Tarnished

by Erica Chilson

  “Deal,” I agree in a heartbeat as I yank our front door open. Half a dozen voices flow in from the kitchen, and I know it’s not going to be a quiet evening at home. Eyes sorry, I try to apologize to Willa without words.

  Moving into the living room ahead of me, Willa pats the center of my chest with her palm, silently telling me it’s okay. She understands. “In less than a week, it will only be the four of us…” she trails off, eager excitement, sadness, and trepidation warring in her voice.

  “Probably five,” I mutter when Kade’s voice reaches my ears, and I try to dampen how happy I am to have the guy to myself, even if it’s only for half the week. We’ll finally be able to connect like grown men, no longer butting heads and playing tug-of-war.

  Looking over her shoulder, Willa smirks at me, reading me like an open book.

  “Pickings are slim with all the college kids sucking up the apartments. Here’s a cheap flat,” Kade rambles as we enter the kitchen. “But you said you wanted a two or three bedroom.”

  “Why so large?” I ask, looking around at all the kids my kitchen seemed to have vomited since I was in my house last.

  Kade is curled around Wynn’s laptop at the center island, with Bren hovering over him. Wynn is at the stove, banging around the pots and pans, creating some concoction that smells like cumin and chili peppers. Jack is on the floor with my little ones, constructing a Lego town. Lastly is Jessica, sitting at the breakfast nook with a Kindle Fire in her hands.

  Bren flashes me a guilty look over his shoulder, but doesn’t answer me. Willa heads in Wynn’s direction before he messes up her special-order cookery.

  “I’m picking out Bren’s housing and his new Jeep. My first attempt at being his trustee.” Kade tries to comfort me, but knowing I’m out of the loop hurts. “Instead of renting for the next four years, I’d suggest buying a foreclosure. The rent on those apartments are jacked up high to drain parents’ pockets dry. But a college town has a hard time keeping homeowners. The mortgage, or just buying it outright, would be cheaper. Then after you graduate and move back to Rusty Knob,” Kade says with hope filling his voice, “You can rent the place out to college kids to pay the mortgage on your permanent home.”

  “Do whatever you think is best.” I sigh, feeling even more depressed. “But Bren has to have a hand in it, or he won’t learn anything.” That comment earns me a snarl from my first born. “You have a steady job lined up and college courses scheduled. I trust you,” I appease my son.

  Jack flashes me a grin when I kneel on the floor next to him. The usually happy kid is hiding his sadness well, but it’s twisting his smile to look dark and gloomy. I pat the kid on the shoulder, realizing I’m going to miss having him around after all these years. The specter of Francis Parker lurking has cast a shadow of sadness over all of us, but Jack’s absence will be felt even stronger.

  Going off to college should be an exciting time, and these kids act like they’re being executed. They’re terrified, and they act like the rug has been yanked out from beneath their feet. I thought only us old folks were supposed to experience Empty Nest Syndrome. I seem to be handling this better than I thought, and they aren’t handling it at all.

  Except Wynn. He would have left yesterday if his dorm room was ready. The kid is vibrating with excitement, and I’m happy for him.

  Sitting against the wall, I ask, “How ya doing today, Jackson?”

  “Good,” he lies. “Glad I’m in a dorm room and don’t have to worry about all this shit,” he tells the truth. “Jesse is making us up a list of stuff Wynn and I will need for our room, and it’s so much easier than what Bren needs to set up a house.”

  “Entering adulthood is rather terrifying… and expensive.” I sigh. “Which is why the dorm room is the best avenue. It gives you a transition period. No ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ issues.”

  “True that,” Jackson grunts, eyes flicking toward Bren with sadness, and then to Jessica with resentment. Realizing I saw, Jack shakes his head no to stop me from questioning him.

  Hayden is absorbed in his building, not noticing I’ve arrived home yet. My heart beats out of whack a few times, both in pain and in happiness. I’ve come so close to losing my youngest time and time again, that I will never take a second with them for granted.

  Organizing all the parts by color and size, Hayley looks up and smiles like I raise and set the Sun. “Hi, baby girl,” I drawl, and receive a quick peck on the lips for it.

  “Welcome home, Daddy,” my daughter sings in a voice that’s already more mature than it was a few months ago. She rises to her feet with grace, and then is skipping to her mother’s side, latching onto Willa’s waist and begging to try whatever’s in the pot on the stove.

  Leaning against the wall, I take over Hayley’s job of organizing the bricks for Hayden and Jack. Tiny, deft fingertips keep snagging the pieces I set out. Always focused on the task at hand, coming into contact with my big palm, Hayden stills, confused, and then he realizes I’ve joined him.

  “Dad!” Hayden grins, clutching at his chest like I would, like I scared the piss out of him.

  My son looks like me but not as much as Bren does, so most people would never question whether Hayden was or wasn’t my offspring. That difference is what made me love the Gillettes so much. Seeing Willa, Warren, and Wynn reflected on my son’s face– seeing Corbin gazing at me from Hayden’s eyes –it’s a humbling experience.

  “Did you have fun with Aunt Penny today?” I prompt, enjoying nothing more than chatting with my kids. “Have you held Copper yet?”

  Hayden is terrified of his baby cousin for some reason, when Hayley has taken to the boy with a natural maternal instinct. “I helped Uncle Warren a bit, but then Aunt Penny snagged us and made us go back to her house, said we were getting in the way at the center. It was okay, I guess.”

  “Liar,” Hayley says in her momma voice. She plops down next to me, forcing Jack out of our orbit. The young man chuckles as he gets to his feet, joining Jessica at the breakfast nook. “Hayden likes all of Aunt Penny’s little sisters,” Hayley announces with a wicked gleam in her eye.

  Poor Hayden.

  “Sis!” Hayden whines, batting her hands away from the Legos. “Do not!”

  “Do too!”

  “Do not!”

  “Do too,” is my cue to get up.

  While the twins bicker, Jackson is lighting into Jessica. “Curtains? Really, Jesse? Curtains?” He points at her Kindle Fire with fury lacing his voice. “I’m gay, but that doesn’t mean I’ve grown a vagina. Wynn and I don’t need curtains.”

  “Let me see that,” Wynn comes to the rescue, taking the tablet from Jessica’s hands. “We’re not allowed to have a microwave or hotplate, but we can use the ones they have in the student lounge. So yes to the popcorn. We’ll need a mini-fridge for drinks, though.” He passes the tablet to Jack instead of its owner. “No curtains. No bullshit we don’t need.”

  “We do need extra pillows,” Jack mutters as he changes the list. “And an air purifier.”

  The tiny blonde’s ponytail is vibrating from the way she holds in the outburst readying itself to explode. I’ve heard Jesse cheer at all of the basketball games, and that girl has a set of lungs on her, so I have no idea why she’s not lighting into Jack and Wynn.

  “Fine,” Jesse hisses from between clenched teeth as she retrieves her tablet. “I’ll do the household list instead of your shitty dorm room bullshit. If you forget anything important, you get to live without it.”

  Wynn looks baffled, but Jackson is a breath away from launching himself over the table and choking the piss out of his childhood friend. I have no idea what’s going on between Jack and Jesse, but Wynn’s just as lost as I am.

  Diffusing the situation, “You’ll want blackout curtains, fuckfaces,” Kade mutters as his fingers click away on Wynn’s laptop. “Jesse ain’t a prissy girl anyway, so you know damn well it wasn’t for decoration. Rise and shine isn’t always when the Sun de
cides. By the end of your afternoon classes, you’ll hit your dorm room and drop dead on your beds. So stop pissing the girl off, or she might never help you again.”

  “Thanks,” Bren mouths to Kade, confusing me more. Even Willa and Hayley are looking back and forth, trying to ferret out what’s going down in our kitchen.

  “I narrowed it down to three houses.” Kade slides off his stool. “Bren can decide later. Git yer ass over here, Wynn.” Still confused, Wynn shuffles over without complaint to sit on the stool Kade just vacated. “I need you to bring up that spreadsheet you keep with all the stuff in the storage units, and crosscheck it with the items on Jesse’s lists. I trust you to not be wasteful.”

  “Aye! Aye!” Wynn says with a grin, but Kade doesn’t smile back at him, which confuses both Wynn and me even more.

  I slide up beside Willa at the stove, and whisper into her ear. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for those four to be at the same school for the next four years.” I peek into the pot, surprised to see that Wynn had made us a batch of chili Willa’s doctoring up with extra spices. “Smells pretty good.”

  “I’m taking three classes a week for my masters of education in school counseling, on Mondays and Thursdays,” Kade is still in ‘the man in charge’ mode, and it makes me grin with pride. “The house you pick better have a room for my ass to sleep twice a week so I don’t have to drive back to Rusty Knob, and I’m too old to bunk in the twinky dinks’ dorm room.”

  “I know.” There’s an obvious eye roll hidden in Bren’s voice. “We’ve been over this all damn day. I just want to rest.”

  “You have five days to get this settled, sweetheart,” Kade taunts his brother. “I suggest you sleep later.”

  “What about Perty?” Hayden asks, causing Willa to toss her hands up and point the wooden spoon at Kaden.

  “Oh! No, you don’t!” Willa pokes Kade in the chest. “Nope. You are not dropping that dog off here for me to clean up his shit piles off the floor.”

  “Perty’s been going to obedience training.” Kaden blushes, even the tips of his ears. “He hasn’t had an accident all week.”

  “Accident?” Willa snorts, and then says firmly, “No.”

  “Yes,” Kade says with a grin, realizing how they are bickering like the twins had earlier. “Your kids love my dog. They’ve always wanted a puppy.”

  Hayley’s high-pitched squeal of excitement has us all flinching. “Yay! Perty can sleep in my room.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Willa mutters, wishing she’d never met Kaden.

  “Excuse me,” Jesse tries to cut through the chaos to make it to the guest bathroom. I step to the side, but not before I notice how green around the gills she looks. “I don’t do well with so much…” her hands gesture vaguely around the room. “I like quiet.” Then she’s locking herself in my bathroom.

  “Where’s Jesse staying?” I ask out of curiosity. “A dorm room?”

  Slipping by me to go check on his friend, “With me,” Bren shocks me senseless.

  “Ah, three bedrooms? I get it,” I mutter to myself, but the way Jackson looks ill yet furious has me rethinking my words. “I don’t want to know, I take it.”

  Interpreting everyone’s facial expressions, only Jack and Kade know what the hell is going on, with the rest of us in the dark.

  Kade pushes me out of the room with a heavy palm on my chest. “No, you don’t want to know,” he whispers as he tugs me into the den. “I need to talk to you in private.” Then I find myself behind the locked door to my office.

  “What’s going on?” My ass automatically finds my desk chair, with Kade sitting in the seat in front of my desk. “Is it about Brennan? He’s not with Jessica, is he? How would that even work? He might be bi, but she’s a lesbian.”

  “Forget their shit.” Kade makes a hand motion like he’s washing it away. “Just a bit before we headed home this evening, Warren was teaching me how to change the oil in my Durango out by the service bay to the shop.”

  “Yeah?” I mutter, suffering whiplash from having no segue from one topic to the next.

  “Hayden was with us and Hayley had just left with Penny and Copper– Jeb came back for the kid about a half hour later because Penny’s sisters were driving her nuts and only Hayden quiets them down.” Kade laughs at the memory, but he looks sick to his stomach. “Warren said if he could teach me anything, then he’d have no issue helping his father-in-law during the training sessions.”

  I don’t say anything, but I’d agree with Warren. Kade is smart, but it takes a lot of patience to drill the knowledge into his brain.

  A lot of patience.

  “Hayden will be wanting to change the oil in your car, I suspect. He’s a quick study, but I still have no clue.” Kade shrugs self-deprecatingly, knowing I don’t care because I’ll love him no matter what. “We had a visitor,” he finally gets to the point.

  “Who?” is a breath on the wind.

  “Warren acted like it was nothing, so I suspect he never cut off communication–”

  “Corbin.” Sighing, I look down at my hands folded on my desktop. “I see. Did he want to see Warren? Or was he checking up on Wynn again?”

  “He wanted to see Hayden,” Kade draws me up short.

  “What?” I gasp. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Kade’s voice drops into whine. “The kid is his grandson.”

  “What’d you do?” I don’t mean for my voice to sound like an accusation, but it does anyway.

  “Royce–”

  “I see,” I say again, feeling helpless. Just hearing Corbin’s name reminds me of a time I want to pretend never happened, much to Dr. Cassidy’s regret. She says Corbin’s name constantly to desensitize me.

  “It was me and Warren. He’s Hayden’s uncle, and I’m just a foster-whatever, or the guy his uncle is dating. We’re family, but not enough for me to be in charge.”

  “I understand,” I whisper, hating how helpless I feel right now. “I trust you.”

  “Good.” Kade chuckles, causing my eyes to snap up to connect with his. “What a ringing endorsement,” he teases me. “Corbin looked uncomfortable and out of place, but completely sober.”

  “I saw him a few months ago at graduation,” I finally admit. “He was sober then, too. Looked healthy.” I try to hide my resentment.

  “Warren and I just kind of looked at each other, both of us wanting the other to make the decision. Which is not how War operates. Ya know?”

  “I know.” This time I laugh, and it’s genuine. “If it was anyone but you, Warren would have done whatever he wanted.”

  “True,” Kade allows. “So we let the kid pick.”

  “What?” I gasp in surprise.

  “Hayden’s a big kid now, so we let him pick whether he wanted to see his grandfather or not. But we wouldn’t let them be alone.”

  “Smart.” I mull that over, nodding my head up and down. “Very smart. What’d my son decide?”

  “Hayden is too much like Wynn–”

  “I know, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.” I lean back in my chair, sighing heavily. I fold my hands on my chest. “So what did Corbin do when Hayden decided to visit with him?”

  “Cried.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah…” Kade’s voice is thick with emotion. “Corbin cupped the little guy’s cheek, and kept saying how much he looked like Donny, and how he could see himself in the kid’s eyes, which only seemed to make him sob more.”

  “I… You? What- huh?” I grunt, completely at a loss. “Corbin knows Hayden is my son.”

  “Everyone there knew,” Kade agrees with me, but then kicks me in the teeth. “Hell, Warren and I think the kid even knows. So needless to say, it was an odd exchange. Corbin chatted with Hayden, asking about Hayley and Willa. He asked me about Wynn, and kept chattering with War about Penny and Copper like he saw them yesterday. I didn’t recognize that man.”

  “Corbin’s not evil,” I twist out, wishing it wasn’t
the case. “I just don’t like him. I spent my entire childhood dealing with Corbin taking my brother from me. The only time I liked the asshole was when Sean came to Rusty Knob and Corbin kept trying to run him out of town… then he–” I cut myself off. “I don’t like him. He’s violent when he’s drunk, but that doesn’t mean he’s not human.”

  “Warren and I have always tried to figure out why you left your kids with him for three years.”

  “Good question,” I mutter, not knowing myself. “You’ll have to ask Willa. She said it was life or death and promised Corbin would keep my babies safe… and he kinda did. But he lost me my brother, and that I can never forgive.”

  With curiosity lacing his voice, Kade tries to get me to release secrets that aren’t mine. “How?”

  “I’m sorry, Kaden.” I reach across the desk. “I’d tell you if I could. Corbin lost me my brother and I’ll never forgive him for that, and that’s all I can say.”

  “Then I guess you won’t want his message, then?”

  “Give it to me,” I order, nearly begging.

  “Corbin asked me if it was okay to visit the Life Skills Center, saying Donny would want that,” Kaden relays, and I hiss sharply in pain. “Then he said to meet him in the usual place at the usual time, and he wanted to clear the air once and for all.” Kade parts his hands in his lap, “That’s it. What’s it mean?”

  “I know what it means,” is all I can reply. “Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to keep this private, for not pushing for answers I can’t give, and for taking care of Bren and whatever mistake he’s making. I’m proud of you, son.”

  Freedom

  It will be five years tomorrow since I’ve set foot on Kennedy land. In all of my years, I never missed more than a day or two without connecting to my roots. After Annie died, Bren and I spent nearly a month up here, grieving with Donny’s support.

  I’ve allowed the past to change me, to remove my lifeblood from my veins. I haven’t felt right in the head, and I thought it was because of what had happened to me. Now, as I drive down the dusty backroads to Kennedy Holler, I realize my soul was weeping because I was neglecting who I am.