by J P Barnaby
“Six months ago they found his body behind an abandoned warehouse in New York. He’d been shot in the back of the head. I came back to the States after the funeral, at the helm of my father’s company, and so alone I could barely stand it.” Bitterness crept into his voice again, harsh and strong against a backdrop of grief.
A long silence hung in the air between them in a haze of loss and pain. Thomas had always imagined Aleks graduating and being king of the world. Since that morning when he’d grabbed his stuff and run, he’d comforted himself with the fact that Aleks would get over it and be happy in his role as prince of the empire. He never once stopped to think that maybe Aleks would have problems too, even if they weren’t the monetary kind.
They watched each other for a long time, so long, in fact that the steam rising from Thomas’s cup disappeared. The standoff lasted until Aleks broke and checked his watch.
“Look, I don’t have much time.”
“Then why don’t you tell me why I’m really here?”
Aleks sighed, a long, heavy thing. He sat his cup on the table between them and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You’re right, there is no way the board would let me bring you on, and I still have to answer to them. But I did bring you here because I want to help you.”
“What, you want to give me a handout, Aleks?” Thomas kept his tone derisive, though on the cusp of losing their home, he certainly would have considered it. Even if he couldn’t admit that aloud.
“That’s not what this is about. I do need your skills as a coder, but not for the company.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father was into something, something that got him killed. If we follow the digital trail, maybe we can figure out what happened.” Aleks had lowered his voice to the point that Thomas could barely hear it, but he got what Aleks was saying.
“And you want me to hack into financial institutions in order to help you find that? Are you out of your mind? I’m not going back to prison.”
“I don’t trust anyone else. I know there’s a risk involved, a big one. But you’re good, Thomas. You were the best of all of us. The only reason you got caught was that you were cocky. Now there’s nothing to boast about.”
“Yeah? What happens to my daughter when I go back to jail for helping you?”
“What I’m proposing is, in exchange for your help, I will marry you. You’ll have a prenuptial agreement guaranteeing two million dollars after three years of marriage. Hannah will have health care coverage, the best in the world. If you’re caught, I’ll do everything I can to protect you, but even if I fail, you will still be my husband and Hannah my daughter. She’ll want for nothing. And, of course, I won’t be able to testify to anything.”
Thomas sat back in the chair, a stunned silence tingling against his skin. Anything that had been bouncing around his brain as Aleks spoke vanished in his shock. He picked up the cup, and it took a minute for him to realize that his mouth hung open, so he took a long drink of the tasteless tea.
“It’s a perfect cover. The fact I’m gay isn’t a secret, and anyone who digs would see we were close in college.” Aleks shrugged. “Look, I have to get back upstairs. I’ll leave you to think about it.” He took a business card from his pocket and handed it to Thomas. “My personal cell is on the back.”
“Are you crazy? Why the hell would you want to marry me?”
“I need you,” Aleks said simply, picking up his cup and moving past Thomas’s chair. “The board thinks I had something to do with whatever my father was into. They want to take the company, and I will not let that happen.”
Thomas stood to follow him. “So you’ll marry me, save Hannah’s life, and give me millions just for a couple of keystrokes? No one is that nice, Aleks.”
“You help me, and I’ll help you.”
“Help me what? Get head down, ass up for you? Whore myself out to save my kid?”
“Think about it.” Aleks turned and caught Thomas’s gaze.
Aleks turned away and tossed his cup into a nearby garbage can on his way out the door, leaving Thomas openmouthed and more exposed than he’d felt in years.
ϛ͵
“ARE YOU going to tell me what’s going on?”
Charlotte threw the rest of the empty boxes on the living room pile. Then she straightened up and pulled the bandanna from her hair. She ran her fingers through the short strands. Thomas watched, marveling at how much Hannah resembled her, with the high cheekbones and button nose. His mother had dark brown hair, like his. And they had eyes in the same shade of brown, like the leaves in late fall.
“I didn’t get the job. I told you that.”
Thomas grabbed an empty broken-down box and folded it into shape again. He took more care than he would have without his mother’s focused gaze. Once the bottom was covered in duct tape, he started adding books from a nearby shelf. Not once did he meet his mother’s eye.
“Yeah, you told me that. But you’re holding back something else. I’ve spent the last seven years taking care of Hannah. If you’re lying to me about something—”
Thomas held up a hand, cutting her off as he listened for any sounds from upstairs. Hannah was lying down for her second midevening nap, something no healthy seven-year-old should have to take. Hearing nothing, he motioned for his mother to follow and moved into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of Jack from the back of a high cabinet, a bottle he used only when he couldn’t stand the sight of his own face anymore. His mother raised an eyebrow when he brought it to the table without so much as a thimble of Coke to mix it with.
After a long, healthy swig, he set the bottle on the table and met his mother’s gaze. “It wasn’t a job offer. He just used that as a pretense to get me there.”
“Who used it?”
“Aleksander Sanna, my roommate from Georgia Tech.”
“I remember him. A shy little thing with black curly hair, right? Quiet? Let you get into all kinds of trouble?”
“Yeah, only he’s not all that shy anymore.” Thomas snorted and took another pull from the bottle.
“What did he want?”
“He wants me to help him figure out who murdered his father.”
“Why would he ask you? You’re not a detective.” Charlotte took the bottle from Thomas’s hands and drank from it herself.
“I do have certain skills.”
“Skills that put you in prison.”
“That’s what I told him. But he….” Thomas couldn’t finish. He had no idea what his mother would say about the proposal. No one had ever known he liked guys. He’d grabbed the first girl he could after college and held on for dear life.
“But he… what, Thomas?”
Thomas plucked the bottle back and took another long drink. The burn settled his nerves, warmed his insides against the shock of what was to come. He wouldn’t lie to her; he couldn’t. “He said in return for my help, he would… he’d… marry me. Aleks has more money than God. He also has amazing health insurance. We would be taken care of, Mama. Hannah would get the best medicine out there.”
“What if you split up?” His mother was nothing if not a pragmatist.
“He said that I’d be entitled to two million dollars after three years of marriage.”
Charlotte took the bottle and held it between her hands. After a long drink, she simply stared at the label. Thomas wondered if she found answers hidden in the fine print on the side. If so, he wanted to turn the bottle around to find them. After what seemed like a lifetime, she tore her gaze from the bottle. “God knows it’s legal now. It’s been all over the news. What are you going to do?” She held no judgment or contempt in her voice. Mostly she sounded weary.
“What do you think I should do?”
“Thomas, I can’t answer that for you. Will you be able to live with yourself either way? Married to a man, or single and knowing what you could have done for Hannah? Rolling the dice on going back to prison on the word of a guy you haven’t seen in a decade? No, there’s no way I can a
dvise you here.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“Would you have to have sex with him as part of your deal?”
Again, her voice held no judgment—just trying to cover all the bases. He was surprised by that. In his heart, he’d expected her to tell him “hell no” and that would be the end of it.
“He asked if I was attracted to him.”
“Are you?”
Thomas took the bottle back. He didn’t know if he could say it aloud. The kiss, the groping in the dark—those were a one-time thing. It never happened again. Not with Aleks, and not with anyone else. But God, he’d thought about it. He’d jacked off countless times to the thought of a guy’s hot mouth around his dick. A tangle of black curls usually accompanied that mouth, with soft blue eyes looking up at him. He shifted in his seat.
After he took another long pull from the bottle, his mother’s face swam before him.
“Yeah, I’m attracted.”
She watched him for a moment, just long enough for him to wonder how disgusted he’d just made his mother. “Then it sounds like you have a decision to make.”
Thomas sighed and screwed the cap back onto the bottle of Jack.
“Go ahead and use the old newspapers I brought home to pack up the dishes in the hutch. I’ve got an eight o’clock breakfast meeting. We’re going over the RFP for the Housing Authority. I have to make sure all their little presentation ducks are in a row because this could mean a lot of new business for the company.” Her face gave nothing away, but she wasn’t exactly the shy, retiring stereotype of a genteel Southern belle. No, the label “steel magnolia” fit her best. She’d have said something if the disgust had smacked her in the face.
“Night, Mom,” Thomas said as he grabbed the newspapers from the chair beside him and stood up.
“We can talk more about this tomorrow, after we’ve both had a chance to think about it. You know we can manage. We’ve been doing it for years.”
“I know, but…. Hannah—”
“Yeah, she deserves better than what she’s been getting.”
“And maybe he was just fucking with me. I guess we’ll see.”
Charlotte nodded and pushed up from the table. She wobbled just a bit, enough for Thomas to notice but not say anything. His mother hated to be coddled. After saying her good night, she headed in the direction of the stairs.
Thomas grabbed a box and started pulling dishes out of the hutch.
He’d worry about Aleks’s offer the next day.
ζ͵
THOMAS HUNG up the phone and carried Hannah onto the porch. Usually the rocking motion of the swing calmed her, but as nauseated as she was, he kept still. He stroked her arm as he waited for the sound of the siren and wondered, not for the first time, if her quality of life was worth the hell they were putting her through. It killed him to watch her pain and how she tried to be so strong. He doubted he could have been that strong.
The sound of the ambulance brought him out of his thoughts, and he watched it pull into the drive, all the way up to the house. He was about to stand when he saw the Jaguar pull into the drive behind the ambulance, swinging wide to stay out of its way. Aleks always had impeccable timing. Thomas focused on the paramedics rushing up to the porch instead of the stunned man getting out of the sleek luxury car.
“She has leukemia. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, her pulse is thready, and she can’t stop throwing up,” Thomas told the closer paramedic, a small woman whose uniform badge read Connor. The woman smiled down at Hannah, attempting to soothe her.
“Okay, sweetheart. My friend Jimmy is going to get a bed for you, and we’re going to roll you into the ambulance. Daddy is going to follow us in the car, but he’ll be right there. Can you be big and brave for me?”
Hannah, who had been through the routine before but looked frightened by all the commotion, simply nodded.
“Can’t I ride with her?” Thomas asked as the other paramedic, a tall man with a bad comb-over, came back up the sidewalk with a stretcher. Sometimes they let him, sometimes they didn’t. It was just the luck of the draw.
“No, sir. For safety, we can’t take anyone in the bus except our little patient here. Well, and her alligator friend.” She smiled at Hannah and ran a finger over Lizzy’s fuzzy head. “It would be best if you didn’t drive, though. We don’t want you getting into an accident on your way to the hospital.”
“I’ll take him.” Aleks’s offer startled Thomas, who had completely forgotten he stood there watching the drama unfold.
“Great. Just meet us in the ER. They’ll get her stable.” The woman pushed Hannah toward the wide-open doors.
Thomas followed them to the rig. “Thank you,” he told them before turning his attention to his daughter. “Hannah, baby, I’m going to be right behind you. I love you.” He kissed her forehead before watching her get loaded.
“I’m a big girl, Daddy. It’s okay. I love you too.” Hannah’s voice came out as little more than a whisper.
Thomas’s eyes clouded at the bravery in his young daughter. She’d been through so much that an ambulance trip barely fazed her. What kind of world allowed that to happen to a child?
Thomas turned to Aleks while the paramedics pulled out of the drive with his daughter. “What are you doing here?” he asked, each word heavy and dull.
“It isn’t important. Do you need anything from the house?”
“Yeah. Let me grab the bag. She may be there awhile.”
Thomas grabbed their emergency bag from a table near the front door and carried it into the kitchen. He filled three water bottles with ice and tap water and then grabbed an economy bag of pretzels and a few granola bars from the pantry. The bag already contained a change of clothes for both him and his mother. They could figure out the rest later.
Aleks led him to the ridiculously expensive car, a car that probably could have covered the cost of his family’s home. He climbed into the passenger seat and tried to relax. His pulse pounded in his temple, just waiting to start one hell of a headache. It was that kind of day.
“Let me text my mom and let her know what’s going on,” Thomas said as Aleks pulled the car neatly out of the drive.
Hannah wasn’t any better this morning. She couldn’t get out of bed. Called the ambulance. On my way to the hospital now.
“Does this happen often?”
“She has leukemia, Aleks. That makes her a very sick little girl. Over the last two years, Hannah has spent more time in the hospital than out of it.”
Aleks grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. She doesn’t deserve any of it. Her mother is gone. I was gone for the first half of her life because of my own stupidity. Now it looks like she’s going to have to have another round of chemo, which is hell on her. On top of everything else, we’re losing our house, and we’re going to have to move into a tiny apartment with no grass and no swing set, the thing she loves most in the world.” Thomas wiped his face on the arm of his T-shirt.
“About that—”
“Whatever it is, save it for after she’s settled. I can’t think about it right now.”
“Okay. GPS says we’re about ten minutes out. We’ll be there soon.”
“Thank you for this. We only have one car, and Mom has it at work right now. I don’t know what I would have done if I had to wait for her.”
Aleks didn’t answer; he simply nodded and followed the computerized voice telling him to exit. Thomas had made this drive more times than he could count, but somehow he felt more on edge than before. Aleks made him uneasy in ways he couldn’t really quantify. It wasn’t just the proposal he’d offered, but his presence.
They rolled into the parking lot just as his mother texted to tell him that she’d be there as soon as she could. Thomas knew the firm his mother worked for was working on a proposal for new business. Besides, at the hospital, everyone spent their time hurrying up just to wait. At least she’d have something to keep her mind occupied.
&nb
sp; Thomas reached the ER doors first and bypassed the waiting room to check in at the nurses’ station. Many of the staff knew his family, and Melanie, the nurse on duty, was no exception.
“Hey, Thomas. They’ve started assessing Hannah, but I’ll take you back. There may not be a lot of room for your friend, but he can come too. She’s been chatting up a storm with Dale. He’s so great with kids.” Melanie sighed, and if little hearts could have popped out of her mouth with it, they would have.
She escorted them through the labyrinth of tiny caves shrouded with opaque curtains for the illusion of privacy. After a quick right, she pulled back the edge of a curtain and ushered them inside.
Hannah lay back against the bed, her face as pale as the pillow behind her head. Her bruised eyes were closed, but Thomas had the sense she wasn’t sleeping. Aleks moved off to one side, wide eyes watching the medical equipment around Hannah’s bed. Right then, she only had the wires running under her shirt to the leads for the heart monitor and a pulse oximeter taped to her right forefinger to track her oxygen levels, but apparently Aleks didn’t spend much time in hospitals.
“Hi, sweet girl. I told you I’d be right behind you.” Thomas ran his fingers gently over the baby-fine regrowth of hair on her scalp. She leaned into his touch like a kitten seeking affection.
“I’m tired, Daddy.” The lack of strength in her voice terrified Thomas down to places he’d never known fear could live.
“Okay, sweetheart. Take a nap. I’ll be right here beside you.”
They’d been to the emergency room five or six times in the past two years. Each time Hannah couldn’t sleep even when she got into a room because of the change and the excitement. He’d never seen her willingly curl up in a ball and sleep while surrounded by beeping, light, and chaos.
“Mr. Aberthol?” a voice asked from behind him. Thomas didn’t turn away from his daughter but merely looked over his shoulder at the doctor in the doorway.
“I’m Thomas Aberthol.”
The doctor, whose name tag read Dr. Pierce, glanced at Aleks before coming to stand on the other side of the bed from Thomas. He was short and thin, prematurely going bald, but had a pleasant face and a kind demeanor. He still looked happy, so he was definitely new to the underfunded county hospital.