Family Man (13 page)

Forget homework. Forget work in the morning. Absolutely forget making out with Vinnie, because Mom had decided that, once again, the whole goddamned world was about her and her
disease
.

Something inside of me rebelled. Some little piece of me wanted to scream in rage. There are only so many emergencies a person can take before the urgency turns to weariness. Only so many blackouts and trips to the emergency room. Only so many rehab waiting rooms or tearful promises that this will be the last time. At some point, every new drama was just another trip around the carousel.

I was so goddamned tired of riding this ride.

When I hung up the phone, I tried to avoid looking in Vinnie’s eyes. “I have to go. My mom’s in the hospital.”

Oh, but I hated the concern on his face most of all. “Is she okay?” He was already standing up, tossing bills onto the table. “I can take you—”

“No!” I didn’t want any of this to happen, but I certainly didn’t want Vin in the middle of my family drama. I didn’t want him to know the details of our sordid lives. If Vin and I kept dating, he’d find out eventually, but I wanted to put it off a bit longer.

“It’s okay,” I told him, trying to sound calm. “I’ll grab the EL—”

His expression became stormy, and all of a sudden I had a big, angry, overprotective Fierro bearing down on me. “Trey, don’t be ridiculous. My car is right around the corner. Let’s go.”

Vinnie touched my shoulder, squeezing it briefly in reassurance, and headed for the door.

The only thing I could really do was follow.

Chapter Fifteen

All the way to the hospital, Trey was silent, which did nothing to help Vince figure out how to respond. He had no idea what Trey needed. Support, yes, but what kind? If this were his family, everyone would be a melted mess, and he’d buck up and be strong. But Trey made hardwood look limber and pliant. He wasn’t stoic, but he wasn’t exactly despondent. It was almost eerie, his reaction. It didn’t fit in any way with what Vince thought of as the buffet of choices when the main course was
my mother has been taken to the hospital and whisked into the emergency room.
Not despair, not indifference. Just this weird wall and tension all the way to the hospital, and it only escalated once they were in the waiting room.

Sophia was already there, holding a magnifying glass and a
Reader’s Digest
. She had a companion expression to Trey’s, though there was a weariness to her that seemed to fit better. When she saw her grandson, her whole demeanor changed, and she motioned him over. He let her embrace him and kissed her cheek, but Vince noticed Trey never relaxed, not even with her.

They didn’t talk. Trey didn’t ask what was wrong, just looked at his grandmother with a silent question, and Sophia responded with a curt nod, as if to say,
Yes, it’s what you think.

Trey’s response was to turn away.

No one explained to Vince what had happened or why Mindy was admitted. Instinct warned Vince not to ask.

It was one of the hardest evenings of Vince’s life, though for the strangest reasons. He wanted to be there for Trey like he wanted little else, but it was eight kinds of hell trying to figure out what
being there
looked like. The need to talk to Trey, to get
him
to talk, was a pulsing urgency, but Vince couldn’t tell if that was instinct or habit because that was what he was used to. With his family, if he went along to the hospital with his brother and a sick kid, he knew his job, and that was to listen to people vent, to get them to a safe space where they could fall apart.

Vince couldn’t tell what the hell his job was here. Worse yet, he wasn’t sure if Trey wanted him there, not at first. After swallowing several,
You okay
s, Vince was all set to point-blank ask if Trey wanted him to stay when all of a sudden Trey leaned against his shoulder.

Okay. Vince let out a quiet breath of relief.
Finally.
He had a fucking job to do.

He glanced around the waiting room. They were seated in a row of chairs with god-awful uncomfortable armrests between them, which meant that even if he could disengage his arm to wrap it around Trey, he’d only mash them up against a metal bar. Almost as a gift from God, though, a couple rose from one of the few comfortable seating offerings, this one a small sofa that promised its occupants if not a nap at least a moment of potential repose.

Gently dislodging Trey, Vince rose. When Trey didn’t reach for his offered hand, he bent and took Trey’s palm and hauled him up as well, launching them both across the room at a decent clip.

“What?” was all Trey managed before Vince pushed him down by the shoulders into the couch.

“You want anything?” He kept hold of Trey’s hand, but he didn’t sit. “Something to eat? Drink? Read? Throw?”

He did a mental fist pump when the last one made a tiny smile flirt with Trey’s mouth. “I’d love a Sprite.” Looking up at Vince, Trey squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

Vince winked at him and squeezed back. “Save my spot.”

A bit of wandering found him a gift shop, where he bought not only the biggest Sprite they had but two bags of snack mix and a couple of word search and crossword books, as well as a pack of mechanical pencils. He stopped by the cafe and got a hot tea with lemon for Sophia and a black coffee for himself and headed back to the waiting room. Sophia accepted the tea with a grateful if not sad smile and continued staring at the
Reader’s Digest
in her lap. Vince was sure she hadn’t actually opened it yet.

Trey had moved to the very edge of the couch and seemed poised to take flight at any given second, but when he saw Vince, he eased back into the couch. He accepted the Sprite with a quiet murmur of thanks, and when Vince tilted the open bag of snack mix for him, Trey ate a little.

Vince put his arm around Trey’s back and rubbed at his shoulders, opening up a space against the side of his own body. Trey slid into him like he was coming home.

Vince shut his eyes before he could glance nervously around to see who watched and what they thought, making damn sure this moment was only for and all about Trey. He was a big, burly Italian, and he wasn’t stupid: it felt good to lean against a big Italian man. He remembered quite well how good it had felt as a boy to curl up against his father, and if he didn’t miss his guess, Trey was feeling more than a bit of his inner little boy right now. Vince kept his arm around Trey’s shoulders, ran his fingers in reassuring circles over his sleeve, and pressed his lips into Trey’s soft, fragrant hair in between sips of his coffee to keep himself from murmuring stupid platitudes to fill the silence.

He’d just started a word find and was about to entice Trey into joining him when Sophia suddenly sat up straight, her body abruptly taut with tension. Seeing her, Trey tensed as well.

Vince squeezed his arm reassuringly as a doctor in scrubs came toward them. Trey made no response, only went more rigid.

The doctor smiled one of those weirdly placid doctor smiles. “She’s going to be okay.”

There was a strange pause, and both Vince and the doctor glanced back and forth, waiting for the sigh of relief, the tears of gratitude, the
thank Gods
and all the usuals. But like everything else about this, Vince didn’t get what he expected. Sophia shut her eyes for a long moment, then turned to Trey, who deflated in what Vince at first thought was release, but when those blue eyes lifted, all Vince could see was despair. Once again Sophia seemed to know what Vince did not, namely what was going on inside Trey’s head.

It was starting to drive Vince crazy. He wanted
in
. He wanted to find out why Trey looked so shut off and dead and helpless, and he wanted to fucking fix it.

He was
going
to fucking fix it.

He leaned closer to Trey, rubbing circles against his back. “Trey, baby, tell me what you need.”

Without moving his gaze from his grandmother’s, Trey said, his voice dull and flat, “I want to go home.”

“Okay,” Vince replied. “Do you want to see your mom first?”

“No. I just want to go home.” Trey turned to look at him, his gaze still flat and dead. “Can you take us home?”

“Of course.”

The eerie silence continued as they left the hospital. Trey only broke it once, long enough to argue with Sophia over who should sit in the front seat. “Don’t be silly,” Sophia said at last. “Vinnie doesn’t want to talk to me all the way home.” And so she’d taken the backseat, and Trey took the front, but despite Sophia’s words, it didn’t really matter who Vince wanted to talk to. It was obvious Trey had no desire to talk at all. He sat, silent and stoic, leaning against the window with his eyes closed.

Sophia seemed to have recovered from whatever had happened at the hospital. “How’s Frank?” she asked.

“Good. Proud of his grandbabies, as ever.”

“He’s such a good man. He always was.”

Vince caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror, surprised at the wistfulness he saw in her features. And loneliness.

An idea struck him, and he went with it. “You should stop by and see him more often. He gets awful lonely, I think, with everyone gone. With his rheumatism, he can’t babysit like he wants, either.”

It felt good to see the soft smile play at Sophia’s lips. “I just might do that.”

Despite his victory in the car, Vince was back to being unsure of what to do when they reached the house. Trey was barely looking at him, and Vince didn’t know how to ask if he should stay or leave.

Luckily, Sophia stepped in then, as well. “Come in,” she said. “He wants you here.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. Trey was already at the front door, unlocking it, seemingly unaware of the conversation going on at the curb.

Sophia patted his arm. “My Trey has a big heart. When he’s happy, he could lift us all up to the clouds, but when he’s down, it’s hard for him to find his way out of the dark.”

The words were like tumblers in a lock falling into place, and Vince stared at Trey’s back as the revelation settled in. God, how had he missed it? Trey was like Rachel. When things really upset her, she shut everyone out, and almost everybody went. Only Vince had ever figured out how to help her, to simply be present and give her space enough to come apart. He’d bet money Trey came apart the same way too, not in big sobs or dramatic fits but in subtle sighs. He thought of how Trey had melted into him at the hospital, and he didn’t just think he was right. He knew it.

He followed Sophia inside, and he thought maybe he did see a hint of relief in Trey’s blue eyes. “I’m going to bed,” Sophia said immediately. She shook her finger at Vince. “And don’t you worry. Once my hearing aid’s out, I can’t hear a thing.”

Vince felt his ears begin to burn at her implication, but he was happy to see a ghost of a smile on Trey’s lips. But then Sophia was gone, and it was the two of them, staring at each other. Vince suddenly felt awkward.

“Thank you,” Trey said at last.

“I didn’t do much.” In truth, he was still frustrated he hadn’t been able to do more. “Is there anything you need?”

Trey looked away, biting his lip hesitantly. “Will you stay for a bit? Sit with me?”

Yep. Rachel all over again. Vince smiled. “Anything.”

Trey led him to the couch. Vince sat, and Trey instantly curled up against him as he had at the hospital. Vince leaned back, turning toward Trey so he could wrap his arms around him and hold him close.

“I don’t want to think for awhile,” Trey whispered.

There were a few ways Vince could accomplish that. Holding him as close as he was, the memory of their dance and their kiss still so fresh in his mind, he had some very good ideas about how to distract Trey. But he knew now wasn’t the time.

He reached out and grabbed the remote off the coffee table. He turned on the TV and began flipping through channels. “Tell me when to stop.”

After a few minutes, Trey said, “Here.”

It was Marilyn Monroe—
The Seven Year Itch
, if Vince remembered his old movies right.

Trey snuggled closer. For a long time, he was completely silent. Then he let out a long, shuddering breath.

“Champagne and potato chips,” he mumbled. Vince thought maybe the ice was breaking. Maybe this was when Trey would let everything out.

However, when he looked down at the boy in his arms, he found that Trey was fast asleep.

Chapter Sixteen

The hospital kept my mom overnight. “For observation,” they said. They also hinted, none too lightly, that with the amount of cough syrup and vodka she’d consumed, they suspected she’d been trying to commit suicide.

I refused to let myself think about that.

When my phone alarm went off, I got up and went to work my shift at the coffee shop, dead on my feet, then walked to campus for my classes. I tried not to think about my mother, but it was impossible.

Things like this had happened in the past, and always the question was, had she done it on purpose? A few of the times, the overdoses had been legitimate accidents. Some of the others? Maybe not. Had this time been a serious attempt, or just another
cry for attention
? It was possible I’d never know.

Did it matter?

Did I care anymore?