by Kaje Harper
“Not quite. They were a bit hard. You know, if you’re going to be with your mom for a few more months, you should get her to teach you to really cook. Because we have three people in this house, and not one of us can do much more than boil water. Then if you decide you still want to move here later, you’ll have a skill to bargain with.” He inspected the recipe on the back of the chocolate-chip bag. Brown sugar. Did they even have brown sugar left? Could he substitute white? Was that what he did last time?
“I don’t know what I want,” Torey admitted softly. “It’s so weird at home now. Mom gets sad and cries a lot. And Brandon doesn’t think girls are good at anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said. “If it’s any help, I think part of your Mom’s crying is being pregnant, with the stress and hormones and all.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s not… awful there, right?” He didn’t want to hear it, but he had to ask. If worst came to worst, they’d take on the world for Torey, too. “Like, is anyone hurting you? You’re not going to run off or… do anything drastic?”
“Like my butthead brother?” Torey sighed dramatically. “It just sucks.”
“You feel safe, though?”
She gave him a guarded look. “Yeah. All Brandon does is yell a bit. Mostly at Mark.”
“That should get better with Mark gone.”
She shrugged, looking doubtful.
“You can call us, anytime. Me or your dad. Or Mark, although I’m guessing you don’t want your brother’s advice.”
Torey shook her head.
“Honey, things may be hard right now. But you have lots of people who love you. You know that, right?”
She nodded, her eyes wet. Ryan pulled her into a hug. “Hey. It gets better. I heard that somewhere.” Her arms tightened around him, and she sniffled into his shirt.
The front door banged. After a moment, John appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Brandon went for a walk to cool off.”
“He’s from California, isn’t he?” Ryan said. “Cooling off won’t take long in this weather.” He freed an arm to reach out. “Come here, babe. Torey needs a hug.” And you look like you could use one too. John’s arms were big enough to gather them both in. Ryan rubbed the man’s shoulder, and for a moment they all stood together, warm despite the cool kitchen.
****
John hunched his shoulders at the sound of Cynthia’s footsteps on the stair, and glanced around the living room for escape. Funny how, even after four years, he recognized the determined rhythm that meant she was building up a head of steam. God, he hated fighting with her. It had always ended with icy-cold rejection, until she decided to forgive him. He remembered how hard he’d worked in the past for that forgiveness. He hadn’t had a big fight with Ryan yet, but somehow he didn’t think icy cold was going to be part of it when he did.
“John,” Cynthia said to his back. “We need to talk.”
“I know.” He sighed and turned. “I sent Ryan out with the kids to a movie.”
“You let him take Torey somewhere without asking me?”
John rubbed his face. “Yeah. I did. They were here a week at Christmas and he took them places then. I trust him with my kids. Hell, I trust him with my life.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“And I don’t trust Brandon,” John pointed out. Even though he’d made damned sure Torey wasn’t actually afraid of Brandon, that was miles from trust. “But we both have to live with it.”
“Brandon wouldn’t hurt the kids.”
Neither would Ryan. John skipped the obvious and said, “Brandon pushed Mark and belittled him and made him feel like crap, until Mark was flunking school, and running away from home. There are a lot of ways to hurt a kid.”
“You can’t blame Mark’s problems on Brandon.”
“Maybe not but he didn’t help any.”
Cynthia frowned. “I didn’t come in here to talk about Mark right now. That’s not what this is about.”
Unfortunately. Mark’s future was the real important issue, but he knew she wasn’t ready to go there yet. “What is this about then, Cynthia?” Make her put it in words.
“You and that… that… man.”
“Ryan.”
“How could you?” He couldn’t tell if she was scolding him, or genuinely asking. “How could you want to be with him?”
“I love him.” Plain, simple, and getting more certain every time he said it. Admitting the truth today might have made this whole mess more complicated, but it made his goals simpler. Himself, and Ryan, and Mark, and as much of Torey as he could get, and a life.
“You can’t.” Cynthia groped for the arm of the wingback and then sat heavily. “How can you be gay? We were together almost twenty years. I would have known.”
“I didn’t know myself. I never looked at anyone but you. And then you were gone, and I looked around, and there was Ryan, and we just fit. At first I thought we were only good friends, but then I realized it was more.”
“And you… and he… sleep together?”
“Yes, we do.”
She actually shuddered. “With Mark in the house? With Torey?”
“We’re probably more discreet than you and Brandon are. You didn’t get pregnant without sharing a bed with your lover.”
“That’s different!”
“Not by much.”
“Of course it is. We’re married. We’re… normal.”
Whereas we’re not allowed to get married, at least not here in Wisconsin. “So you never slept with Brandon until you married him?”
She actually blushed. But then her spine straightened. “You can’t compare us. And I don’t want the kids staying in this house, if you’re going to do disgusting things around them.”
“Jesus, Cynthia. Grow up. The most I’m going to do in front of the kids is kiss the man. We don’t—”
“You kiss him?”
“I love him. Of course I kiss him.”
“I can’t do this.” Cynthia dropped her head in her hands. “I can’t talk to you. I can’t think about this. I can’t imagine you and him.”
“Well, don’t, for Christ’s sake. Do you think I like to imagine you and Brandon doing stuff?” He choked a laugh, as she looked up and glared at him, and shook his head helplessly. “We need to get back to talking about Mark, and what’s right for him.”
“He can’t stay here. That’s final.”
“What are you going to do? Drag him back to California in handcuffs?”
“You have to tell him he can’t stay.”
“But I want him to stay!” John tried to lower his voice. This was hard for her, he understood that. “He’s welcome here. He and Ryan get along well. He’s aced his high school classes this first week.”
Cynthia was just shaking her head over and over.
“Cyn, he’s fifteen. He’s starting to make his own decisions. And what I really don’t want is him running off to busk on the street with his guitar somewhere, thinking he can make it on his own.”
“That Ryan is encouraging him to play the guitar.”
“He doesn’t need encouragement. He’s a musician. When was the last time you actually listened to him play? He’s probably going to have a career in music. But if he stays with me, he just might finish school first, maybe even go to college. If Brandon tries to take his guitar away from him, we may never see him again.”
Cynthia shrank into the chair. “Mark wouldn’t do that. He’s just a kid.”
“He hitchhiked to get here.”
“He what? You said he came on the train.”
“And then hitchhiked. He’s independent, he’s angry, and he doesn’t always make good decisions.” John leaned toward her. “Cynthia, for his own good, you’re going to have to let him stay here, at least for now.”
“How long?” she demanded. “How long do you get to keep my son away from me?”
John bit his tongue hard to keep from saying, maybe as long as you’ve kept my kids away from me.
“Until he’s ready. Until he decides living with you is right again. Maybe until he’s eighteen and goes to college. You’ll get visits, I swear, even if I have to drag him out to LA myself. He’ll come see his little brother or sister and visit you. But he’ll live here, for as long as he wants to.”
“To hell with that,” Brandon said from the doorway. “That kid is not living here.”
John looked up at the ceiling. God give me strength. He took hold of his temper by the skin of his teeth, and got ready to start the argument over again.
Chapter Fifteen
Ryan paused at the door of Mark’s room Wednesday evening. The boy had been sullen and monosyllabic ever since his mother and stepfather’s visit. Ryan had hoped that having Cynthia give in and head back to California without him would smooth things over, but Mark wasn’t bouncing back.
Of course, Carlisle was still threatening to go to court to enforce the custody order. The man really hadn’t thought it through, if he believed dragging a resentful teenager back to his house was going to make his life better. Ryan wasn’t sure if Carlisle’s refusal to let go was driven by homophobia, possessiveness, or a simple unwillingness to admit to a mistake. Whichever, the uncertainty was wearing on all of them.
He knocked, then pushed lightly on Mark’s door. Mark was sitting on his bed with his guitar on his lap. He wasn’t playing it, just staring off into space.
“Hey,” Ryan said. “Your dad called to say they had a tree blow down in the quad. He has to get it cut up and hauled, so he’ll be late. We could order pizza.”
“Not hungry.”
Ryan leaned in the doorway. “Anything I can do?”
“No.” Mark looked up at him through brown hair getting rather long and shaggy. Suggest a haircut? Sometime when he doesn’t look like he wants to bite your nose off. But Mark’s expression was already shifting to uncertainty. “Ryan?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you something? I mean, if I ask you a question can we talk about it without you, like, telling Dad?”
“Probably,” Ryan said cautiously. “Unless your safety is involved, in which case I can’t promise.”
“It’s not that. It’s…” He stopped, fingering the inlay on the guitar. His long finger traced the pale curves in the wood, round and round.
“Okay,” Ryan said when the pause had stretched out long enough. “I promise.” He went in and sat on the desk chair, and tapped the door shut with his foot. “Lay it on me.”
Mark groaned. “No one says that anymore.”
“Just being the father figure here.”
Mark nodded instead of laughing. “It’s one of the guys in the band. What I said before. About the… problem. Who to tell?”
Ryan rummaged around in his brain for the first part of this conversation, and then remembered a week earlier. “The guy doing the drugs?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm. That’s tough.”
“I don’t want to tell Dad who it is, because then he’ll make me quit the band, and we’re, like, awesome, most of the time.”
Ryan wanted to say John wouldn’t have a knee-jerk response to the news, but in the interests of keeping it real, he took a pass. John was definitely overprotective about Mark and the band. “So when you’re not awesome? What do the other guys say?”
“See, that’s the problem. They don’t really see it. Because when we’re playing, he’s basically fine. A little spacey and absent-minded, but he plays okay. It’s when it’s just the two of us, writing songs, that he starts to… wander.”
“So this is Patrick we’re talking about?”
“I didn’t say that!” Mark protested.
Ryan knew who wrote the songs for the band, but okay. “One of the guys. Have you talked to him about it?”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “Like I said, ‘hey, dude, that’s some mellow weed you’re on.’ But he denies it. He says he’s just tired lately.”
“And you don’t think that’s true?”
“No way.” Mark snorted. “He used to write these cool lyrics, you know. But more and more, they don’t make sense. The words just ramble. And then in the middle of working, he’ll wander off into some weird-ass conversation. Sometimes it’s like he’s not even talking to me. He’s on something, and I don’t think it’s pot.”
“He never offered anything to you?”
“Ryan, he won’t even admit he’s taking shit. So how would he be offering it to me?”
“Right. Sorry.” Ryan gave it some thought. His mind wandered back to Alice, up a tree, wandering in mental space. “Does he seem… happy? Um, serene?”
“Kind of. Like, dissociated.”
“Good word.” Ryan nodded. “He said he knew that girl Alice, didn’t he?”
“Girl? Oh. The one in the tree that you tried to save? The one who jumped from, like, forty feet, when you were about to grab her, and almost made you fall out?” Ryan had told Mark the short version. Obviously, someone had also given him the long version.
“The first time I met him, didn’t Patrick say he worked with her?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“I wonder,” Ryan said slowly. “Patrick claimed Alice never did drugs. Now he says he’s not doing drugs. Maybe there really is something in the lab, some contaminant or something. Maybe he’s being drugged without knowing it.”
“Like, on purpose?” Mark’s eyes were wide.
“No.” Ryan hesitated. “Well, maybe, but it’s not likely. I’m thinking some kind of accidental exposure.”
“So if it was accidental, then he could just stop going into the lab, and he’d be fine. Right?”
“I don’t know.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair. “This is all hypothetical. Maybe it’s some recreational substance he and Alice use, and don’t want to tell anyone about. But it’s possible it’s the lab. I wonder if we should tell Detective Carstairs to take another look.”
“You can’t!” Mark bounded to his feet, clutching the guitar. “You promised. You can’t tell anyone. I don’t want Patrick to get into trouble. He’s not hurting anyone.”
“Except maybe himself. Mark, you know Alice effectively killed herself on the drug, whether she took it on purpose or not. Don’t you think for Patrick’s own safety—?”
“No,” Mark insisted. “I mean, yeah, I’ll talk to him. I’ll ask him if there might be something in the lab. I have to ask him first, before I tell anyone.”
“I’m not sure we should wait.”
“Two days,” Mark said urgently. “No practice tomorrow. But Friday, I swear, I’ll talk to him. It’s been months since the girl fell. He’s been fine so far. If I snitch, and Patrick gets busted for drugs, he’ll never forgive me. The whole band will never forgive me. I might as well just shoot myself!”
“Stop. Enough. You’ll have a life and a career, even if this band falls apart.”
Mark shook his head wildly. “No way. You can’t tell the cops. God, Ryan, please, you promised.”
“All right,” Ryan said reluctantly. “Till Friday. Then you talk to Patrick. Carefully and safely, while the other guys are around. Don’t confront him with this while you’re alone with him, okay? Promise me.”
“What do you think he’ll do? He’s just… mellow.”
“Doesn’t matter. If you threaten to take away someone’s drugs, it can get ugly. Promise you’ll talk to him when the rest of the guys are there.”
“Okay. Jeez. I promise.”
“And then call me,” Ryan added. “Call me either way. If he’s doing drugs on purpose, we need to… at least talk about it. Maybe we can help him see it’s messing up the band. And if it’s not on purpose, then we need to tell someone in authority.”
“Shit.” Mark sat back on his bed and picked at the strings of the guitar, a few tentative notes. “I keep thinking I’ve got stuff under control, you know. But there’s always something else.”
“I know the feeling.” Ryan stood stiffly. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re ha
ndling a whole series of tough problems pretty damned well.”
Mark’s eyes went bright, behind those shaggy bangs.
“And now,” Ryan said, “Pepperoni pizza?”
“Sure,” Mark ran through a rapid minor line, the notes clear and crisp. “I guess I could eat.”
Ryan made the trek to his own room, stretched out on the bed with his phone, and called to order dinner. He could get in twenty minutes with his feet up before the food came.
“So,” he said conversationally to the air, to the deity he wasn’t sure he believed in, “when I said I wouldn’t mind having kids, did I forget to mention I’d prefer they didn’t show up ready-made as teenagers?” The silence was his answer. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He was coming to love Mark, and Torey was a great kid, but their teen problems made him envious of Drew’s fatherhood, with his chocolate-pudding-on-the-carpet complaints. It would’ve been so much easier to start with toddlers.
****
John paused in his work at the end of Friday and stretched, thinking about the coming weekend. It could only be a vast improvement on the last one. He’d thought Cynthia and Brandon would never leave. They had talked Mark’s choice to death, before bowing to the inevitable, and then started in on Cynthia’s visitation demands. Mark didn’t want to go back to California at all. In the end, they’d agreed to a month’s cooling-off period first. Unless Brandon went through with his threats to take the whole mess to court instead.
It’d been hard to say goodbye to Torey. John really wanted to keep her with them too. That would be heaven, to have both his kids and Ryan, all together again. But it wasn’t going to happen, and he hoped they’d done the right thing for Torey. A girl needed her mother. She’d left without too much fuss, gazing tearfully out the back of the rental car. God, parenting was the hardest job on earth. But temporarily getting settled with Cynthia was a weight off his mind. Now he, Mark, and Ryan had a chance to work out how to live together.
And in a few minutes, he’d be going home to Ryan. Just a little more paperwork to do. It wasn’t a bad life.
John liked coming back to his office at the end of the day. Sure, it was a small space in a stuffy industrial basement, but he had a variety of campus maps on the walls, plant-care schedules, contractor numbers. On the biggest map, lines in green, yellow and red marked the walking trails he’d refurbished, the ones in need of care, and the ones he was planning for the future. A big photo of the lilac hedge in full bloom lent inspiration for the coming spring.