys headed after this?”
Donnie said, “Going home for a family birthday. Adam’s nephew.”
“Home is good.” She lifted the stencil, eyeballing the placement.
I held Donnie’s hand, and he didn’t seem eager to pull free. Home was good. But home was no longer Tallbridge and the nursery, not really. It was wherever Donnie and I put our bed and our clothes and, if we ever got a pets-allowed lease, where we’d have our own dog. Home was Donnie’s fingers squeezing mine, and his blue eyes narrowed in concentration, and the catch of his breath. I squeezed back and watched, as Maggie transformed the initials of a man my boyfriend had needed, and hated, into strong new dragon wings. And I let all my hopes take flight.
####
About the Author
I get asked about my name a lot. It’s not something exotic, though. “Kaje” is pronounced just like “cage” – it’s an old nickname. I was born in Montreal but I’ve lived for 30 years in Minnesota, where the two seasons are Snow-removal and Road-repair, where the mosquito is the state bird, and where winter can be breathtakingly beautiful. Minnesota’s a kind, quiet (if sometimes chilly) place and it’s home.
I’ve been writing far longer than I care to admit (*whispers – forty years*), mostly for my own entertainment, usually M/M romance (with added mystery, fantasy, historical, SciFi…) I also have a few Young Adult stories (some released under the pen name Kira Harp.)
My husband finally convinced me that after all the years of writing for fun, I really should submit something, somewhere. My first professionally published book, Life Lessons, came out from MLR Press in May 2011. I have a weakness for closeted cops with honest hearts, and teachers who speak their minds, and I had fun writing four novels and three freebie short stories in that series. I was delighted and encouraged by the reception Mac and Tony received.
I now have a good-sized backlist in ebooks and print, both free and professionally published, including Amazon bestseller The Rebuilding Year and Rainbow Award “Best Mystery-Thriller” Tracefinder: Contact.
I’m always pleased to have readers find me online at:
Website: https://kajeharper.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KajeHarper
Goodreads Author page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4769304.Kaje_Harper
Other Books by Kaje Harper
Self-Published/Indie:
Tracefinder: Contact (Tracefinder #1)
Tracefinder: Changes (Tracefinder #2)
Second Act
The Family We’re Born With (Finding Family #1) - free novella
The Family We Make (Finding Family #2)
Rejoice, Dammit
Unfair in Love and War
(in the charity anthology Another Place in Time)
Not Your Grandfather’s Magic
(in the charity anthology Wish C
ome True)
Audiobook:
Into Deep Waters
(Narrated by Kaleo Griffith)
The Rebuilding Year
(Narrated by Gomez Pugh, coming fall 2017)
Re-releases:
The Rebuilding Year (Rebuilding Year #1)
Life, Some Assembly Required (Rebuilding Year #2)
Building Forever (Rebuilding Year #2.5)
Sole Support
Gift of the Goddess (2018)
From MLR Press:
Life Lessons (Life Lessons #1)
Breaking Cover (Life Lessons #2)
Home Work (Life Lessons #3)
Learning Curve (Life Lessons #4)
Unacceptable Risk (Hidden Wolves #1)
Unexpected Demands (Hidden Wolves #2)
Unjustified Claims (Hidden Wolves #3)
Unsafe Exposure (Hidden Wolves #4)
Storming Love: Nelson & Caleb
Full Circle
Where the Heart Is
Ghosts and Flames
Possibilities
Tumbling Dreams (in the anthology Going For Gold)
Free series stories:
And To All a Good Night (Life Lessons #1.5)
Getting It Right (Life Lessons #1.8)
Compensations (Life Lessons #3.5)
Unsettled Interlude (Hidden Wolves #1.15)
Unwanted Appeal (Hidden Wolves #2.5)
Can’t Hurt to Believe (Into Deep Waters #1.005)
Stand-alone free novels:
Into Deep Waters
Nor Iron Bars a Cage
Chasing Death Metal Dreams
Lies and Consequences
Laser Visions
Changes Coming Down
(in the free anthology Hunting Under Covers)
Stand-alone free short stories:
Like the Taste of Summer
Show Me Yours
Within Reach
A full list and links can be found at: