Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 03 - Of Dark and Bright (8 page)

Dan nodded slowly. “It’s a lot,” he said softly. “And it’s not like… you know. Krista hasn’t really asked. Not exactly. But she’s made it clear that there’s nobody else.”

“It’d be better to put the baby up for full-scale adoption and let it find a family that will love it than to keep it around like it’s an obligation or something.”

Dan took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, there was a little quiver to it. “I just… it’s scary. I don’t know anything about being a dad.” His smile was sharp. “Well, I have some ideas of what
not
to do. But other than that….”

“If it comes down to it, and you’re willing to try, we’ll make it work,” Jeff promised. He ignored the twinge of pain in his chest. He’d been sure it was getting better, sure enough that he’d canceled his appointment with the cardiologist. This current pain was just… it was just a remnant. A pulled muscle or something. He smiled at Dan, and was rewarded with a smile in return. “We’ll figure it out,” he promised. And Dan seemed to believe him.

Chapter 6
“DO YOUremember the place on Dennison?” Krista asked as she
dipped her cookie in her tall glass of milk. “The way it smelled?” “Cat piss,” Dan confirmed. “And it got even worse after Mom tried to clean it.”

 

“She used ammonia!” Krista shook her head in amused disgust. “Like it didn’t
already
smell like ammonia.”

“Not a great housekeeper.” They were getting onto dangerous ground here, and Dan wasn’t sure how far he wanted to take it. Krista had been in the house for over a week, and they’d had lots of casual conversations, but nothing heavy. Dan thought maybe it would be a good idea to keep it that way.

Krista didn’t seem to have the same sense of caution. “Not a great
mom
, really.”

 

“She wasn’t bad….”

“She let the asshole beat the crap out of you, Dan. He called you a fag, like, daily, and he’d slap me around too, when you weren’t handy. And she never said a fucking word.” Krista frowned at him. “Don’t tell me that’s the way a mom’s supposed to act.” Her hand was back on her stomach, cradling it protectively. The gesture had become familiar to Dan. And every time he saw it, he hoped that maybe he and Krista weren’t as different as they seemed. He hoped that they had more than Smokey in common, and that he’d somehow be able to build a real, meaningful relationship with her.

But the gesture didn’t take away the sting of her words. “Mom did her best.” The defense sounded weak, even to his own ears, and Krista was shaking her head before he was even finished.

“She could have done a hell of a lot better, if she’d remembered that it was her job to look after her kids instead of spending all her energy on her asshole of a husband.” Then her face lost its stubbornness, and shifted into a crafty look. This expression was becoming just as familiar as the protective hand across the abdomen. “And I want better for my baby.”

“Have you heard from Susan? She was meeting with the federal prosecutors today, right?” It wasn’t exactly a change of topic, but Dan hoped that it would shake Krista off whatever path she was on.

“She hasn’t called yet. But I talked to her last night, and she said there’s no way I’m not doing time.” Krista didn’t seem too alarmed by the prospect; Dan couldn’t tell if her calm was genuine or just bravado. “And like I said, I think you could really use a baby. It’s… I don’t mean to sound rude, Dan, but it’s in everyone’s best interest if you keep your boyfriend happy. I’ve been checking him out on the Internet, and that family is
rolling
in cash, right? And he’s obviously generous.” She waved her hand around the guest house. “He’s a keeper, and you need to work at that relationship. You’re not going to be pretty forever.”

“Krista, if you want me to help you with the baby, you can just say that. You don’t need to wrap it up like you’re doing me a favor.” “A favor? Oh, no, my brother, I’m not talking about doing you a favor. I’m talking about making a deal.”

This was what Dan was afraid of, and he’d been trying to avoid the topic for days. But she apparently wasn’t going to let it go, so he took a deep swallow from his glass of milk, braced himself, and said, “What kind of deal?”

“I’ll sign full custody over to you. Or to you and Evan jointly. I don’t know the best way to play that. You’d probably want to check with a lawyer, see what the laws are like for gay adoption. For alimony or child support or whatever if you split up. Palimony, I guess it’d be. I don’t know. And I guess we’d have to look at your finances, in terms of what you’d be able to pay me. I get that you’d probably have trouble with a lump sum, but you could get him to give you, like, a monthly allowance, right? And you could just give a chunk of that to me.”

“You want to sell your baby to me?” On some level, Dan had known that she was leading up to this, but he still couldn’t make himself believe it in his core. “What about all that ‘a mom’s job is to look out for her kid’ stuff?”

“I
am
looking out for my kid,” she insisted, and for the first time there was a little heat in her voice. “I think you’d be a good dad. And I think Evan would be a good dad. So, what’s the problem?”

“What about Jeff?” Dan had mentioned Jeff a few times, but he hadn’t made the nature of the relationship crystal clear. It was a bit cheap to do it now, but he wanted to get a genuine read on how sincere Krista was about all this. “He’s part of the relationship too. All of us. A threesome. Polyamory. ‘Johnny has
Three
Daddies’.”

“Seriously?” Krista raised an eyebrow as she looked at him appraisingly, then tilted her glass and dunked her cookie again. “I guess you’d want to talk to the lawyer about
that
too. I mean… can three people even have custody of the same baby? I have no idea.”

“You haven’t even met Jeff, and you’re going to just give him your baby?”

“I’ve met Evan, and I know you. I don’t think either of you would be with an asshole.” She frowned, then smiled, quick and sharp. “Is Jeff rich too? That’d be excellent—you could probably play them off against each other. Maybe you should keep custody of the baby for yourself, and then if things go south, they can fight over you and the kid.”

“Jesus, Krista! It’s going to be a human being! A little… a little person. Not a tool for keeping people interested in me.”

“It’s easy to talk that way when you’re young and good-looking, Dan. But ask yourself—how much of Mom’s shit was because she was desperate to keep her man around? She hooked up with the asshole when she was looking good, and he treated her, and us, okay. But then she got sick, and less hot, and she didn’t have anything to hold over him.”

“
She
had kids! If your whole argument is that I need a kid to keep my man, then why didn’t she have good luck with
two
kids?”

“Yeah, she had kids.” Krista sounded like she couldn’t quite believe how stupid Dan was. “But he didn’t
want
kids. He could have gotten any woman knocked up if he wanted a kid. But your boys are gay. They’re not likely to get anyone pregnant, right? And—well, I haven’t met Jeff, but Evan definitely wants kids. He looks at my belly like it’s a candy buffet. Plus, even if he decides he
doesn’t
want the kid, in the long run, once you guys have been raising it together, I bet you’d be entitled to child support or something.” She sat back and drained the milk from her glass, then shrugged. “Like I said, you should talk to a lawyer. But don’t take too long—if you don’t want to pay for the baby, I need to find someone who will.”

Dan stood up abruptly, his hip jarring the table. “No. I’m not
buying
my niece or nephew. That’s… it’s not right, Krista. You shouldn’t let—how can you give your baby to somebody just because they happen to be rich?”

“Don’t preach at me.” Krista shook her head in disgust. “You think it’s
easy
being poor? Things were never all that bad, before you left. Sure, money was tight, but we got by. But when Mom got sick again, and the asshole lost his job… we didn’t have
food
sometimes, Dan. That’s not going to happen, not for my baby. So it’s going to be raised by people who have enough money to raise a kid
and
have a little left over for the mom.”

“‘A little left over’? How much are you looking for, Krista? What’s the price tag on your baby?”

She must have heard the sarcasm in his tone, but she ignored it. She leaned back in her chair, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Why don’t you make me an offer?”

Dan had nothing to say, nothing that he wouldn’t regret. So instead of speaking, he turned and headed for the door. He needed some fresh air to clear his head. Maybe things would make more sense from a distance.

E
VAN hesitated on the porch. He nodded to the uniformed security guard and thought about starting a conversation with him. He wasn’t sure if he was doing the right thing, going to visit Krista like this, and maybe he needed to find an excuse to talk to somebody else instead.

But the door behind the screen was open, and there was movement beyond it, and then Krista appeared. “Evan?” She stepped forward and pushed the screen door open. “Hi. Do you want to come in?”

“I don’t want to intrude,” he said. He especially didn’t want to intrude when he wasn’t really sure what the hell he was doing there. Dan had been weird about Krista for the last few days, and Evan had decided to come down and see if he could figure out what was going on. But now that he was standing there, it seemed like a pretty bad idea. It seemed like him pushing his nose into Dan’s business without an invitation. Again.

“No, it’s not intruding.” She stepped backward to make a path for him. “It’s your house, after all.”

“But it’s your
home
,” he said. He remembered having a similar conversation with Dan, just before Dan had moved out of the guest house. Maybe it was a Wheeler family tradition to be hyperaware of ownership.

“My home? My prison, more like it.” But Krista didn’t sound upset, just resigned. “I’m bored to tears. If you have some time to visit, that’d be great.”

So Evan stepped inside and followed her back to the bright, airy kitchen. He’d asked his housekeeper to arrange for the place to be taken care of, but he wasn’t sure if the cleaners had just been or if Krista was really tidy. He thought of Dan again, and wondered if compulsive stress-cleaning was another family trait.

“There’s just decaf coffee, or juice, or milk.” Krista opened the fridge and peered into it as if hoping something better had somehow appeared. “I really, really wish I could offer you a beer, but I think Dan’s head would lift right off his pure little body if I suggested that he buy me some.”

That didn’t sound exactly like Dan, but maybe it was easier to be strict with someone else’s diet. And obviously Dan was right, saying that Krista shouldn’t be drinking. Evan was glad he’d never have to be pregnant. “Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“Milk on the rocks,” she said, and Evan watched as she pulled two glasses down and filled them with ice.

 

“Dan drinks that too,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone else do it.”

She grinned at him as she poured the milk. “We had a really crappy fridge growing up, with a kick-ass freezer. So if we wanted our milk really cold, we needed to add ice. I guess we both just got a taste for it.”

It was strange to think of Dan, back then. Before he’d gotten in trouble, before he’d found Justin, before he’d lost Justin… and before he’d come to Evan and Jeff. Dan had been so many different people in his lifetime, and Evan only knew one of them. Krista knew another, and Evan decided that he was glad he’d come to visit her. Even if she couldn’t explain Dan’s current mood, she could still help explain
Dan
, as a whole. “You guys got along well?”

Krista made a face. “Not really. I mean, we were okay. But our house was never exactly peaceful. Not with our dad, and not with the asshole, later. So neither of us spent much time at home. We were never close, not like you and Tat.”

“She said she’s been coming over to visit.”

“And bringing presents every time.” Krista ran her hand down her gauzy maternity top. “It kinda sucks that everything’s only going to fit while I’m fat. I bet this one outfit costs more than all the other clothes I own.”

“Don’t be too sure. Tat’s a pretty good bargain hunter.” That wasn’t really true; Tat was an impulse buyer, just like Evan. But it seemed polite to pretend otherwise. And the fashion wasn’t really what had caught his interest. “Your dad—he came back at some point? After Dan left?”

“Yeah,” Krista confirmed. “I was still underage when my mom died, and the asshole had left when she was sick, so I was in foster care for a while. And then they got hold of Dad, somehow, and he got me out.”

“And….” Evan wasn’t quite sure how to keep the conversation moving. “The… the crime. It started right away, or were you a normal family for a while?”

She sighed. “I guess it started pretty much right away. But it was smaller stuff at first. He’d create a distraction, and I’d shoplift stuff. That sort of thing.”

“You told Susan all that? I mean, how you were… I don’t know, how you were raised to this life?”

“I told her,” Krista agreed. “She said it might help.” Krista shifted in her chair and ran her hand over her belly. “It makes it clear to me,” she said softly, “how important it is for a baby to be raised in a loving, stable home.”

Evan nodded. This was an interesting twist to the conversation. “I agree. It’s something I’ve worked really hard to do with Tat.”

“And from what I’ve seen, you’ve done a great job.” Her fingers traced gently, absentmindedly over the stretched fabric of her blouse. “I talked to Dan about this baby—I’m not sure how he felt about it.”

“I’m sure he wants to help out.” Evan tried to make his voice comforting without sounding patronizing.

“I don’t think….” Krista’s hand fell away from her stomach. She reached for her glass of milk and took a long swallow. “I think I’m looking for something more than ‘help’. Susan still isn’t sure, but she says I’m going to go away for quite a while. I’m thinking… I’m thinking the baby needs a real family in the meantime. And then, when I get out, I can be the aunt, or whatever. That’s what I think would be best.”