Every Little Kiss (17 page)

His mom moved closer to him. “Without you, son, so many of us would lose our anchor. All the people you help every day in your job. Your dad and I here in this retirement home. Even those good people down at that literacy place. You help us all.”

She looked up at him, her eyes shining with emotion. It made his heart swell and thump. “That's not—”

“No, don't minimize it,” she interrupted. “You do that, you know. You tell yourself it's your job or it's your duty or whatever. But it's not. You don't
have
to help everyone the way you do. And I'm grateful, Abe. Your dad, too. Even if he can't say it. We both—I just don't know where we'd be if you weren't giving us the chance to live here. For me, taking care of your dad—well, it would be quite a lot more exhausting than it already is.”

He took his mom's hand. “Are you guys doing okay? Do you need anything?”

“See? This is what I mean. You're holding the kite string, even now.”

Abe didn't know what to say to that. It was simply how he was wired. “You need to let me know if there's something missing. Anything. More help, more money. Whatever. Okay?”

His mom pressed her shoulder into him. “For now, we're fine. More than fine. The village helps when I need them to. Your dad is comfortable. It's all we can ask.”

Abe struggled to reconcile that version of his dad with the one who had been fearless when he was growing up, who'd taken him to the ice rink to skate, who had once spent an entire week salvaging wood scraps so he could build Abe and Stu a fort.

“It's awful,” he said finally, “this disease.”

His mom nodded. “It is.”

Abe thought about his ninety-day pattern, wondering if he acted that way because he knew how tenuous things were when you loved something deeply. “Don't you get mad or frustrated or anything?” he asked his mom. “Do you ever wish this all just—hadn't happened?”

“The disease? Sure. I absolutely wish Pete didn't have dementia. But I'm also thankful to be here, and to be one of the last things he'll ever remember. Your dad has been the great love of my life. I'd hold his hand through anything, and be honored to do so.”

The truth of it tore at his heart. Being in love meant risking being hurt. The prospect and the reward were intertwined.

He turned back to the painting. “The longing on the kid's face. What's that all about?”

“Ah,” his mom said, smiling, “you caught that.”

“Is it supposed to mean something?”

“It all means something, honey. In this case, maybe he's just looking at that kite and thinking he wants to be up there, too. Flying, instead of steering.”

“How's that even possible?”

His mom laughed. “Literal again! I love you, Abe, but art interpretation will never be your strong suit.”

“I could have told you that when I was five.”

His mom chuckled. “This girl you mentioned earlier. What's going on there?”

Nothing. Everything.

“She's nice. I like her.”

His mom raised an eyebrow. “Will she last for a bit?” The subtext wasn't missed by Abe:
Unlike all your other girlfriends.

“That might be more up to her than me.”

“Nonsense. You woo her. You romance her. You get her to see your good qualities if you like her.”

“I didn't know my love life was so clear-cut.”

“I'm only saying you might want to open yourself up a bit, honey. She's the kite, you know?”

“Wait, a
woman
is the kite now?”

“Possibly.”

Abe rubbed his forehead. “I'm confused. Can't we just go cut more cookies with spoons?”

His mom laughed and hugged him. “We can. Come on.”

As they left the room, Abe glanced over his shoulder one last time at the painting. The kite shimmered on the canvas, bright and beguiling. A lot like Casey, actually.

She liked being up there, in the wild wind. But how could he launch himself into the air and meet her in the clouds? She was impossible to reach, it seemed, and there was only a thin string connecting them.

He could try, though. For once, he could put himself on that beach and believe that there was more for him than cold sand and freezing foam and pelting rain. There was a kite. It was Casey. And he could reach it.

Abe Aloft.

It was starting to make a little more sense.

C
asey tapped gently on Ingrid's office door. “Got a sec?”

Ingrid glanced up from her computer and pulled a gnawed number-two pencil from between her teeth. “Come on in,” she said, blinking as if she were trying to focus.

Casey wondered if her own eyes had the same bleary look. She'd thrown herself into her work this morning as well—in large part to distract herself from the constant stream of Abe-related thoughts coursing through her brain. Namely the way the curve of his biceps flashed in her head, the way her skin tingled at the memory of his hands on her, and the ways she couldn't quite read the emotion in his eyes when he'd pointed out the loopholes on her list.

The list.
It was priority number one when she got home. Fixing it would sort out her scrambled brain—at least a little.

In the meantime, though, they had their big talk with Carter this afternoon, and she found her stomach knotting at the thought. Asking a ten-year-old kid to share his personal journal was no small thing.

“I was just thinking about this afternoon,” Casey said, dropping herself into a chair across from Ingrid's desk. Framed artwork from Ingrid's daughter brightened the walls around her. “Rolf knows Carter so well, and you have so much more experience with kids. I want to be involved—I want to contribute—but I'm wondering what I can even
do
when we talk to him.”

She was an accountant, after all. She cared about Robot Lit and she cared about its kids, but she had to admit she might be in over her head.

Ingrid smiled at her. “You've already done the best thing. It was your idea to have Carter share his journals. Clearly you're invested. That makes a difference. Carter needs to know he's surrounded by adults who care.”

“I
do
care. Absolutely. But I'm—it's not like I have kids. I don't know if I'm qualified for this.”

Ingrid laughed, her light blue eyes sparkling. “None of us are qualified when it comes to kids. They're complicated and difficult and there's no manual. We're all just making it up and hoping for the best.”

“That's not true,” Casey protested. “You're a great parent. And you're amazing with the students here. Rolf, too.”

“And you're approaching this whole situation from a place we never would,” Ingrid said. “You're thinking about data, about what information we might have to get at Carter's motives. That's great logic. I need more of that. If it were up to me, I'd probably hand Carter one of my jacked-up pencils and tell him to draw his feelings and we'd be here for days.”

Casey chewed her bottom lip. She wanted to believe Ingrid, and she desperately wanted to help Carter. She just wanted to make sure she wasn't going to mess the whole thing up.

“There's no reason to be insecure,” Ingrid said, watching Casey closely. “Just because you don't have kids doesn't mean you don't have the right stuff to counsel and help them. If I thought otherwise, I'd ask you to bow out.”

Casey shook her head. It was hard not to think about Audrey and all the ways she'd tried—and failed—to do right by her little sister growing up. She'd been too hard, too strict. She'd often acted out of fear, out of desperation, but even now she worried there was still more iron inside her—and that all that cold, metal emotion would find its way to the surface with Carter. She pretended to study the art on the walls, wondering if old Casey would come roaring out of her this afternoon, and if she'd ruin more relationships—not to mention the fragile heart of one troubled little boy.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Ingrid said gently.

Casey waved a hand. “Nothing. It's silly. I'm…”

Terrified. Insecure.

“I just want to make sure I'm a help, not a hindrance,” she finished.

“You're the only one who has any concerns in that respect,” Ingrid said. “But if I don't think you're up for it at any point, I'll ask you to leave it to Rolf and me. You have my word.”

Casey nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate you understanding. And being so supportive. I really do love this place.”

“I know. And this place loves you. So much so that it tried to trap you in an elevator and never let you go.”

Casey groaned. “Enough with the elevator already. This dead horse has been beaten, battered, and fried up on a plate.”

“You know that's my way of bringing up Abe, though.”

Casey rolled her eyes. “Jeez. You don't say.”

“So? Aren't you going to take the bait and tell me how it's going with everyone's favorite firefighter?”

Casey sat back in her chair, trying to formulate an answer. “We're having fun. It's nothing serious.”

“How much fun?”

Casey felt her neck heat. “That's—never mind.”

Ingrid grinned. “I did that once in college. Rex Warrington the Third, if you can believe that name. We would call each other late at night, usually after parties. We never hung out, never went to dinner. We just…well, you know. It was college.”

Except I'm in my mid-thirties
, Casey thought. She wondered briefly if she was too old to be doing this, then dismissed the idea. She was too old
not
to be doing this.

“When did you meet Neil?” Casey asked, referring to Ingrid's husband, a bow-tie-wearing attorney who often surprised Ingrid at work with flowers or a homemade lunch.

“I had gone to a party with this law school student I was seeing,” Ingrid said, her blue eyes fixed on an image Casey couldn't see, “and the room was lousy with wannabe lawyers. It was all red wine and Scotch and pretentious chatter, and I kept wondering where the beer was stashed. At some point I decided the cheese platter was more interesting than my date, and I was pretty much making out with it. That's when this guy came up to me and asked if he could cut in.”

She smiled, her skin pinking with the memory, even now. “I told him to wait his turn because the Brie had just signed my dance card, and the cheddar wanted a spin next. They were
wheels
, after all, I said. And this guy, he laughs like I just made the funniest joke he ever heard.

“He was wearing a bow tie, even back then, and I remember thinking that was nice—that he wasn't another dude in a striped polo shirt. He took one look at my untouched wineglass and my plate full of crackers and told me there was a bar around the corner with good burgers, and asked if I wanted to go with him. I said yes. Just like that. I left my date without another word. Neil and I were married a year later.”

Casey smiled, even as she envied the simplicity of it, the bone-deep knowing of something, even after a few moments. She wondered what that must feel like, how someone could grasp such an impossible thing so quickly.

Involuntarily, her body recalled the delicious shiver of Abe touching her.
That's what it feels like
, a voice inside her whispered.

But of course that couldn't be. Could it? Their connection was just physical. He was her Rex Warrington III, not her Neil.

After all, he wasn't the kind of guy who wanted commitment. And if he did—well, that was even worse. Commitment could only lead to heartbreak when the end of the storybook read differently for them both. Hers was a child-free happy ending. No doubt his was filled with blond-haired, hazel-eyed cherubs who wanted to grow up to be firefighters, too.

At the end of the day, there were simply too many potential obstacles between them. Best to keep it simple. Best to stick to the list.

She stood up, brushing the thought aside. “I love that you and Neil clicked so quickly,” she told Ingrid. “It's a great story.”

“Because I didn't fight it,” Ingrid said. The romantic note in her voice was gone, her eyes were suddenly sharp. “I let it be what it was.”

“And what was that, exactly?”

“It was perfect. And I didn't try to tell myself it was a rock, when I knew it was a diamond.”

Underneath the words, Casey sensed there was a warning, a caution for her. As if she was supposed to connect the dots between Abe and Neil somehow, which felt a lot like trying to link two opposite things: an ant and a skyscraper, for example. The distance was incomprehensible. Unfathomable, really.

“See you at three o'clock with Carter,” she said, forcing her voice to be light. Just two colleagues discussing business.

“You bet. There's no need to worry about anything. It'll all be fine.”

She suspected Ingrid was talking about more than just Carter again and hinting at some deeper meaning about Abe. Ducking her head, Casey left before Ingrid could get another word in. What with all Ingrid's platitudes plus the conversation with Abe last night, her head was beginning to hurt. She wanted to be done talking.

In fact, she was more than ready for everyone to stop yammering so she could get laid already.

A few hours later, whatever anxiety had been riddling Casey vanished under waves of compassion for Carter. He showed up pale-faced and practically shivering in the great room. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans with stringy hems and full of holes. His thin face and gray eyes looked as worn as weather-beaten wood. A battered journal was clutched to his side, a pen shoved into the notebook's spirals.

The first thing Casey did when she laid eyes on him was to get him comfortable on the sofa and make him some hot cocoa. She handed it to him while Rolf and Ingrid made small talk, trying to put him at ease.

Arsonist or not, she wasn't going to have him shaking the whole time, for pity's sake. “You need anything else?” she asked him as he clutched the warm ceramic, his eyes round with gratitude.

“N-no, thank you,” he managed.

She took her seat across from him and tried to smile. She hoped it didn't come across like a creepy grimace.

Rolf started the official conversation with a small throat-clearing. “We've known you for a while, Carter,” he said, pushing his glasses upward, “and you've been such a model student. Hardworking. Attentive. Engaged. We're here today to ask if there's anything going on, since these fires seem so out of character for you. Something that maybe you feel like you could tell us but no one else.”

Rolf leaned forward, his chin resting on his hands. Carter dropped his gaze to his cocoa. “I don't think so,” he said softly.

“So you just lit those fires for no reason?” Ingrid asked.

“The cops already asked me all this stuff,” Carter said. He raised his eyes to Ingrid's and there was such pain there.
Anguish
was the word that popped into Casey's mind.

“You're in a foster home now, is that right?” Rolf asked, trying to get the same answer a different way. “Tell us about it.”

Carter shrugged, dropped his eyes again. “It's fine.” He was white-knuckling his mug.

“Who's in your new home? What are their names?” This was from Ingrid.

“Scotty is the dad and Bridget is the mom. They have another kid, Luke. He's like, thirteen or something.”

Carter's shoulders rounded, as if he were trying to pull his thoughts farther into himself. He was so skinny. Casey wondered if there was any food in the kitchen she could give him.

Rolf asked questions about the foster family and about school, and Carter answered dutifully, but he didn't say anything revelatory. Did anyone hurt him? No. Did anyone say unkind words to him? No. Were things okay at school? Yes. Did he have any friends? Yes.

Casey eyed the journal while they talked. Its battered cover was crisscrossed with creases and lines, like a map she couldn't read. “Carter, can I take a look at that notebook?” she asked, when Ingrid stood to take a break and to get the boy more cocoa. He handed it over slowly, tentatively. This thing meant something to him, that much was clear.

“I'll be super careful,” Casey said, giving him a small smile. “And I won't go anywhere with it. I'll read it right here, okay?”

Carter nodded. His gray eyes were so sad, Casey wished she could take the pain away—but she'd settle for second best, which was figuring out where the pain came from.

She turned the ink-covered pages carefully, and started to read.

Kyle has Batman Legos and we played with them today. Mrs. Finn gave us math homework. It's hard but I like math, it's better than social studies.

Brayden ripped his pants on the slide at school. It was sooo funny! Sonja likes him and said “it doesn't matter” and Chad Foster made kissing noises.

It went on like this for pages—little snippets of a kid's life like snapshots of a moment. The substitute teacher who had fingernails so long they called her the Claw. The librarian who gave him
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda
to read, and he tore through it in a day. Hayden Idris's birthday party, which was held up in Burnsville at an indoor trampoline facility, and Carter thinking he was going to throw up from the combination of cake and bouncing.

When he got to foster care, the sentences got shorter:

Spaghetti for dinner. Math homework. Miss mom.

Casey studied the prose. It was stuttered, sure, but there weren't any red flags that she could see. She let out a small sigh of frustration and kept going.

Read
The Castle Behind Thorns
. Good book. Saw a crow. Luke got to drink soda at dinner but not me.

Thanksgiving. Had some turkey. Crow flew by. Scotty watched football.

Casey turned the page slowly, wondering at the sudden appearance of the crows. Was it because it was fall and they were flocking together as the weather turned? Or was it something else?

Got an A on math test. Tried to build a snow fort at recess. Crow.

Casey clenched her jaw. Crows were so common, why flag them? Something else must be going on. She checked the dates in the journal.