by J P Barnaby
“That had to be hard for you.”
“What, knowing that because of a stupid mistake, I couldn’t be there for her? Or that I can’t provide for her now?”
“Yes,” Aleks murmured.
“Yes, it’s really fucking hard.”
“We can have a quiet ceremony next week.” He changed the subject after a long moment. “The media will get the story eventually, but I want you protected in my house before they do.”
“Why would anyone care if we get married?”
“I’m the CEO of a very successful company. Everything I do is news. That’s why we have to be careful about looking into my father’s murder.”
“Yes, where do you want to start with that?” Thomas asked, happy to get away from talks of weddings and media. He’d had enough of reporters when he was on trial.
“I’ve already gone through his personal financial records, but I didn’t see anything unusual. It’s got to be somewhere in the company. I’ve also been going through his travel in the two years before he died. He made a lot of trips to New York and a few to Greece I can’t reconcile with any business.”
“Rich guy traveling, that’s not so unusual,” Thomas said, watching Aleks glide smoothly into traffic.
“No, but it just strikes me as odd. They’re short trips, so it wasn’t for leisure. My dad never did anything halfway, and that included vacationing.”
“Okay. Were you able to get his cell phone records?”
“Yes. They were part of the company’s AP system. But it’s weird because they’re mostly business-related. Like he never had any personal calls.”
“Maybe he had another phone.”
“Why would he have another phone?” Aleks tilted his head and his eyes widened in surprise.
“Lots of guys on the inside talked about having burner phones.”
“I never thought of that.”
“I’m not saying he did,” Thomas added quickly. “That would just account for the lack of personal calls, especially if he didn’t have a personal cell phone.”
The conversation died off, and Thomas watched the scenery morph from quiet countryside to urban chaos. Exit ramps slid closer together with each passing mile, and his heart hammered in time with the road noise.
Aleks turned off I-75 and headed toward Moores Mill Road. “I figured a corporate guy like you would be more Midtown than West Buckhead.”
“I just bought it recently. I’m in the process of selling my place in Midtown. Wes is helping to coordinate the move.”
“Wes?”
“My assistant. He works for the company, but mostly he works for me.”
“When have you had time to buy a house?”
“I called the realtor as I left the hospital the day Hannah was admitted. The day you said yes.”
Thomas sat up straighter at that. “Why?”
“My place in Midtown was a high-end two-bedroom condo. No place for a swing set. I promised you lots of space, a pool, and a yard for Hannah. I’d kind of been looking since…”
“Since you came up with this scheme?”
“Since I saw your face again.”
Thomas couldn’t respond, the words caught in his throat. He couldn’t ask how much of this marriage would be for show and how much would be real for Aleks. Deep down, he couldn’t allow himself to think about it.
Aleks pulled the Jag into the driveway of an enormous house. The dimensions overshadowed his family’s place by several times, but the footprint of the structure seemed smaller because the homes were closer together. When he looked up, the castle-like structure loomed toward the sky with pale blue brickwork trim to match the blue tiled roof, and cream-colored brick walls gave it a homey feel. Aleks rounded the circular drive and left the car outside the front door as he got out. Thomas followed, slower, taking in the perfectly landscaped grounds.
“Some of the furniture has arrived, some hasn’t. My bedroom stuff isn’t here yet and neither is the living room stuff, but we have a dining room table. The showroom will deliver more furniture over the next week. I left Hannah’s bedroom. I figured we could take her shopping and let her pick out whatever she wanted.”
Thomas spun toward Aleks. “Aleks, this is too much. Way too much. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here. Hannah has hand-me-down furniture. Her favorite toy is that friggin’ alligator we got out of a crane game. All of this is going to overwhelm her. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Okay, how about if I bring her pictures of a few different bedroom styles and let her decide?” Aleks asked as he leaned against the Jag.
“You’re missing the point.” Thomas waved a hand. “Never mind. Let’s just go inside and we can talk about what happens next. I hope your assistant stocked the wet bar.”
“I made sure he did that first.”
“Lead the way, then.”
Aleks dropped his car keys into his jacket and pulled a different set from his pants pocket. These opened the front door onto a foyer with incredible vaulted ceilings and a staircase running along the right-hand wall. The open architecture design of the house made it seem even bigger. A formal dining room with a table set for two lay to their left, and a sitting room opened up across the hall.
“Would you like the tour?”
“I don’t know that I can handle any more right now, to be honest,” Thomas told him, the sheer size of the rooms making them spin. Aleks led him down the hall to the professional chef’s kitchen, full of granite and steel. The room was bigger than Thomas’s first apartment—way bigger than their old dorm room. Thomas pulled out a stool and sat down at the bar-height island, where an array of chopped vegetables rested under plastic. Aleks opened a dual-front refrigerator and removed a shallow plastic container, then turned to set it on the counter.
“Wes takes care of everything,” Thomas commented.
“Nope. I had the groceries delivered earlier when I was moving some of my clothes. I prepped everything. The chicken needed to marinate for a while, so I got that started while I came to pick you up.”
“Why didn’t you just pick something up, or we could have gone out? You seem rather busy to be doing the prep work for dinner.”
Alex gave a small smile. “I wanted to make dinner for you.”
“I already agreed to marry you. You don’t have to wine and dine me,” Thomas joked, but stopped at Aleks’s torn expression. Silence grew heavy, and Aleks pulled out a wok and utensils from the cabinets. He didn’t appear to be searching for anything, so he must have been the one to put it away.
When Thomas didn’t think he could stand the awkward quiet any longer, Aleks set everything onto the counter and turned around.
“Most of my wine collection is still at the condo, but I did have Wes bring some of my favorites. Would you mind going through that door to your left and grabbing a bottle? I don’t care which one. Probably a white would work best with dinner, though.”
“Sure.” Thomas hopped off the stool and pulled off his jacket, then hung it from the back of the high stool. Aleks had put his jacket on a matching stool, so Thomas assumed the formality of the evening had gone down a notch. He made his way into a large pantry lined with dozens of wine rack shelves. There had to be room for a couple hundred bottles in there, but only about twenty-five or so of the spots were full. As he stepped in, trying to decide which bottles would be white wine, a sparkle caught in the corner of his vision. Lying there, so obvious he could not have missed them, were two understated silver, black, and diamond rings in a velvet box. Next to it lay another rose and a white parchment card with a handwritten note.
To make it official.
Thomas couldn’t move for a long moment. He stared at the note as if it might grow teeth and bite. The rings would make their engagement official. It was a moment he’d thought about in an abstract, off-handed way, getting engaged. Never in a million years did he think it would happen like this. Thomas offered Aleks a silent thank-you for allowing him this moment of priva
cy as he picked up the rings from atop the bottle of Stonestreet Chardonnay. He’d never heard of the brand, but the pretty lettering on the label told him it was probably expensive. His hands shook as he pulled one of the rings from its pillowed home and placed it on his finger. It caught rays of light Thomas couldn’t even see. The silver-toned ring—titanium, he guessed—set off the stones in a classic fashion.
It held his gaze as he reached for the box, parchment, and bottle of wine he’d nearly forgotten in Aleks’s well-planned surprise. He looked at the ring for a long moment and then returned it to the box and walked into the kitchen.
Thomas placed the wine on the counter and then dropped the box and card on a nearby stool without a word. The rings caught Aleks’s attention, but he said nothing. Instead, he pulled two large wineglasses from a rack in the cabinet and a corkscrew from the drawer. He set all of them on the island and started stir-frying their dinner, leaving Thomas to pour the wine.
“Do you like wine, or are you still more a beer guy?” Aleks teased as he finished the rice. Thomas liked watching him cook, the lines of his back moving with each flip of the wok.
“I’m more of a Jack guy now,” Thomas told him and handed Aleks the glass of wine. He could tell the bitterness in his tone hadn’t escaped Aleks’s attention.
“I do have a bar, if you’d rather—”
“No, wine is fine. The last time we went out drinking, things didn’t go so well.”
“They were fine to start,” Aleks said, smiling as he spooned the stir-fry on top of the mounds of rice already on two elegant dinner plates.
Thomas took a long drink from his glass. The delicate flavor worked with the crispness of the wine, but it certainly wouldn’t be enough to take the edge off The Twilight Zone turn his life had taken. “Do we have to go into that formal room, or can we just eat at the counter here? Tonight is a little much for me already.” Thomas refilled their glasses and slid one to the only other clean spot on the counter, the end next to him.
Aleks put a plate in front of each of them, then grabbed two forks from a nearby drawer. “I’m fine with that.”
Their knees touched around the corner of the island as they dug into the sweet, fiery masterpiece Aleks had created. Each bite tingled the inside of Thomas’s mouth even as the sweet taste of honey tantalized him. The combination tasted like nothing he’d ever experienced. Of course, they’d lived on rice and beans and ramen for so long, even pizza had become a treat. “This is amazing, Aleks.”
“Thought I could only make gyros, huh?” Aleks said with a chuckle followed by a sip of wine.
“Not even a little. I can’t cook for shit—maybe a grilled cheese or spaghetti for Hannah when she wants it.” He snorted and lifted a forkful of stir-fry in salute. “I’m going to make a terrible wife.”
Aleks laughed and leaned forward until Thomas could feel his breath. “I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful wife.”
Thomas reached for his wine and tried not to choke as he took a long swig.
“Okay, let’s try something easier. How did you meet Hannah’s mother?” Aleks asked, sitting back on the stool. His handsome face still carried traces of amusement.
“When I got out of college, I was anxious to prove two things. One, that I could program like a fiend, and two, that I was straight. I turned out to be half-right.”
Aleks didn’t interrupt. Instead, he brushed a hand against Thomas’s leg in comfort.
“I had three major offers when I started looking for a job. Jonesboro made me the best one and had a great reputation, so I went there. I met Sherry my very first day. She was a tenacious sales rep with a good heart. When she asked me out about four months later, I took the opportunity to prove to myself that I wasn’t gay. We dated. We became intimate. I might have proposed within the year had I not gone to prison. I mean, that’s what straight people do, right?” Thomas shrugged and dropped his fork next to his plate.
“Did she stand by you?” Aleks picked at his rice.
“For a while, until she found out she was pregnant. Then we decided it would be best for her and for the baby if she left me.”
“That must have been hard.” He gave up the pretense of eating and put down his fork as Thomas had done.
“That was a picnic compared to what followed.”
“Which was?”
“First, my mother came for visitation to tell me I had a little girl, and that her mother was dead. Sherry had no real family. Her parents had been killed in a car accident when she was in her late teens. But later, it got so much worse when my mother came to tell me that this beautiful little girl that I’d only seen growing up through inkjet-printed pictures had cancer.”
“Your mother didn’t bring her for visitation?”
“I never wanted her anywhere near the place. Besides that, young as she was, it would have all been for me, not for her. She didn’t need that.”
“I can understand.”
“Can you?” Thomas asked, too bitterly to be civilized.
“I probably should have said I could sympathize with that. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“No, I didn’t mean to snap like that. It’s just not an easy subject.”
“That I can understand.”
“Mom and I sat in the prison visitors’ area, surrounded by guards and the worst humanity had to offer, including me, and talked about what to do next. I’d been using all of my online time to research leukemia. She had just better than a 50 percent chance of survival. We had to sit there and decide if we wanted to torture this sweet little girl with chemo, burning her from the inside out, or if we wanted to just make her comfortable and let her go. Neither my mother nor I are terribly religious, but it seemed like cruelty to force Hannah into a life she couldn’t decide on herself.”
Aleks just nodded, and Thomas understood. There really were no words.
“I watch her fall asleep under the swing she should be playing on. I watch the pain she endures. I watch her sit for hours and brush the hair of a cheap doll. She doesn’t do anything else with it, just brush its hair because she has none of her own. Because the only cheapass wigs her daddy can afford irritate her scalp, and she doesn’t need that.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, as the emotion swelled in the back of his throat. The tension in Thomas’s shoulders eased like an uncoiled spring now that he had that off his chest. The monster had been building and building for years, and he couldn’t unleash it on the people closest in his life. But Aleks listened, and Thomas let out a relieved breath at the lack of judgment in his expression.
“Okay, I’m done playing word vomit. It’s your turn. What happened after you left college?” Thomas finished draining his glass.
Aleks slid off the stool and started to clear their plates, leaving the glasses. It did seem like a bottle kind of night. It took him a minute to start talking.
“My best friend left town without a word after giving me something I’d fantasized about since the day we met. It solidified for me the fact I was gay, which I’d been dancing around for quite some time. Like you, I grabbed on to the first person who expressed interest, only his name was Chris. Finally, about a year ago, I got up the balls to tell my father, the one person in my life whose opinion mattered. I went through the whole speech about being gay, and he never said anything. It felt more like indifference than anger or disgust.”
“How old were you when your mom died?” Thomas asked. He hated himself because Aleks had told him years ago, and he couldn’t remember. That’s something you should remember.
“Twelve.”
“What happened?” The question came out with such gentleness, Thomas barely realized he’d asked.
“Her appendix ruptured. I found her when I came home from school.”
“I’m sorry.” Thomas put a hand on Aleks’s arm.
“She was everything. My father spent all his time out conquering the world, but Mama dressed up like a knight when I wanted to play castle. She sat
by my bed when I was sick. I didn’t realize it at the time, but even at twelve, she was kind of my best friend.” Aleks slid the plates into the dishwasher.
“After the funeral, my father moved us here. I’d never had many friends, but they were gone along with my mother. I didn’t see my grandparents for years. When the school year resumed, my father sent me off to a prestigious boarding school. I don’t think he knew what to do with a kid, especially one acting out after the loss of his mother.”
“Were you ever close?” Thomas rinsed the wok in the sink for something to do. He wanted to focus on something other than the hurt.
“No, but he was all I had in the world. And he did love me, I think. He just didn’t know how to be a father. In fact, it took a while to realize, but I don’t think he’d been indifferent when I told him I was gay. Mostly I think he was distracted by whatever would take his life six months later.”
“Where were you when they found him?” He handed the wok to Aleks and began to rinse the glasses.
“My father hired me right out of college, sticking me in the programming pool to keep me out of trouble until I was ready to move up in the ranks. He didn’t want me to turn into some spoiled rich kid burning through his trust fund with fast women and faster cars.”
“And did you?”
“Didn’t I mention that I’m gay and drive a Prius? Anyway, they pulled me out of a project meeting and into a glass-windowed conference room to tell me my father had been murdered.” Aleks added a pod to the dishwasher and closed the door.
“I’m sorry.”
“I pushed my way past them and went to my father’s office, now my office. I’m not sure if I was looking for him or just trying to get away from the prying eyes.”
“That I can understand. There’s nothing but prying eyes in prison.” Thomas used the sponge to wash the inside of the sink.
“I grew up quickly after that—making all of the arrangements for the funeral, keeping the business running, and trying to untangle all of the legal mumbo jumbo surrounding my father’s estate. It wasn’t long until the whispers started, and then the meetings, about my role in whatever got him killed.” Aleks finished wiping down the island.