Summer Son (20 page)

“They must know,” I said as the full weight of this settled around me. “About his brother, the trial….”

“We don’t know that yet,” she started, but I shook my head as panic set in.

“If Oliver’s out there throwing that name around, then who knows who else might know at this point. Zane changed his name to keep safe, and if he’s not safe anymore, that means Harrison isn’t either. The man lives with me, Linda.”

“Talk to him,” she insisted. “You need to talk to him, Ellis.”

I drove all the way into Manhattan, to the main SVA campus, singing songs with Harrison in the car to distract myself. I knew Zane would be out of classes by now and would be in the studio, working on the final project that made up a hefty percentage of his final grade.

While he was in a class, Zane didn’t answer his phone. It was kept in his backpack rather than his jeans, so it couldn’t distract him even if it was on silent. In the studio, it depended on how deep in his work he was.

There was absolutely no parking for the school, so I had to drive around until I found a space. Finally I managed to pull into one just as someone else was leaving, picked up my phone, and hesitated over calling him. Then I slipped it into my pocket and got Harrison out of his car seat, then carried him through to the studio area.

I’d never been to this part of the campus. I hadn’t been a student here, so I only knew my way around from an exhibition of Nae’s that I’d gone to once. Inside, the walls were covered with drawings and paintings. Yet more were on the floor, leaning against the wall.

“Hi,” I said, stopping the first person who passed us. “I’m looking for Zane Hadlin.”

“You’re Ellis, right?”

I nodded, wondering how this girl with waist-length purple dreads knew my name.

“He’s upstairs, in the studio. He’s way over on the left when you get to the top of the stairs.”

She stopped to give Harrison a hiya, then smiled at me before moving on.

A big curved staircase led up to the second floor, each step covered in muck and paint and God only knew what else. I held Harrison a little tighter on my hip.

Upstairs, in the studio space, there were enough stations for about twenty or thirty students, although there were only a dozen or so actually working. The ubiquitous paint-spattered studio radio was playing Bon Jovi. Zane had his headphones on.

He had several boards set up to create a little hideaway that he worked in, and as I approached I could see more of the huge canvas that was covered with layers of acrylic. I didn’t want to disturb him, but Harrison had other ideas and let out one of his little shrieks of happiness when he caught sight of Zane.

“Hey,” Zane said with a smile as he tugged his earbuds out. “What are you doing here?”

“We missed you,” I told him as Harrison chattered at him excitedly and reached out for a hug.

“I’m covered in paint,” he said apologetically, leaning in to give Harrison kisses on the cheek instead as I tried to balance my squirming toddler in my arms.

“I’ve just come from Linda.”

“Oh?”

“She had some… interesting news.”

“Tell me,” he said immediately. “Please.”

“Oliver got a hold of your daddy’s name from somewhere,” I said. “They’re using Al-Jazari on all the legal documents.”

He sighed heavily. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry, baby.”

For a moment he fiddled with a paintbrush, rolling it between his fingertips. Then he shrugged. “I suppose I can’t hide forever.”

“You’re a lot calmer about this than I thought you’d be.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking right now. I should call Cass, get his take on it.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Zane shrugged out of the plaid shirt he’d been wearing to paint, leaving him in a thin white undershirt that reminded me too keenly of what he looked like naked. When he reached out for Harrison, I let my baby fall into his sure hands to give the comfort I knew Zane needed.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I should have left it until later. You’re working here.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Honestly. I like that you can come out here.”

“Have you had a break for lunch yet?”

“No.”

“Want one?”

T
HERE
WAS
a cafeteria hidden in one corner of the huge building, but Zane directed me back onto the street and took us a few blocks down to a little Italian place tucked out of the way. As we walked, he tugged a fresh shirt out of his backpack and shrugged it on. When we got inside, I wondered just what he wanted to eat there. Then he ordered blueberry pancakes, and it all made sense.

“For lunch?” I teased him.

“As far as I’m concerned, breakfast food should be all-the-time food.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

They had cute (and clean) high chairs for Harrison and good coffee and a waitress who looked like she was smiling because she wanted to, rather than because it was her job. We managed to snag a booth just before the lunchtime crowd started to filter in.

I pulled a couple of cars out of my backpack for Harrison to play with, although his favorite game was throwing them at us and waiting somewhat impatiently for them to be put back on his tray. Zane tangled his feet with mine under the table and buttoned his shirt, getting them misaligned and not bothering to correct it.

“You have a little smudge, just here,” I said, and then I beckoned him closer over the table to wipe the charcoal from the side of his nose.

“I’m such a cliché right now,” he sighed.

I smiled at him indulgently and brushed my thumb over his lips, pleased when he caught it in a kiss.

“Did I tell you I spoke to my mom last night?”

“No….”

Evenings had become a lot less stressful now that Zane lived with us and helped with Harrison’s bedtime routine. It had been a late night for me, though, working on a project, and Zane had been asleep by the time I got into bed.

“She knows I’m living with you now. She still hasn’t asked—I guess she won’t—but I think she knows you’re not my roommate.”

“Bless her.”

“How was your mom when you came out? And Leo too?”

I sighed and played with the edge of my napkin. “I don’t think she understands. For a long time she’s been looking for a ‘reason’ why she made two gay children. For a while it was because she smothered us when we were little, but she seems to have decided now it’s because our dad left us when we were kids, and we’re trying to replace that missing father figure with a male partner.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s not a malicious thing, she’s not trying to change us or anything, but I think she needs to have her reason to understand and be at peace. Mom never got why I wanted to get married and have a baby. She thought if I wanted that, I could get it from a woman.”

Zane handed Harrison back his toy, then reached for my hands across the table, feathering our fingertips together.

“You’re a really great dad, you know that?”

I shrugged it off.

“No, really,” Zane insisted. “Someone told me the other day that parents don’t get to hear it enough. So, Ellis Broad, you’re a great father and a really awesome boyfriend.”

“Love you,” I murmured, squeezing his fingers.

“Love you too.”

The waitress reappeared then, with drinks for us both and some juice for me to water down and put into Harrison’s sippy cup. It was organic, she insisted, when Zane turned the bottle around to read the label.

“It’s fine,” I said, hoping to reassure her, and I kicked Zane’s ankle under the table. “Thanks very much.”

“Ow,” Zane said as she walked away. “It’s not a crime to be watchful of what you’re feeding him.”

Harrison would only throw it at us, anyway. He liked doing that, throwing things, at anyone and anything.

“So, tell me what you’re working on,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation away from my psychotic ex-husband and the drama that came with him.

Zane leaned back in his chair and grinned. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, picking up on his playful mood and running with it. It was a much better alternative than moping. “I never get to see anything you’re working on.”

“I don’t like showing half-finished things,” he said. “I’m quite self-critical.”

“I’d noticed.”

He frowned for a minute, then visibly gave up. “Okay. We had a still-life drawing class this morning. We’ve been looking at stuff which is degenerated—rotten or rusted or falling apart, whatever. Then we have to take that drawing and recreate it in sculptural form, so making the old new, but still looking old.”

“How interesting.”

“Hmm. We have these mini-projects to do alongside all of our big project work, for our final pieces. Sometimes it’s really good. You end up learning a new technique, and you can incorporate that into your final project in a way you hadn’t thought about before. It forces your mind in a new direction. But sometimes it’s just a pain in the ass.”

“I suppose it depends on what the project is,” I said and passed Harrison back his sippy cup, which had, predictably, been thrown at me. “If it’s not something related to your dissertation piece, then it’s a waste of time.”

“Exactly.”

“So, this one…,” I prompted.

“Is a waste of time,” he said with a laugh. “Actually, that’s unfair. I’ve learned a lot of sculptural techniques, again, but it’s not something that’s going to help me with my project.”

As he was talking, Zane had slipped one of his shoes off and was playing footsie with me under the table, rubbing the arch of his foot against my ankle, pushing my jeans up my leg and teasing me. I didn’t mind. It was cute, especially as he was smirking as he did it.

“Did you not do any of this with your degree?” he asked.

“No. My coursework was good, but it was really CAD orientated. They made it clear to us from the outset that we were digital design majors, not art majors, and if we wanted to join the art students then we had three weeks to change our mind and move across.”

“Wow.”

“That was all right by me. I’m really not great at fine art.”

“You can draw,” he said, protesting on my behalf. “I’ve seen you.”

“Cartoons,” I said, conceding. “Nothing better than that.”

When lunch—or brunch—arrived, Zane didn’t even bother to fuss about the huge pile of bacon on top of my pancakes. The waitress had brought Harrison a handful of fresh blueberries, which he went nuts over for some reason, and I shared my bacon. A little bit of my bacon. It was a weird combination, not that Harrison seemed to mind.

By the time I walked Zane back to campus, the stress of the morning had started to dissipate. He certainly seemed lighter somehow and gave me a lingering kiss before heading back inside. I watched him walk away until he turned a corner and I couldn’t see him anymore, and wondered and thought and worried.

Chapter 15

T
HE
NEXT
time the police arrived at the door it was a woman, wearing an ill-fitting suit rather than the harsh uniform the men had worn. She flashed her badge at me, and I took the time to read it. I considered calling up the NYPD to check it out, then decided against it.

“Mr. Hadlin?”

I shook my head. “Mr. Broad.”

She nodded. “Can I speak with Mr. Hadlin, please?”

“The last of your colleagues who came to my home insisted on calling him Al-Jazari.”

Detective Western nodded slowly. “I understand he doesn’t use that name any longer.”

“Not for some time.”

I opened the door a little wider and let her in. Zane was in the living room, sitting on a wide sheet, finger-painting with Harrison. The two of them were covered with paint and looked equally in their element.

“Zane, this is Detective Western,” I said softly.

He looked up briefly, and in that moment I saw his eyes harden. “Here, baba, with the blue. There you go. How can I help you, Detective Western?”

He was polite to a fault. I counted his ability to stay calm as one of his best traits. I had a habit of flying off the handle.

Since Zane hadn’t asked her to sit down, I did, taking the space next to her on the sofa so we could look at what Zane and Harrison were creating. It was a big mess, actually, but Zane had spent plenty of time explaining to me about hand-eye coordination and cerebral development and how children respond to color therapy. I thought they were just having fun and thoroughly approved.

“I need to know where you were last night, Mr. Hadlin, between five and midnight.”

The only indication that he’d heard her was the slight clearing of his throat.

“At five,” he said, “I was in a class at school. At SVA. That finished at five thirty. Then Ellis picked me up because it was raining and I wanted to bring some work home, and I was worried about it getting damaged if I took the subway.”

She nodded. “And then?”

“Then I made dinner,” he said, carefully directing Harrison’s hand to the one area of parchment paper that wasn’t already covered in paint. This was the type of paper that didn’t get soggy and was strong enough to hold the weight of all the finger paint. It was one of the scraps he’d brought home from his job at the center.