The Foster Family (24 page)

“Yeah.”

“You okay now?”

I shrugged. “Better.” I hadn’t relinquished Charlie’s too-big jacket, and I didn’t want to be far from where one or the other of them was.

“It’s a start,” Malcolm conceded after studying me for what felt like an eternity.

“Mal,” Charlie broke in, “call your carpenter guy and see if he has a crew who can come and replace the windows.” He knelt and picked up Malcolm’s foot that wasn’t yet bandaged and set to work cleaning and covering the cuts. “And if Mick doesn’t have anyone available, I’ll see if I can find someone else. Kerry, you might as well get started on your room. You were going to paint. No reason you shouldn’t do that. Nothing we can do about the mess until the cops are done.”

“Look who’s got it all together,” Malcolm said softly, and my shoulders crawled with sudden tension. Seemed every other thing Malcolm said was designed to bait Charlie.

Charlie looked at him and offered only a tense smile. “Forget what I do for a living, Mal? I organize shit. Call your pretty carpenter and get our windows fixed.”

“Bossy,” Malcolm said, still softly.

“For now. Someone has to be.” Charlie bent his head to his task, Malcolm picked up his phone, and I headed for my room to get started on the painting job. At least it was a direction. Malcolm didn’t seem inclined to offer that kind of guidance, and I didn’t seem capable of thinking straight at the moment. I might have to redo the paint job another day, when I wasn’t so shaky, but at least I had something to do now.

“Kerry,” Charlie called when I had reached the door. “Bottom drawer of my dresser, there’s an old sweatshirt. Go put it on. Leave the coat on the bed.”

“Yes, Sir,” I said, probably too quietly for either of them to hear. At least it was a direction.

M
ALCOLM
DID
make Charlie move him to the chair where he could see into Kerry’s room as well supervise the goings-on in the kitchen. He couldn’t see the younger man the whole time, but he needed glimpses when he could get them to reassure himself Kerry was fine. Or at least reassure himself that he was working through toward fine.

“You’re worried about him,” Charlie said, settling on the arm of the chair after the forensics team had left and the kitchen had been cleaned. Kerry hadn’t emerged from his room to do the cleaning, but neither Charlie nor Malcolm had bothered to call him. Maybe they didn’t want to chance overbalancing whatever equilibrium he’d managed to find.

“You didn’t hear him, Charlie, calling like he was three. So scared.”

Charlie pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “Guess it was startling, the window shattering unexpectedly like that.”

“Yeah.” But Malcolm wasn’t convinced that startled was what Kerry had been feeling, crouched in that tiny ball under the table, back pressed tight to the wall.

He would have said more, but his phone rang, and Charlie got up to give him privacy to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Holmes.” Officer Karl’s voice was clear and crisp over the line.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“More like what I might be able to do for you. I did a little digging into our young man’s past.”

Malcolm’s hackles rose instantly. Not just at the unwarranted prying into Kerry’s life, but at his presumption to include himself in any way in Kerry’s ownership.

“Why?” he asked, stiff, carrying the anger like a weapon in his voice.

“Because of how shaken he was. I thought a reaction like that had more behind it than being startled by a rock through a window.”

Dammit that he was probably right and had come to the same conclusion Malcolm had. And double damn that he had gone and done something about his concerns while Malcolm pretended he was content to spy on Kerry through a half-open door.

“And?” he said at last.

“How much has Mr. Grey told you?”

“Not a lot. He was a foster kid. Charlie and I spent time in the system, so we know how it is. We don’t pry. Speaking from experience, most of those memories are best left where they lie.”

On the other end of the phone, Officer Steven Karl drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’ve got that right, Mr. Holmes. Did Kerry tell you how he ended up in the system?”

“I assume the same way most of us did. Deadbeat parents.”

“Sadly, not all kids end up in the system that way. According to his records, both his biological parents were only children. His mother was sixteen, his father a college student from out of state. The night he was born, February 13, a snowstorm whited out half of Washington. His mother was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. His father, paternal grandmother, and both maternal grandparents were killed in a crash on the way to meet her there.”

“Jesus,” Malcolm whispered.

“She did all right, alone,” Karl said quietly. “Found an apartment. Finished high school by correspondence, worked evenings in a high-end restaurant. She was doing okay.”

“But?”

“Stupid fluke shot,” Karl muttered. “Her place was a pretty seedy corner of Seattle. Lots of violence. Gangs. She was victim of a drive-by shooting in her own home. Bullet ricocheted off an iron railing outside, through her kitchen window when she was washing dishes, and hit her in the neck. Killed her quickly. She bled out. When she didn’t show up for a shift on a Tuesday evening, a coworker went to her place. Found her dead and her son huddled near her body under the kitchen table.”

“Jesus,” Malcolm said again. “How old was he?”

“Eleven months. A baby. Barely walking, and he’d been shut in that house with his dead mother three days before anyone found him.”

“He never said anything.”

“It’s all on paper, Mr. Holmes. CPS reports say he never talked about it. The official records say that he knew, from reading the report and being told, when he was older, but never said anything about when it happened. I’d be surprised if he consciously remembers any of it.”

“Best keep it that way,” Malcolm said.

“But it explains his reaction today, even if he doesn’t realize why he was so affected.”

“Yeah.” Malcolm pulled in a breath and couldn’t, for some reason, force it out again. “So why wasn’t he adopted if he was that young? I would have thought some desperate family would have snapped him up.”

“One did,” Karl said softly. “But he was a troubled little boy. He didn’t speak when he should have. He never interacted with the other kids in his day care. The mother quit her job to stay home with him, apparently. They did everything right. Or tried to, but he never bonded with any of them. He just never really came out from under that proverbial table. By the time he was three, the marriage was over, the mother pregnant by some other guy, and the father a workaholic. They gave up.” Malcolm could hear a low rumble of anger in the officer’s voice as he spoke. “The bastards actually gave him back. Do you believe that?”

“Jesus. Poor kid” was all he could think of to say. What kind of people give away a child, essentially a baby no matter what his age in years, because he hurt so badly he couldn’t speak? Who just gives up because it’s hard? “Thanks for the information,” Malcolm said at last.

“Not that there is a lot you can do with it, but I thought it best you know.”

“And it’s not against some oath or other that you dug into his records and told me this?”

There was a fraught silence before the police officer spoke again. When he did, it was with the same officious voice in which he’d delivered the report of Kerry’s past, but there was a brittle edge to it now.

“We all come from someplace, don’t we, Mr. Holmes?”

“I… suppose.” Malcolm waited. There was a point here, and maybe the cop would get around to making it if he was patient.

“This is a pretty small town, Mr.—”

“God, can you call me Malcolm?”

Another pause. “Malcolm,” Karl said. “Yes. Likewise, call me Steven.”

Malcolm resisted a heavy sigh. “You were saying, Steven? About this being a small town?”

“It’s friendly now. For people like… shit.”

“People like us. Me and Charlie and Kerry. Yeah. I get it. We’ve been happy here.”

“It wasn’t always. Twenty years ago, people weren’t so comfortable with the idea.”

“Here or anywhere else,” Malcolm agreed, trying to be patient as he craned to see into Kerry’s room and figure why it had gone so quiet in there.

“Yeah. Anyway, my little brother, Patrick, he knew firsthand how uncomfortable it made people. He had it pretty hard growing up. A dozen or more people knew he hid under the bleachers in his high school gym almost every single day to eat his lunch and not get beat up. If even one of them had said something about it to me, his obnoxious, overbearing dumbass cop brother, I might have been able to give him the help he needed. The world is full of shit and fucked-up individuals and rules that might make sense some of the time.

“But all rules, no matter how important they seem to be on the surface, end up needing to be broken eventually. I’ve made a serious practice out of knowing when breaking them is going to keep the world spinning in the right direction, and when keeping them is going to shatter it. In this case, a small bending of a guideline seemed unimportant in light of Mr. Grey’s problems. Whoever is trying to hurt him knows enough about him to know how best to damage him from the inside out. I’m inclined to agree with him that a bully who strikes from the outside is not his biggest threat right now.”

Malcolm was silent for a long time, digesting that. Maybe this cop was right. Maybe the things that had been happening in Kerry’s life were bigger than a dickhead of an ex.

“Thank you,” he said again when the silence had gone on a long time. “I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, the restraining order is still a good idea. Because I’ve known men like this Andrew Shelton-Bishop. They don’t give up easily. They don’t like to be told no. I want it in place in case he comes back for one more try. It might be just a piece of paper, but it still earns him jail time if he gets caught violating it.”

“Agreed. And we will keep an eye out for your blue car and a careful watch on your young man.”

Malcolm smiled, knowing it was a pretty grim expression. “More than one set, I assure you, officer. Steven.”

They said their good-byes and hung up, and Malcolm rested his head on the back of the chair and closed his eyes. His feet ached. His head hurt. He’d never gotten that cup of coffee or any breakfast.

“Here,” Kerry said at his elbow. His voice was still brittle and too thin around the edges. Malcolm hadn’t heard him leave his room or noticed that he’d been in the kitchen.

When Malcolm opened his eyes to look up at him, he was pale and his hands shook, but he held out a cup of coffee, steaming and threatening to spill its creamy contents onto the hardwood if he jostled it even a tiny bit harder.

Malcolm took it from him. “I thought you were painting.”

Kerry’s throat worked as he swallowed two, three times, and he licked his lips. His blue-gray eyes were clouded and uncertain, but at last, he spoke. “I’d rather be where you are.” He glanced at the couch. “And Charlie.”

“You have work to do.”

He nodded. His lips curled down at the corners and his eyes got bright, but he nodded anyway. “Yes, Sir.” He didn’t argue but turned and went back to his room, and a moment later, Malcolm heard furniture moving across the floor.

“What is he doing?”

Charlie peeked into the bedroom. “Scratching the hardwood.”

“Charlie, really?”

“He’s piling the furniture in the center so he can paint.”

“So go help him.”

But Charlie didn’t move.

“Charlie?”

“This is real, Malcolm. He’s painting his room.”

“Yeah. That was the plan.”

“Was it?” Charlie turned to look at him, and his eyes were dark, unfathomable like they got when he was on the verge of that place Malcolm couldn’t always help him back from.

“Come here,” Malcolm said softly, holding out a hand. He didn’t dare make it an order, but he didn’t dare leave the commanding tone out of his voice, either, as he watched Charlie balance on that thin edge. One zig in the wrong direction, and this conversation would send them both careening off the cliff. The ocean out there beyond their familiar dynamic was deep, and it had been a long time since they’d had to navigate it.

His heart stopped, standing stock-still in his chest as Charlie contemplated his outstretched hand.

“Did we ever have a plan, Mal?” Charlie asked.

It was difficult to think with no heartbeat. Malcolm shrugged.

“Or did you go out and find him and bring him home like a new toy and then not read the accompanying instructions?”

Malcolm tried a smile that barely twitched his lips. “When do I ever read the directions to anything?” he asked.

“Never.” Charlie pushed himself off the doorframe where he was leaning and headed to the kitchen, then the back door. “I’ll be in the garden.”

Malcolm was still trying to jump-start his abandoned heart when the screen door creaked open and then slammed closed.

Not five minutes passed before Kerry emerged from his room and stood quietly beside Malcolm’s chair.