by Cole McCade
Autumn leaves, he thought, then bowed over the pad and set his ruler to the edge and began to draw.
He wasn’t sure what he’d set out to make—but he let the pencil flow and scrawl, drawing paths of autumn leaves swirling across the page. From them came the spindly reach of shedding trees, outlined in silhouette, and then, as he connected them…the outline of walls. An enclosure, or the suggestion of one, overgrown by trees that stretched toward the sky with their graceful, nude branches. Like ruins, reclaimed by the forest until every autumn and every cycle brought what man had built closer and closer to sinking back into the earth and vanishing beneath the falling carpet of red and flame and gold.
The page was filled nearly from corner to corner with sketches, estimated measurements, and materials notes by the time a knock came at the door; he jerked, lifting his head, blinking as the room came back into focus. His eyes ached, and he scrubbed at them, then pinched the bridge of his nose where a knot of concentration had gathered, comforting in its age-old familiarity; his back hurt a bit, but it wasn’t unbearable yet. The door to the workshop creaked open, and Wally peeked in tentatively, lips curled in a warm smile and a basket hanging from his arm.
“Hullo.” He wiggled his fingers in a little wave, then stepped in and closed the door behind him. Two steps brought him to Joseph’s desk, and with a little twirl he deposited the basket—filled with checkered cloths and wrapped sandwiches that even through the plastic wrap smelled mouthwateringly of marinated turkey—onto Joseph’s desk. “I brought you lunch.”
Joseph straightened, leaning back in his chair and stretching up to meet Wally upside-down as Wally bent to kiss him. Joseph grinned, nipping at Wally’s upper lip. “You’re spoiling me again.”
“And taking utter delight in it.” Wally draped his arms over Joseph’s shoulders, hands dangling down his chest, and rested his chin to his shoulder, peering at his work. “What are you working on?”
“I don’t know.” Joseph leaned back into Wally and curled a hand around one of his wrists. “I keep thinking of that construction site you took me to. I want to make something like that, but…not.”
“Not?”
“I don’t want to copy what they made. That’s theirs. It belongs to them. It’s made with their heart, their soul, their history. I want to make my own history.” He sighed, turning his head until his cheek pressed against Wally’s smooth, soft skin. “But what kind of history do I have, that I could put into something I can build?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be about history,” Wally murmured, voice a throaty sigh against his ear. “Maybe it can be about your future. Your desires.”
“I’m not putting tarot sculptures on my front lawn.”
“Is that what you’re working on? A lawn decoration?”
“I don’t know.” Joseph blew out heavily. “I’m used to building things with moving parts. Massive machines. Industrial things for the textile mill. I used to think about creative design and architecture, but that was a long time ago.”
“So build something with moving parts. Something creative, that no one else has ever made before.” Wally pressed a kiss to the top of his head, then pulled away and started unpacking the basket. “You’ll figure it out when you’re ready. And whatever it is, if you’d like me to, I’ll help you build it.”
“That’d be nice.” Joseph propped his chin in his hand, watching as Wally set out two wrapped, massively overstuffed sandwiches on wheat bread, a little covered bowl of peach slices, two chilled glass bottles of lemon soda. “I’m starting to think you have a fetish about feeding me.”
“It’s not a fetish to take pleasure in looking after my boyfriend.” Wally clucked his tongue. “Honestly, I don’t know why I never had children. If anything, I’m obsessed with taking care of people, period.”
“I imagine children in your situation would have been a bit more difficult back then than it is now.”
“That is true. Can you imagine trying to convince the courts that a single, openly gay man with a fondness for glittering spandex and no forwarding address would make a good adoptive father?” Wally snorted and dragged a second stool over, settling next to Joseph with their thighs brushing. “People and their prejudices.”
Joseph carefully pushed his drafting pad up to the top of the angled desk and clipped it in place, safely away from the food, then snagged one of the sandwiches and peeled the plastic back. “Not like that now, though. Well, not so much. But there are so many kids in the foster system…well…you know.”
“I know,” Wally said, and sighed. “When I was a little lad, I’d have been happy for anyone so long as they loved me and wanted to keep me. Children don’t care about such things, and it’s daft that adults do. It’s not something I’ve thought about in some time, but…” He idly toyed a bottle opener between his fingers, then fitted it to one of the bottles of lemon soda and snapped the cap off. “I keep remembering moving from home to home, unwanted, unloved. I’m not so old that I can’t raise a child, and I’ve settled down. Perhaps I could give some little darling what I always needed.”
“Is that the life plan, now? To adopt?”
“I always did want to be a father, and…well…” Wally shrugged and set the opened bottle in front of Joseph, before working at the second. “Our little bird’s flown the nest.”
“Ours.” Joseph lifted the top layer of the sandwich. Spiced, marinated turkey, fresh tomato slices, lettuce, avocado spears, and pepper jack, all drenched in seasoned olive oil; his mouth watered. God, Wally knew his appetite too damned well. “Still feels weird for you to say that, even if it’s true.” He frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. “We’ve already raised one kid together.”
“Hm…? What are you getting at?” Wally cocked his head quizzically.
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “I’m thinking ahead. Trust us engineers to be all about the what-ifs.”
Wally quirked a brow, only to flush quickly, hotly, filling up with color like a boiler bursting over, hands unsteady on the bottle, the cap going flying and the bottle opener clattering down. “Oh—oh, I wasn’t trying to insinuate—”
Joseph had half a second to enjoy that completely blown look on Wally’s face before Joseph’s phone trilled, quivering in his back pocket. He groaned and reached back for it. “God, what now?”
A quick swipe unlocked the screen to show a number he didn’t recognize. Local. He wrinkled his nose and tossed it onto the desk. He was in no mood for telemarketers right now. Or police. Or reporters; he’d gotten a few in the first couple of days after the story about the police chase broke—but he’d hung up on every last one, and the disaster of the current news cycle had sent the vultures after more rotten meat before long.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Wally asked.
“Nope.”
“Joseph. What if it’s….?”
He stopped short of saying it, but the name hung between them, a gunshot fired and striking deep in the pit of Joseph’s stomach.
Willow.
It wasn’t likely. She’d begged him to promise, and in that promise he’d understood that he might not hear from her again for a very, very long time.
But he couldn’t miss the chance. Not when just the idea of having some small part of her, knowing she was alive in this moment when they both breathed the same air under the same sky, made his throat seize up with terrible and wonderful hope.
“All right,” he said, and caught the call on the last ring. “All right.” He lifted it to his ear, waited a three-count to be sure his voice was steady, then said, “Hello?”
The voice that answered was so much like Willow’s that he’d have known it anywhere, and yet never could he have mistaken it for his daughter. Willow would never sound so cold. So haughty. So imperious. So impatient, as though even these few words imposed so rudely on her space, self, time.
“Joseph? We need to talk.”
Gravity lost meaning, for half a second—a second in which the f
loor fell out from beneath him and there was no mooring to the world, everything spinning, his heart in suspension.
“Miriam,” he whispered.
Wally went white. “What?”
It took one look at Wally’s pale, stricken face to ground Joseph to earth, nailing him in place with hot bolts of steel fury—years and years of simmering bitterness and resentment, driving deep. He closed his eyes, breathing in deep and dragging his hand over his face. Calm. Calm. Don’t snarl. Don’t—anything. Whatever she wanted, he’d get through it, hang up, get done, and forget her.
She wasn’t a part of his life anymore, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t want her to be.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Is that how you say hello?”
“You said we needed to talk. So I’m asking what you want to talk about.”
There was something satisfying about her silence. He could picture her, wondering what had happened to the man who’d chase after her, this puppy desperate for her affection, but if he’d learned one damned thing it was that he didn’t have to be desperate for anything. Not her love, not her approval, not anything from anyone, because he had every damned right to be treated better than she had ever treated him.
When she spoke again her tone was colder, glassier, the composed and regal queen speaking from her tower. “I’d like to know when, exactly, you intended to tell me about Willow.”
“I’d like to know when, exactly, you decided to be Willow’s mother.”
“I’ve always been Willow’s mother,” she snapped, before an audible breath crackled over the phone. “It’s been nearly a month and you’ve not told me a thing, and yet your daughter is all over the news embarrassing me—”
“Is that all you care about? That she embarrassed you?”
Joseph broke down swearing—until a long, slender hand covered his, and he realized he was clenching his fist until it shook and not even paying attention to the shooters of pain searing through his tendons. He lifted his head, looking at Wally. That dark gaze held him, gave him strength, and he relaxed his hand, letting it go loose under Wally’s and turning it palm-up to lace their fingers together. Breathe. He offered Wally a tired, grateful smile before continuing more evenly.
“Willow could be dead.” He said it not out of spite, because for God’s sake he just needed Miriam to know, to care. “She’s wanted by the police, and you didn’t even—How was I supposed to even reach you? Your receptionist doesn’t let anything through.”
“There was a time when you’d have done anything to reach me, Joseph,” she said pointedly.
“Yeah? Well that time isn’t now.”
“I can’t believe you would—”
“Believe it,” he bit off. “This game has been over for years, and I’ve been the only fool still playing. I left my strings dangling so you could catch them and play with them whenever you wanted, whenever nostalgia made you wistful for your old toys. But your toys are getting put away. You aren’t playing with me anymore. If you honestly care about our daughter, I’ll tell you what I know, when I know it. If you actually want her to be safe, you’ll make this about someone other than yourself. And if you want to continue to both be parents, we can try to be civil. But if you’re just offended that I didn’t come scrambling after you again, then hang up this phone and lose my number. I sure as hell won’t be keeping yours.”
Her voice rose into a crackling swoop. “If you’re going to—”
“Will you stop—”
“Excuse me,” Wally said crisply. “Joseph, darling dear? May I have the phone, please?”
Joseph drew up short, flicking his gaze to Wally again. Walford watched him with a certain quiet calm as smooth as the edge of a razor and just as hard-honed, the line of his jaw firm. In Joseph’s ear Miriam still flung accusations at him, but he wasn’t listening. Wally extended his free hand, palm-up, expectant.
Why the hell not.
At this rate, Joseph was going to blow a vein.
“Sure,” he said, pulled the phone away from his ear, and dropped it into Wally’s palm.
* * *
WALLY KNEW EVEN BEFORE HE lifted the phone to his ear that this would not be a pleasant conversation. But he’d seen that look—exhausted, wounded, stricken, furious, torn between the four in a constant battle—on Joseph’s face too many times over the years, and done nothing about it because there was nothing he could do about it. It hadn’t been his place then.
But it was his choice, now.
He offered Joseph a smile and squeezed his hand, then tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear. Miriam hadn’t even realized the phone had changed hands, still railing in that aggrieved, sulky tone he was so familiar with, both offended hauteur and a calculated ploy for guilt.
“—I tried to be her mother but she didn’t want m—”
“Please lower your voice, Mirry,” Wally said. “I didn’t raise you to shriek fit to raise the roof off a barn.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Wally…?”
“Of course, dear. It’s not been so long that you don’t recognize your own brother’s voice, has it?”
“No, but I—I—oh.” She audibly deflated, picking up words and setting them down and then picking up others to try again. “You’re still staying with Joseph? Devon had mentioned—”
“Regardless of what young Mr. West said, yes. I’m spending quite a bit of time with Joseph.”
“You aren’t—”
“Is that your business?” he asked. “Did you want to know about Willow’s safety and whereabouts, or not?”
“I…y-yes.” The sound of shuffling papers and something rattling came over the phone: nervous sounds, distressed sounds. “I know it might not seem like it, but I really do care, Wally.”
“Then learn to show it. I know the man Willow is with, Miriam. And I know she’s safe with him.”
It came out fast, too easy, but as soon as he said it, that hand in his went cold, lax. He held in a sigh, even if that sigh clutched hard as steel claws inside his throat. He couldn’t look at Joseph. Not yet. Not when he had too much explaining to do, but he had to get through this first.
“That’s all you need to know,” he continued. “If or when we learn more, you’ll be the first person I call. But I would thank you not to harass Joseph with your small cruelties. I know you love Willow in your own way, but the way to show it isn’t to take out your fear for her safety on her father.”
Miriam made a soft, sobbing sound, then sniffled loudly. “Wally…”
“Don’t, Mirry. I’ll not be swayed by waterworks this time. It won’t change what is.”
“I can’t believe you’re speaking to me this way.”
“I can’t believe I never have. Maybe this is my fault. Maybe I should have tried to be more of a parent than a brother to you, when we had no one else who would stay with us, but the time for ‘maybe’ is too late and your choices are your choices, my darling love. Not mine.”
“But—”
“Stop.” He’d never known how to be firm with her before. Never. But he found the strength in him somewhere, if only for Joseph. Anything for Joseph, and he wondered what could and would have happened if he’d done this over ten years ago; if he’d stopped being passive and giving and stood up to Miriam. His airways closed, and it was a miracle he could smile when the threat of tears haunted the backs of his eyes and the depths of his throat. “I love you, dearest little sister. I always will. But I’ll not be a patsy in your trail of destruction any longer; I’ll no longer aid and abet your everyday violences, particularly where they affect Joseph and Willow. It’s always been a mixed blessing that you chose to destroy others instead of yourself, but that’s hardly a life, either. Get yourself together. I’d love to help you, but I doubt you’d let me.”
Silently, he pleaded with her to listen. Underneath her wildness, her callousness, he thought she did love him, love Willow, perhaps even still loved Joseph, but getting throug
h to her when the only thing she knew was to hurt other people before they could hurt her…
“I don’t need your help,” Miriam snapped, the roughness and tears gone from her voice, the sniffles banished to whatever bag of tricks she’d pulled them from. “I’m married to the richest man in Crow City. While you’re so poor, you’re living with my ex-husband—and my son is paying your damned bills. Who needs help?”
“Very well.” He sighed. “I do love you, Miriam. Goodbye.”
The only answer was a click, sharp and final, and the phone flickering back to the home screen as he pulled it away from his ear. He looked down at it, then offered it back to Joseph with a small smile.
But Joseph didn’t take his phone. He didn’t move, save for to pull his hand completely free from Wally’s. And those dark brown eyes turned flat, forbidding as he fixed Wally with a look that stabbed into his heart like a pin stapling an insect to a board.
“What do you mean, you know the man with Willow?” Joseph asked—cold, too quiet, every word precise and controlled, and Wally wondered if this stolen season of happiness was already coming to an end.
With a few little words, and one terrible lie.
He set the phone down and folded his hands, buying himself a moment of time. A moment to compose himself so he wouldn’t beg, plead, break down into tears when he was nothing but glass right now, thin as tissue, and Joseph’s ire was the hammer poised to shatter him.
Out with it, then.
“His name is Vincent Manion,” Wally said. “He calls himself Priest. I know him. Knew him. Or I thought I did.” And he remembered that tanned, elegant, murderous hand in his, the veiled words between them, the things he’d said in the dark of the night, wondering all the time if he was doing the right thing or making a terrible mistake when he’d known deep down exactly what every subtle implication and carefully masked intent truly meant. He pressed his lips together. “I saved his life, once…and I may have created him.”