A role model. Only if he was the “don‘t” in a pair of “do’s” and “don’ts.” That was the only advice he could give anyone. Don’t do what I’ve done. Don’t screw up your life. And the biggest don’t of all. Don’t be like me.
As the digital display on the clock advanced to 11:59, he left the apartment. One of the first things Karen had done after her September marriage to Jamey was institute a regular Sunday dinner. It was the way families did things, she had insisted, and even though Reid had never been a part of any family, he had accepted her decree. He showed up every Sunday. Karen cooked, and they ate in the dining room or, on a hot day, outside in the shade of a tall live oak. His stepmother was responsible for most of the conversation because, all too often, he and his father had little to say to each other. Once dinner was over, he helped with the dishes, then left. It was an uncomfortable few hours, stilted and often sinking into hostility. It made a mockery of the Sunday dinners Karen was trying to recreate from her own family traditions, but she kept trying. She kept hoping.
Though it pained him to admit it, he kept hoping. Maybe this would be the week that things would go smoothly. Maybe this meal would be less strained. Maybe this time nothing would bring that look into Jamey’s eyes.
Sometimes he thought his father wasn’t even aware of the emotions that came into his gaze—the disappointment, the distrust, the disapproval. Sometimes he thought it was simply habit. They had shared so much anger and resentment for so long that disappointment in Reid came as naturally to Jamey as love for Karen. After all, for so many years, that was all his father had ever felt—that and scorn. Contempt. Shame.
And a little regret, honesty forced him to admit. In his first months on Serenity, Reid had received any number of apologies from his father. Jamey had been sorry for the divorce, sorry Meghan had taken Reid away, sorry he had never bothered to find out where they’d gone. He’d been sorry he had never been a father, sorry Reid’s life with Meghan hadn’t been easy and sorry she had abandoned him here. After the incident Reid had mentioned to Cassie, though, there hadn’t been any more apologies.
He had been in trouble again—arrested again—and Jamey had been concerned enough to try to talk to him. The idea of this man who had ignored him for his entire life suddenly deciding to play father had made Reid’s anger explode. He had landed only one blow, a solid jab that had connected with Jamey’s jaw, and he had waited for some response, half hoping that his old man would hit him back. Fists were something he understood. Meghan had taught him that.
It had been a test, he knew with the clarity of hindsight. If Jamey had overlooked the punch and still tried in his awkward way to exert some influence, then Reid would have known that his father really did give a damn about him. If Jamey had hit him, that would have meant something, too. Physical blows had been the closest Meghan had ever come to expressing affection.
But Jamey had walked away. He had given Reid a look that made him feel like the lowest, most contemptible bastard on the face of the earth, and he had walked away. He had never intervened again, had never offered advice or warnings or anything kinder than utter indifference. He had never again, in all the years since, made the mistake of trying to act like a father.
That was when Reid had gone to work for Jimmy Falcone.
Downstairs the bar was quiet and shadowy. Sunday was the only day of the week the doors remained closed. It had been that way from the beginning, back when Kevin O’Shea had first opened the place in the early part of the century. Sunday had always been a day of rest, a day for spending in church and with family.
The closest thing Reid had to family was waiting for him across the street.
He let himself out, then locked up again before crossing the street and passing through the center gate into Karen’s yard. Fixing the rusted, broken gate had been his first job, one that he had tried to accomplish before dawn one morning. It hadn’t been early enough to avoid her, though. He had lingered to pet the scroungy mutt she’d adopted for her own, and she’d caught him. She had thanked him politely and asked him about the puppy. She had been the first person in longer than he could remember who hadn’t subjected him to some variation of Jamey’s distrusting looks. She had been open, warm and friendly, as if he were deserving of such treatment, and he had been well and truly caught. He had fallen half in love with her right then and there.
He climbed the steps to the veranda. Although the door was open and the latch on the screen door wasn’t secured, he knocked a couple of times, then waited. Clients walked right in during the hours the women’s center was open, but there was an unwritten code allowing some measure of privacy the rest of the time. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was family in the real sense of the word.
His back was to the door, his gaze on the yard, when footsteps approached in the foyer. Before he could turn, a familiar, soft voice spoke. “Good afternoon.”
His gaze skimmed Cassie’s face before darting toward the street where she usually parked her car. It wasn’t there. If it had been, even at the risk of disappointing Karen, he wouldn’t have come.
“I parked around back. I had a few more things to unload.” She pushed the screen door open, but he didn’t move. After a moment, she politely asked, “Aren’t you coming in?”
He didn’t ask if Karen had invited her for dinner. Of course she had. Just as Kathy’s House had an open-door policy, so did Karen. Anyone who walked past was asked in for a visit. Anyone who came to visit was invited to share a meal. So today he got to have dinner with both Jamey and Cassie.
He’d rather be home alone.
Finally he reached for the screen door, pulling it from her hand, waiting until she backed away a few feet before he stepped inside. He took care to close the door without banging it and to slide the hook into the eye bolted into the doorjamb—dawdling, he suspected, in the hope that she would return to the kitchen or wherever she’d come from. She didn’t.
“Karen and Jamey are out back.”
Of course. It was a pretty day, warm and not too humid, perfect for eating at the picnic table he and Karen had built last fall.
Cassie folded her arms across her chest. “Are you not speaking to anyone at all today, or is it just me?”
Just you, he wanted to reply. She had caught him off guard. He had come prepared to deal with Jamey, but dealing with both of them was more than he could handle. “You haven’t said anything yet that requires an answer.” He heard the stiffness in his voice and felt it spread to his neck and shoulders.
“It’s customary when someone greets you to return the greeting.”
“Yeah, well, it’s too late now.”
She studied him for a moment with a cool, penetrating gaze that saw too much. “I don’t suppose you gave any thought to my suggestion yesterday.”
Although he knew exactly what she was referring to, he preferred to pretend ignorance. “What? That I leave Serenity?”
“I never suggested that. I’d like you to come by and spend some time with the boys in my class.”
“Yeah, right.” He walked past her and headed for the kitchen and the door that led into the backyard. Bordered on all three sides by the brick walls of the neighboring houses, the yard had never been particularly large, and it was smaller than ever now that most of it had been turned into a parking lot for the Kathy’s House staff. A small patch of grass remained, though, right at the foot of the steps leading from the house, shaded part of the day by the live oak nearby and just big enough for a charcoal grill, the picnic table and benches.
The grill was smoking now, the coals almost ready for the thick hamburger patties stacked on a plate on the table. The buns had been toasted and were wrapped in a cloth napkin inside a basket, next to a platter of onions, tomatoes and pickles. There was a bag of potato chips, a casserole of baked beans and—Cassie’s contribution, no doubt—matching bowls of tabbouleh and salad.
“Hey, Reid.” The greeting came from Karen, comfortably stretched out in the sole chair,
a weathered, peeling Adirondack. Jethro, the puppy he had fed until she’d taken him in, was scooted as far under the chair as his bulk would allow, snoring with his eyes closed.
“Hey.”
From his position next to the ice chest sitting on the end of one bench, Jamey asked, “You want Coke or tea?”
“Coke.” What he really wanted was a stiff drink or two, something that might ease the tension in his muscles, but the only place to get a drink was across the street at O’Shea’s. Neither Karen nor Jamey drank, and Reid doubted that he should, either. Jamey’s old man had drunk himself into an early grave, and Meghan also had a drinking problem. She had never understood the word moderation, whether in reference to her men, her partying or her drinking. Every time she’d started drinking, she had gotten drunk. Usually the booze had made her morose, but sometimes it had made her mean. He still had a scar or two to prove it.
He accepted the soda and sat down at the opposite end of the bench. Cassie got her own soda, then glanced around as if deciding where to sit. Not across from him, he silently hoped. He didn’t want to see her face every time he looked up. He didn’t want to notice for the hundredth time how pretty she was, what a deep brown her eyes were, how appealing her smile was. He didn’t want to watch her, so cool and composed, and wonder what it would take to shatter that composure. He didn’t want to waste his time, because whatever it might take, he didn’t have.
When she moved away from the bench across from him, he said a silent thanks. When she came around and sat down between him and the ice chest, he mouthed an equally silent but savage curse.
Her cologne, subtle and exotically different, perfumed the air around her. It clung to her skin, her clothing and her hair and made him wonder how it would smell on him, transferred in the most intimate way possible, from her skin to his, from her body to his. Would it still be sweet and clean, or would it turn sour, as so many things had in his life?
He wasn’t ever going to find out. Karen wouldn’t approve. Jamey really wouldn’t approve. Cassie would never settle for him. He would never let her.
But it didn’t hurt to wonder, did it? It didn’t hurt to indulge in a fantasy or two. He’d been doing it all his life, wanting and never having. Wanting a mother like the ones he’d seen on TV—pretty, affectionate, motherly, sober. Wanting a father of any sort. Wanting a place that would be home not just today but next week, next month and next year. Wanting to settle long enough to make friends, long enough to finish just one year in the same school where he’d started. Wanting to be a normal kid in a normal family living a normal life.
But wondering could hurt. Wanting what you couldn’t have could hurt. Every run-in he had with Jamey left him feeling raw. Every time his simplest gesture was met with hostility or suspicion, every time he saw how different his life was from those of other men his age, every time he looked at Cassie, it hurt way down deep inside. Knowing that he had no one to blame but himself made it even worse. Maybe he’d had a lousy home life and lousier parents. Maybe the odds had been against him. But people beat the odds all the time. He’d had a chance, back when he was fifteen, and he’d blown it. He’d made so many bad decisions, and now he was paying for them.
He was afraid he would pay for them for the rest of his life.
Once they’d finished eating, Cassie reached across for Reid’s empty plate and fork and watched him shrink away from the possibility of even the most casual touch. With a sigh, she stacked his dishes with hers, then handed them to Karen.
She knew he liked women. Just last fall he’d ended a long-term relationship with a woman who lived down the street, and according to Shawntae Williams, one of the mothers who devoted much of her free time to the center, there had been plenty of others before her. Maybe it was just casual physical contact that he tried to avoid.
Or maybe it was physical contact with her. Cassie had seen him with his girlfriend a time or two last fall. A person would have been hard put to squeeze anything more than a breath of air between them, even though they’d been on the street, in full view of anyone around. Of course, it had been Tanya doing all the clinging, but he hadn’t complained, pushed her away or done anything to suggest that he was uncomfortable with such a public display.
One night Cassie had gone home and compared her reflection in the bathroom mirror to Reid’s girlfriend. Her long, straight brown hair with Tanya’s dramatically short and spiky black ‘do.’ Her everyday-average voice with Tanya’s bed-room-husky purr that promised heat, satisfaction and all sorts of wicked things. Her outfit of denim shorts, plain cotton top and sandals with Tanya’s high-on-the-thigh black leather micromini, daring red halter that left most of her bare and four-inch heels that made her legs look a mile long. Miss Prim-proper-and-damn-it-all-serene against Miss I-can-make-your-wildest-dreams-come-true. No man with a single functioning hormone would even notice that she existed as long as Tanya was in the same universe.
Reid certainly hadn’t.
“Karen tells me that ten of your thirteen students are boys,” Jamey remarked. “Are you sure you’re up for that?”
“No problem. I have a million nieces and nephews.” Cassie smiled immodestly. “Little boys like me.”
Karen polished off the last pickle on the platter before stacking the dishes on it. “I bet big boys do, too.”
The only big boy Cassie was interested in was sitting right beside her, pretending he was someplace else. He’d been that way ever since she’d sat down. Feeling perverse, she decided to make him stop ignoring her: “I asked Reid over lunch yesterday if he would come by in the afternoons when he’s not working and spend some time with my class. I think it would be good for the boys to have regular contact with a man who isn’t on welfare, doesn’t steal from others, doesn’t use or sell drugs and works to support himself. Unfortunately he doesn’t agree with me.”
He still didn’t look at her, but if his scowl was any indication, at least he was no longer ignoring her. “I didn’t say I disagreed,” he muttered.
“No, you didn’t.” She allowed a small smile. “You said I was crazier than Karen.”
A flush warmed his face even as his stepmother laughed. “It’s all right, Reid. You’ve called me that to my face before. It’s okay to say behind my back.” Then she sobered. “It is a good idea, Cassie.”
“But?” She knew there was a but. She could hear it in her boss’s voice. She could see it in the look Karen exchanged with Jamey. She could actually feel it in the air.
Now it was Karen’s face that was flushed. “Maybe you should wait awhile. Give the kids a chance to settle in. Some of them haven’t been to school for a long time. All of them will be behind. You’ll have your hands full just trying to get them caught up.”
“I realize that. But it was my understanding that the emphasis isn’t supposed to be strictly academics, that we’re supposed to deal with all the problems the kids face. That includes the pressure they’re up against to join a gang, to take the easy way out.”
“That’s true, but...” Karen looked at Jamey again, then shrugged awkwardly.
“But what?”
When neither Karen nor Jamey spoke, Reid did. He got up, tossed his empty soda cans into the garbage can, then faced her. “I thought I made it clear yesterday that I’m not interested in being your classroom example of everything a kid shouldn’t do. It’s a stupid idea. I’m the last person in the world those people want their kids learning from. People don’t trust me. They don’t want me around. They sure as hell don’t want me influencing their children.”
Cassie turned on the bench to face him. “But don’t you see? That’s exactly why you should talk to them. You faced the same choices they do, and you made the wrong ones. You’ve lived the life they have to turn away from, and you got out of it alive. You telling them not to go that route would be a hundred times more effective than us saying it.”
He drew a short, deep breath before flatly refusing. “No.” Without another word, he turned and walked aw
ay, disappearing around the corner of the house.
When she started to stand up, Karen reached across the table to touch her hand. “Let him go, Cassie.”
“People have been letting him go all his life.” But, with a sigh, she sank back down. “Is he right? Would the parents refuse?”
“They wouldn’t like it,” Jamey admitted. “Didn’t you notice the way the mothers who helped at the school treated him?”
With a faint smile, Karen answered for her. “Of course not.” She wasn’t around the mothers that much because she was always volunteering to work with Reid.
Cassie thought back to those weekends. Reid had always been distant. When the others had gathered first thing each morning for coffee, pastries and small talk, he had gone straight to work. When they had taken a break to eat lunch together on the side veranda, he had remained apart from them, eating some distance away or taking the meal back to the carriage house. No one had ever suggested that he should stay away, but no one had invited him to join them, either.
She had never witnessed any blatant hostility toward him, but she’d never seen any overt friendliness, except from Karen.
“J.T. hung around him, and Shawntae didn’t seem to mind,” Cassie said. Reid had let Shawntae’s young son help on several of the easier tasks. They had talked and worked with comfortable familiarity, and the boy had bragged about the drawings Reid had done for him that hung on his bedroom walls.
“Last summer Shawntae had four rules for J.T. to follow.” Karen ticked them off on her fingers. “Don’t open the window. Don’t go outside. Don’t talk to strangers. And don’t talk to Reid. I think she’s given up on them now. She and J.T. spend a lot of time over here, and so does Reid. But I wouldn’t say they’re friends.”
The Taming Of Reid Donovan Page 4