Enchanted Heart (34 page)

29

“I
f you hadn't given her money, she wouldn't be dead.”

For the middle of the night, the emergency room at Riverside Regional Medical Center was hopping. In the time since Lance and Tarique had been there, two gunshot wound victims had been rushed in and another ten to twelve people were sitting around moaning and groaning, some of them bleeding.

“Why'd you tell the police you had a gun?”

“I didn't want them to take her.”

Lance put his arm around the boy's shoulders and was surprised when he didn't pull away. “Gayla loved you, Tarique. She just had some problems.”

“She didn't love me. She loved her pipe. She was a crack head.”

There was nothing he could say to that. “Yeah, she was.”

The police released Tarique into Lance's custody. Then Lance called a funeral director.

As he made the arrangements for Gayla's body to be picked up, Lance realized just what her death meant. He had a son to raise. A son he didn't know, and wasn't all that sure he even liked.

 

 

Lance watched dawn creep along the horizon. Tarique had fallen asleep by the time Lance pulled into his parking spot. The boy put up no protest when Lance deposited him on the large bed in his guest room. The boy simply pulled the pillow close to him and cried himself to sleep.

That's when Lance felt old.

Old and tired and not at all sure how he'd found himself in this situation.

He knew absolutely nothing about kids—except that they grew up. What was he supposed to
do
with Tarique?

Everything about the day had been so far out of his realm of experience that he didn't even know where to begin.

It was one thing to fantasize about having a son—about taking him to ball games and on trips. It was another thing altogether to have an angry, grieving ten-year-old ensconced in his guest room.

He watched the James River Bridge open for a passing ship and then eventually close as the vessel moved on; the only sign of its transient passage a gentle wake in the water.

All his life Lance had done just that, passed through, sometimes kicking up a big wake, but rarely leaving anything of lasting value. Now he had the opportunity to do that. Now he could stop being the trust-fund bum out for nothing but a good time.

He could be a father and a role model and a hero to somebody. He could be to Tarique all the things he never got from his own father, a man he'd never known. He could be all the things Cole had been for him. Lance grew up idolizing his uncle. Cole was smart and funny and had everything so together. For the first time, Lance understood what Cole had meant when on so many occasions he'd said the eleven years separating them in age was more like twenty.

In all ways except physically, Lance had been a boy up until now. With no real thought as to how he'd realistically support her or where they'd live or what the vows he took really meant, he'd married Gayla on the spur of a romantic moment.

Without more than a look at a pretty face, the curve of a breast and the flair of a hip, he'd slept with woman after woman, not concerning himself with any lasting liaisons or emotional ties that may have been forged.

He'd so easily blamed his mother for dumping him into his grandparents' care. He'd so easily blamed Cole for taking the best jobs at Heart Federated and leaving him with the dregs. He'd so easily blamed Gayla for his lack of trust, and his grandmother for riding him on everything from his sleeping around to his freewheeling spending.

Light spread across the horizon and a few cars traveled the distance from the far side of the bridge in Isle of Wight, to the base near the marina below his complex.

But the blame belonged not on anyone else's shoulders. The burden now and always had been solely on him.

He knew what he had to do to turn his life around. Even the company he wanted to start represented another selfish gesture. It, like everything about Lance, was about image. What it meant to look good, to dress sharp, to be the center of attention.

The real center of attention lay across that bed down the hall. Lance knew nothing about being a parent, and even less about other things. But the time and place to start was right now.

With Tarique, he was way out of his element. Lance was man enough to admit that much. He needed help and wasn't going to be too proud to ask for it. Stepping away from the view, he reached for the phone to call his mother, then realized it was six o'clock in the morning. From Florida, there was little she could do other than console him. And it would take a while to get her up to speed on just how he'd come to have a ten-year-old son. He'd have to answer a lot of questions that he'd just as soon not deal with right now.

Lance rarely saw the crack of dawn, but he knew someone who did—even on Sunday. He quickly called Cole's house, interrupting Sonja's morning exercise.

A little while later, Sonja shut the door on the still sleeping Tarique. They went to the kitchen where they could talk.

“I figure there's some paperwork or something I'm supposed to fill out, but what is it? Where do I go?”

Sonja poured a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen counter. “Before you go all legal, are you sure he's your son?”

“Did you take a look at that kid?”

Sonja conceded the point. “All right. So he's yours. You know, he looks just like Cole did at that age. There are some pictures of Cole and Mallory at the house in Carolina one summer. One of them is of Cole asleep on the porch.”

Lance wiped a hand over his face. “Yeah. Tarique is a Heart through and through.”

Without question he affiliated himself completely and totally with the Hearts. Genes from the father he never knew accounted for little to Lance or anyone else in the family. And the distinction between his heritage as a Heart and his surname of Smith frequently faded. Even he used Smith when he wanted to remain anonymous. None of the women he dated or the social connections he'd made had anything to do with the name Smith.

He filled Sonja in on the gaps in the story.

“I tell you, Lance. You don't do anything by halves. Apparently nobody in your family does.”

“I wish that was all of it,” Lance muttered.

“Well, you've certainly piqued my curiosity.”

Shaking his head, Lance answered, “That part's not salient. Trust me.” He wasn't up to the Viv story now.

“You know, Lance, you look like hell.”

“I could say the same about you. You miss him, huh?”

“More than I ever thought I would—or could.” Sonja shook herself as if divesting herself of thoughts of Cole.

“He's fine,” Sonja said. “Cole e-mailed this morning.”

Lance frowned. “E-mailed? If my woman was . . .”

“Lance, let it go. I came over here to be a guest at your pity party, not mine.”

His dubious expression clearly said he didn't want to let it go, but he cut her some slack. “I look like hell because it's been a long-ass day.” And it was starting to look as if it would be a long life from here on out.

“Well, the first thing you need to do is stop worrying about the long-term. There are plenty of things that need to be done right now to keep you occupied for a while.”

“Are you talking to me or yourself.”

She cut her eyes at him, then went to the fridge and opened it. Not a thing on the shelves could remotely be construed as suitable for breakfast. “Eat out a lot?”

“I'm not hungry.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “But your son will be.”

For a long moment, neither said anything. Lance reached under the counter and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. “What do I need to do first?”

 

 

Gayla's funeral was a small, but elegant affair that surprised some of her friends from the projects. White roses filled the small chapel at the funeral home and were carried to the gravesite. And all eyes, Lance knew, were on the front pew of the tent. The service and burial were what the Gayla with whom Lance had fallen in love and married would have appreciated. But Lance didn't know the woman she'd become, and the child standing at his side in a black Armani suit that matched his own was just as much a stranger.

The suit had caused no small amount of trouble. They'd gone back to the Granger Shores apartment for Tarique to get something to wear. That's when Lance discovered that the boy's entire wardrobe consisted of jeans and sneakers. Tarique balked at the idea of having to wear a suit. In the end though, the novelty of having a tailor cut and size cloth for him kept Tarique still enough. That and the matching wraparound sunglasses they each wore won the boy over.

Lance wasn't sure if they looked more like Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in
Rain Man
or Austin Powers and Mini-Me. He decided on the latter and smiled.

“Mr. Heart?”

The soft inquiry from the funeral director brought him back to the moment. The mourners included some of Gayla's friends from Granger Shores as well as an aunt who'd read the obituary in the newspaper. He'd tracked down Gayla's mother, but she'd refused to see him and wanted nothing to do with Tarique.

Lance nodded at the funeral director and reached for a handful of the soft soil. He motioned for Tarique to do the same.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

They sprinkled the newly turned soil onto the top of the mauve casket that held all that remained of Gayla Stewart Heart Smith.

Later, as the cars were leaving, Lance and T.J. walked to T.J.'s pickup parked along the edge of the cemetery road. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Where would I have started?” Lance said. “At the part about I have a wife and kid that I in effect abandoned? Or maybe at the part where I say ‘you know that juvenile delinquent you've banned from the rec center? Well, he's my son.' ”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Did what?”

“Started volunteering down here?”

Lance's presence in the East End of the city where crime was a constant threat despite the best efforts of community activists like T.J. had been something of an anomaly.

“No,” he said, and knew it was the truth. “I started coming because I wanted to connect with something.”

“And did you find it?”

Lance looked toward the green funeral home tent that had shielded mourners from the afternoon sun then back at his friend. Tarique sat in a wooden folding chair, his head down. “Yeah. I found it.”

T.J. nodded. The apology was accepted.

“What're you going to do now? I mean about Tarique?”

“I don't know. I'm thinking we might just go away on a trip. You know, one of those father-son things. Get out of town for a little bit. We could both use a change of scenery.”

“Yeah, man. That might be good.”

His tone though said that it would take more than a road trip to make Lance a father or Trouble Stewart a model son.

Lance was inclined to agree.

After all the mourners departed and the graveyard people had moved on to another site to be prepared, Lance and Tarique stood at the hole in the ground staring at the top of Gayla's casket.

“I want you to live with me,” Lance said. “I know we don't know each other that well, but I'd like to get to know you.”

“It's not like I have a lot of choice.”

Lance didn't say anything.

“Did you love her?”

Lance looked at his son. “Yes. Very much.”

The boy's lip trembled. “Then why didn't you come get us?”

Lance squatted down so he was eye level with Tarique. “I didn't know where your mom was,” he said. “And I didn't know about you at all. Not until a few weeks ago.”

“She said you were rich and didn't care about us.”

“That wasn't true,” Lance said. “There were things . . .” He only wished he knew what. “Things that happened that kept us apart. If I'd known, I'd have been right there with you, every step of the way.”

“Yeah, right. Nobody wants me.”

Tarique had overheard the exchange between Lance and Gayla's mother. She'd refused to acknowledge the boy back when Gayla first told her she was pregnant, and she refused any association with him now.

Lance put a hand on the boy's shoulder. “That's not true. I do.”

When Tarique didn't say anything, Lance rose. “Let's go get something to eat.”

 

 

Later that night, after a meal of juicy cheeseburgers and crispy fries from What-a-Burger, Lance took Tarique to the Granger Shores apartment to pack up some of his stuff.

“I've been thinking about moving into a house,” he told the boy. “Someplace where we could put a basketball hoop.”

“Yeah?”

Lance nodded.

“Well, I don't like basketball.”

Lance sighed.

Tarique went to his room and Lance, standing in the middle of the cluttered living room of Gayla's apartment, closed his eyes. This wasn't going to be easy.

The drug paraphernalia had been taken away by the police, but bloodstains remained on the threadbare carpet. Lance had gotten a call that the housing authority needed the place emptied out. There wasn't a thing Lance wanted, but he did make his way to Gayla's bedroom.

The room was littered with clothes and magazines. Ants skittered over a mound of what may have been the remains of a sandwich.

Lance spied a photograph on the dresser. Stepping around a laundry basket, he picked it up.