Don't Be Afraid (30 page)

This killer. This great, amorphous creature—that’s how she thought of him—had managed to get into the house that the cops had searched. He’d killed Poppy, he’d killed Officer Feeney.

She couldn’t stay. It had made sense at one point, but it didn’t anymore. She didn’t want to leave, to leave was to concede defeat, but it was also to save their lives.

“What do you want for dinner, sweetie?”

“I dunno.” Emma dragged her coat along the ground, humming a little song.

“Pick up your coat, Em.”

“Can we have ice cream?”

“Maybe for dessert. Not for dinner.”

“Why?”

Her hands fumbled with the doorknob. She knew the police had just been inside, but still she opened hesitantly, half expecting someone to jump out at her. She felt like the Jamie Lee Curtis character in
Halloween
.

“Why, Mommy?”

“Why what?”

“Why can’t we have ice cream for dinner.”

“Because it’s not a dinner food, it’s a dessert food.”

“Why?”

“Get your suitcase out of the closet, Em.”

She saw Emma’s hand reaching for the closet door and suddenly called, “No! I’ll do it.”

Emma jumped. “I can do it.”

“I know you can, but Mommy’s going to do it. You can get your crayons packed, okay?”

They would have checked the closet, right? She had to steel herself to turn the knob. A mental count of three and then she did a fast twist and pull, jumping back as she did so and—nothing. The closet was empty. The metal hangers pinged quietly against one another.

Amy let out her breath and grabbed Emma’s suitcase and her own.

“Mommy, did you make these pictures?”

“Hmm?” She closed the closet door and turned to see Emma holding up photographs.

“What are those, Em?”

The little hands were clutching the photos, Emma’s eyes very wide. Amy knew then. She knew as the small hands turned them slowly around. She knew before she saw her naked body lying on her bed. She snatched the photos from Emma’s hand.

“Where did you get these?” she cried, her voice loud and scary. Emma shrank from her, but she couldn’t help repeating it. “Where, Emma?”

“Here!” her daughter shrieked, pointing at the coffee table. A manila envelope sat alone at its center with a single word scrawled across the cover in red: WHORE.

 

 

Mark mopped at his face with the Kleenex, taking deep breaths to calm down.

It wasn’t your fault.
He heard Father Michael’s voice in his head.
Sometimes things happen and there is no reason for them. There are tragic accidents. It’s part of the mystery of life.

He touched his hand to the floor. He thought of the boy’s eyes dimming and he sobbed some more and prayed for the boy and for Tyson and for the man who’d used the boy. And then he prayed for himself. When he was done, he stood up and knocked on the door and handed over the tissues with a thank you and a twenty-dollar bill. The woman took the tissues, but pushed back the money.

“You go now,” she said, eyeing him suspiciously. “You go home.”

He took the five flights faster on the way out. Each level down seemed to lighten something inside him.

You go home.
He was in the car and driving in a few minutes. Someone had stolen his hubcaps while he’d been inside, but at least the stereo was intact. He swiped at his eyes and started the car.
You go home.
He turned the car up 14th Street. The streets got cleaner in the West Village, the houses nicer. Working streetlamps. Less graffiti. Painted trim on old brownstones and lights above the front doors. It had been a fall day when he’d first come down here. Taking a break from the mean streets on his day off.

He found a parking spot next to a hydrant and put his light on the roof. He was only a few feet from the apartment.
You go home.

There were six steps up to the front door. The light above the door cast a glow on the stoop. The bell was a series of chimes. He listened to it ring and suddenly realized that he looked like shit. He brushed at the dust on his pants and ran his hands through his hair. There was movement at the door and he knew he’d been spotted. He held his breath, feeling faint for a moment, and then the door swung open.

A slender man stood in the doorway wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, his feet bare. His eyes were large and brown. His hair was honey-colored and it needed to be cut. He brushed it impatiently out of his eyes. He was shivering.

“Ash.” Mark’s voice croaked on the name. It was the first time in months that he’d said it out loud. “I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t stop the tears that fell from his eyes and then the other man lifted one slender hand and brushed at his cheek.

“Welcome home.”

Amy dropped the photos back onto the table as if they burned.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“Nothing, baby. Nothing’s wrong.”

“I’m not a baby, Mom, remember?” Emma said with the exasperation of a five-year-old.

“You’re right, sweetie, you’re not a baby.” Amy knelt next to her daughter. “You’re a big girl now and I need your help. I need you to pack your pink suitcase, Em. Do you think you can do that?”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to Nana’s house.”

“We are?” Emma sounded delighted. “Right now?”

“Yes, right now. We need to go really fast. So you pack all your stuffed animals. I’ll get your clothes.”

“Even my big unicorn?”

The largest of her stuffed animals, the giant unicorn that her father had indulged her with, the toy that Amy wouldn’t let her take on trips because it was too large.

“Yep. Even your big unicorn.”

Amy whipped clothes from her dresser, shoving them into her own suitcase. She grabbed clothes from the closet and added them with their hangers still on. Her hands shook as she yanked open the desk drawers in her office and removed all their important documents: Emma’s birth certificate, her birth certificate, their Social Security numbers. She grabbed her two best cameras, the extra telephoto lens, and then she took the photo of Emma as a newborn off her wall and added it as well.

The cops were surprised when they stepped outside, each of them pulling a bag behind them, Amy tightly gripping Emma’s free hand.

“Ma’am, you don’t have to leave. We’ll be watching the house all night,” one of the officers said. He was a tall man with graying hair and gray-blue eyes. He looked like someone’s grandfather, but Amy didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust anyone.

“He’s been here,” she said. “There’s a manila envelope with some photos on the coffee table. It’s from him. I don’t know how he put them there, I don’t know how he got in, but they’re from him. It needs to go to Detective Juarez. He’ll understand.” She loaded the bags and Emma into the car.

“Detective Juarez requested round-the-clock protection for you,” the other officer said. “You’ll be safe here.”

Amy shook her head. “No, we won’t. It’s not safe to stay. I wanted to stay. I really, really wanted to make it work—” She stopped, choked up. “We’re going,” she said after a minute. “I’ll call Detective Juarez tomorrow to explain.”

Emma hummed a little song in the backseat and Amy watched the house receding in the rearview mirror feeling as if she was watching her dreams for an independent life slipping away. She blinked back tears and locked the car doors before pressing her foot harder on the accelerator. It was only an hour-and-a-half drive to her mother’s house. If they made good time she could be there before midnight.

Morning and consciousness came together. Mark didn’t know where he was for a moment and then he recognized the midnight blue comforter and saw the Pride flag hanging on the wall and he knew.

He rolled over and saw Ash asleep next to him, curled up like always, one hand softly cupped near his face. Mark stroked the soft, fine hair, running strands between his fingers, and Ash’s eyes opened and he smiled at him.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

Ash let him continue stroking, saying nothing and just looking at him. The room was the same as when Mark had last been here, more than six months before. The large, carved four-poster that Ash inherited from an aunt, the shelves filled with books, the numerous pictures on the wall of Ash and his family and friends. The Pride flag from some long-ago parade. The empty cast from a teenage skiing accident. The program signed by Placido Domingo. The Yankees pennant that had hung over his bed as a child.

Mark saw that the photos had been carefully rearranged to cover the hole left by the removal of one. Soon after they met a friend of Ash’s took their picture at a party. The two of them, side by side, arms loosely wrapped around each other’s waists. Ash beamed at the camera, leaning back slightly against Mark’s shoulder while Mark sat very straight with a more reserved smile.

Ash had hung it in the center, the place of honor on his wall, and it was gone.

“I still have it,” he said, seeing Mark’s gaze. “When you first left, I used to study it.”

Mark waited, not saying anything, his stomach hurting because he wanted to ask why but was afraid of the answer.

“I couldn’t understand why you’d left. We were happy. We were going to share this place. I couldn’t understand what went wrong. But then I looked at the picture and I saw it in your face. In your eyes. You didn’t want that picture or this life with me. I was your secret—that was all.”

Mark kept stroking his hair, letting him talk, feeling the pain of that separation spilling from both of them.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I was afraid. I’d barely come out to myself. When you said ‘move in together,’ it was just too much. I wanted it, but I couldn’t handle it.”

“And now you can?”

There was a bitter note in his voice. Mark didn’t blame him. “Yes.”

“Why? What’s changed?”

He wanted to say “everything.” He was not the same person he’d been six months ago. Going home had changed him. The case had changed him. Trying to hide who he was had changed him.

“I miss you,” he said instead. “I’ve missed you every day that I’ve been gone. I need you. I need us. I’m tired of hiding this part of my life.”

Ash didn’t say anything, but he sat up in bed and reached for the T-shirt that had been left in a ball on the floor last night. He pulled it on and stepped over to a large plush armchair to get his jeans.

Dressed, he crossed his arms across his chest and looked at Mark. “What about your family?”

“What about them?”

“Have you told them?”

“No.”

Ash sighed and headed out of the room. Mark scrambled out of bed and went after him, leaving his own clothes behind. Ash was in the small kitchen making coffee, slamming open the fridge to get the beans, grinding them with a set look to his face, pouring them in the expensive Italian coffee machine that he’d bought at an overpriced cooking store around the corner.

They’d argued about it, but in a teasing, happy way, conscious that they were sounding like an established couple to argue about a purchase. Mark had told him that he could have gotten a better deal somewhere else, Ash arguing that the best coffee comes from the best preparation.

“Can I have a cup, too?” Mark asked. He was shivering in nothing but his boxer shorts. Ash snarled something unintelligible in response, but he got another mug out of the cupboard.

“I’m going to tell them,” Mark said. “I just haven’t yet.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Well, I was lying before—to myself as well as to you.”

Ash watched the coffee brewing with his back to Mark. “Why should I believe you this time?” he said. He sounded angry, but there was a plaintiveness in his voice that moved Mark to cross the room to him. Ash stiffened when he touched his back, but didn’t pull away.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said. He let his arm drop and wrap around the smaller man’s waist and he pulled Ash back against his chest. The other man didn’t resist him, but he was stiff in his arms.

“I will tell them,” he said. “But I need to know what to say.”

Ash pulled free and turned around, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. “How about, ‘I’m gay.’ ”

Mark smiled, relieved to be able to find some humor in this. His stomach unknotted a little. “Yeah, I’d planned on that. But I was talking about whether I could tell them about us.”

There was a long silence except for the drip of the coffee maker. When it stopped, Ash poured two mugs and added cream to one. He handed it to Mark.

“Is there an us?” he said, looking from his mug into Mark’s eyes.

“I want there to be,” Mark said. “I don’t want to be with anyone else.”

“I slept with someone else,” Ash said, aiming for casual but his voice climbed higher, betraying him. He gave Mark a wide berth and headed into the living room and the large, brown sofa, curling up on one end.

Mark followed, allowing the pain of that statement to hurt him the way he knew that Ash wanted it to. He sat down on the opposite end.

“And?”

“And what?”

“Are you with him?”

Ash laughed then, the light sound that Mark had missed. “You’re so old-fashioned,” he said. “No, I’m not with him. I’m not having his baby so we decided to forego the shotgun wedding.”

“Okay, smartass. I meant are you still seeing him?”

Ash shook his head, still smiling. “It was just one night. I was missing you and he looked like you.”

The pleasure this gave Mark was so immediate and so sweet that he felt for a moment like his heart might stop just from the feeling. They sipped their coffee for a few moments in silence. Ash gradually let his feet slide over until they were resting against Mark’s side. It was something else they’d shared. He was always nudging Mark to rub his feet, trying to manipulate him into giving foot rubs, and being a general pain in the ass about it.

For a moment, Mark wished that he could go back and that nothing else had taken place. That he could choose again, to stay here, to stay within this apartment, within this love, and never have to have experienced all the pain of the last six months.

All at once he remembered something. “I slept with someone, too.”

Ash gaped at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. You don’t have to sound so shocked.”

“I can’t help it. I thought you were trying to go straight.”

Mark didn’t say anything, but he could feel his face turning red.

Ash started to laugh. “No!”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God. Well, I guess I have to ask. Are you still with her?”

“Shut up.”

But Ash had given in to a fit of giggles. “Is she carrying your love child?”

Mark picked up a velvet throw pillow and tossed it at him. Ash deflected it, laughing so hard he was snorting. “I can see the tabloid piece, ‘My Gay Love-Child.’ ”

Mark pounced on him and wrestled him onto his back. “Shut. Up,” he said, punctuating the words with kisses.

“Hmm . . . what will you give me?”

“This.” And Mark kissed him once. “And this.” And then over again.