Flare (43 page)

Hugo glanced over at Russell and Summer to see if they’d mind keeping an eye on Brooke while they both made their calls, and Brooke was already leaning her head on Summer’s shoulder.

“Food,” Russell quickly said. “We all need food. I just remembered.”

“Oh crap, the bill,” Kevin said, palming his forehead.

“No, I took care of it.” Russell stood and started walking toward Kevin, who passed Russell two fifty-dollar bills. “I’ll go get something easy for all of us to eat. We need to eat.”

“Yeah. Okay. We’re not going anywhere for a while,” Hugo said as they walked through the doors and out into the warm May air.

I
T
WAS
hours later. Hours and hours later when they were finally released. At first the attending physician wasn’t pleased with Finn’s progress and wanted to monitor him longer. Then the doctor was waylaid by a gruesome accident that seemed to keep her forever. When she finally returned with a fresh scrub shirt but blood still splattered on her shoes, Hugo forgave the wait and hoped the other patient was safe.

At one point, Hugo headed out to the waiting room again and encouraged Brooke to go home with Summer and Russell, but she refused, saying she wanted to wait for her brother and sleep at home with him in his bed. Hugo knew the feeling. Sometimes being physically close when you worried about someone made all the difference.

The doctor wanted to make sure Finn had an EpiPen before he left the hospital, so the rest of their wait time consisted of Hugo and Kevin perking their ears up whenever someone’s footsteps slowed outside their curtained room rather than quickly walking past. Finn slept peacefully through all this. Hugo started to wonder if someone was making the EpiPen from scratch in a little room somewhere buried in the hospital when Franklin finally walked in with a smile on his face and a bag of meds and instructions, followed by the doctor.

“You’re free to go as long as you promise to call this number in the next week,” she told Kevin as she handed him a card. They’d already been told about how severe Finn’s allergic reaction was, that the kid wasn’t going to be eating shellfish for years, probably forever, and they needed to make sure it never got in his diet.

It was nearly eleven when they finally emerged from the exam room with Finn asleep in Kevin’s arms. Brooke was in much the same state in Russell’s lap. As soon as Russell stood and started walking toward the door, Brooke woke, breathing deeply and looking around to get her bearings. She slid from Russell’s arms, taking in a big, deep yawn and stretching as soon as she found her footing.

“Let’s get home, Olive,” Hugo said, taking her hand as they walked toward the door. Hugo willingly followed Russell and Kevin, having no clue where they’d parked, let alone how to get to the parking ramp. Summer trailed behind, telling Hugo how brave he’d been.

“Here we are.” Kevin’s voice echoed around the nearly empty cement structure and Russell joked about like minds when he realized they were parked beside each other.

“We got here as fast as we could.” It was a strangely familiar voice Hugo heard, but he wasn’t able to place it until he walked around the car and saw Tasha Clarke standing next to Russell at the tail end of his truck. Kyle stood off to the side, looking weary and worn.

“Get in the car, Brooke. Get in the car,” Hugo said in a fierce whisper, and he was grateful when she went sleepily without a thought.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Unexpected Surprises

“W
HAT
ARE
you doing here?” Russell asked the question on everyone’s mind.

“We came as soon as you hung up,” Tasha said as if it were obvious.

“You called her?” Kevin sounded fricking annoyed but had kept his voice quiet since he was holding Finn so close to his chest.

“No,” Russell spat. “No, I didn’t call her. My phone rang while we were still at the restaurant waiting to pay, and I automatically answered it, thinking it was you. I told her I didn’t have time to talk because Finn was in the emergency room. Geez, Mom, why did you come here?” he nearly whined. “I told you I’d call you tomorrow.”

“You drove four hours to be here?” Kevin asked.

“Well, of course we did.” Tasha rushed forward, hands out as if she were going to grab Finn.

Kevin’s hand went out and his face became ugly and mean, lips curling into a sneer Hugo had never seen before. He turned his body away to protect Finn. “You stay away from our son.”

“That’s nonsense. I need to know he’s safe.”

Kevin ignored Tasha entirely and handed Finn to Russell. “Take them home, please. Summer, will you get Brooke in your truck and drive to your house?” Silently, everyone did as they were asked, and while the kids were being moved about, Tasha mumbled, looking back and forth between her husband and grandchildren.

“What’s going on? Why are you leaving? I don’t understand,” Tasha said.

“Mom,” Russell said to Tasha through his rolled-down window. “I’m backing up. Please get out of the way.” Kyle tugged on her shirtsleeve, and Tasha watched in utter confusion as they headed out of the parking ramp with Finn and Brooke.

“What’s going on? Is he okay? Is he alive?”

“Of
course
he’s alive. Do you think they’d let me walk out of the hospital carrying our dead son?” Kevin looked at Tasha and shook his head in disbelief.

She was making little sense, and Hugo noticed her eyes were glassy.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kevin finally said after he seemed to come back to his original thoughts after getting the kids away from whatever was happening.

“You can’t keep them from me. You can’t! The lawyers said. I know things,” Tasha shouted between short breaths, and that was when Hugo finally reacted.

“You don’t get a say in this, Tasha. You don’t get to tell us what we can and can’t do with our kids.” Hugo said
our
kids with such pride that he actually felt his chest puff up. “You lost that right with the things you’ve done to them.”

Kyle spoke up, saying something after being dead silent for far too long. “I was the one who raised my hand to the boy, but I didn’t strike him.”

“If that were the only thing…,” Kevin said with a nasty shake of his head.

“What do you mean?” Kyle asked. “Isn’t that why you’ve kept the kids away and made Russell and Summer stick to us like glue when they finally did visit?”

“You think all of that was because of me walking in on you about to slap Finn?”

Kyle nodded, but Hugo watched the worry build in Tasha’s eyes as she pulled her wrinkled hand to her mouth. Hugo noticed how much older she looked. Her hair was not nearly as red as the last time he’d seen her; it almost looked blonde. Gray, he realized. She must not have dyed it recently. And she looked older.

“I
know
we come from different generations, Kyle,” Kevin said. “I know you disciplined Erin in ways we’d never do today, but I’m not a fool. What I saw when I walked in your family room was a kid freaking out over something and a man who had no clue how to handle the situation. You were trying to shock him, slap some sense into him so he’d stop, right?”

“Yes. I didn’t know what else to do,” Kyle admitted, and Hugo was thankful for his honesty.

“Well, that’s not the best way to handle it, but I get the knee-jerk reaction. That’s not why we required supervised visitation. Let me ask you this,” Kevin directed at Tasha. “Why did you want custody? Why did you
really
try to take our kids?”

“To give them a better life,” Tasha answered immediately. “You scared Finn, coming up behind him and terrifying him into silence. I worried about what else you did to him when I wasn’t around. Behind closed doors.”

“You might have talked yourself into filing for custody for that reason alone, but I don’t think that’s the full truth,” Kevin said.

Hugo decided to speak, but he wanted no bitterness in his voice, so he took a deep breath. He leaned against the car and made his body relax, releasing all his defensiveness. Kevin stood beside him with his hand on the trunk and an encouraging thumb pressed up against Hugo’s back. Then Hugo gave Tasha and Kyle a gentle smile.

“Let me tell you what I think happened and why you sought custody,” Hugo said as kindly as he could. “I think you miss Erin more than you can express. You’ve lost two daughters now—one even before she had a chance to take a breath and one who had her whole life ahead of her. I think it hurts every day, and Brooke and Finn are your only connection left to Erin.”

“Yes. Yes,” Tasha said, and she looked at Hugo as if she’d never seen him before, as if he understood her like no one else.

“I’m sure it was more than surprising when you found out Kevin was involved with a man rather than your amazing daughter. Why would he choose me? I can understand your confusion. No one knew Kevin was bisexual, not even Erin until he told her that fall.”

“It’s not normal. It’s not right,” Tasha said forcefully, and Kyle stood behind her, holding her around her shoulders and studying Hugo as if he wondered what was coming next.

“You said that before, the same day you told Erin I was a risk to Finn. That’s what led you to talk to Finn about me. Isn’t it, Tasha? Asking him to show you where I touched him, even bringing a doll out so he could point to body parts.”

Stress filled both Tasha and Kyle’s faces but in very different ways. Kyle removed his palms from Tasha’s shoulders. Hugo pushed on, not giving them a chance to respond.

“When he didn’t give you the answers to support your suspicions, you tried to plant ideas into his head. It didn’t work. Then you told him he was going to move away from Kevin and live with you instead. He freaked out, and I’m assuming that’s when Kyle noticed what was happening and tried to help Finn. Finn was already reeling from losing his mother just months prior, and there you were, telling him you were going to take him away from Kevin and me, the two people who were his foundation. And he screamed until Kevin hugged him and told him he was safe and he’d be taken care of.
That’s
what Finn told his therapist.”

“Tasha, is this true about the doll?” Kyle asked with bewilderment. Tasha turned her head and looked at her husband with hooded, determined eyes, but she didn’t answer. “That’s what all those private conversations with the lawyer were about? Everything’s so much clearer right now,” he said as he shook his head in disgust and pinched at his brow.

“That’s why I had Russell and Summer be so vigilant,” Kevin said. “I don’t trust you, Tasha. There’s good reason not to trust you.”

“What made you start writing letters to me?” Hugo suddenly decided to ask.

“Letters? What letters?” Kyle demanded. “Christ, Tasha. There’s more? What’s been going on?”

“Tell him,” Hugo urged. “Tell him about the letters you’ve been writing to me.”

She shook her head and looked unsteady, leaning on the trunk of their car for support, even allowing herself to slip a little so she could sit on the bumper.

“Should I tell him?” Hugo asked in a voice filled with concern. Something seemed off with Tasha, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was something more than simply a woman being faced with her own trash to sort through in public.

“That’s not what they were,” Tasha started with a shaky voice. “Or at least not what they started out as. I just wrote after I took my new medicine. I thought differently when I was on it, and I felt excited. I knew Erin always found comfort in writing, so I started to write too. To feel closer to her.”

“Medicine?” Kevin asked Kyle with a quirked brow.

Kyle answered and looked even more concerned. “Her doctor put her on antidepressants again when Erin was first diagnosed. She’s been on them a few times before, but they seemed to stop working. She was more anxious lately, so he switched her to an antianxiety med a little while ago.”

Hugo nodded in understanding.

“So you took these pills, and then you’d sit down to write, eventually deciding to write to me?” Hugo tried to clarify.

“Yes. After I read Brooke’s contest article on the computer about your plans to adopt Brooke and Finn, all I could think about were the things Mabel talked to me about.”

So they read the article
.

Hugo watched as Kyle shook his head and shifted from one foot to the other, violently wiping a hand over his mouth. “What did Mabel say? What sort of nonsense is that old bat filling your head with now?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“About her son. You know what happened to him as a boy.”

“I’ve gone over this with you again and again,” Kyle said. “The man who did those things was sick in the head. He wasn’t gay. He was a pedophile.”

“That’s what she was talking about. A man having sex with boys.”

“I don’t have sex with boys!” Hugo shouted, and his voice echoed again and again in the parking ramp before he calmed himself. “As a matter of fact, I don’t have sex with anyone besides Kevin.” Hugo shook his head. He was livid. “I don’t understand. Rather than talking to me about any of this, asking me questions, getting to know me, or even talking to Kevin to see if he had concerns, you went to Finn. A boy. The things you filled his head with…. And when failing to get any satisfaction with custody, you moved on to harassing letters, telling me I was the scum of the earth and ruining the lives of not only my husband, but your deceased daughter, and my kids. The things you’ve said: I’m not normal. I’ve brainwashed the people I love. It’s my fault Brooke was bullied at school. It’s
all
my fault. What else did I do, because you’ve blamed me for nearly everything I can think of lately aside from tornados?”

“Letters? And while you’re loopy on drugs? What are you doing, Tasha?” Kyle asked under his breath. “This stops right now. You need to fix this tonight.”

W
HEN
H
UGO
knocked on Summer and Russell’s front door and Russell answered, his gaze drifted back to where Kevin, Kyle, and Tasha stood. He silently allowed the door to swing open, inviting everyone in with a sweep of his hand.