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Right now, Ethan doubted even Jake knew what he wanted to do with that gun once he had it. Why would he admire that, she’d asked, given what happened because his father carried a gun?
Who said admiration was what Jake felt? He’d been abandoned by his father in the most devastating way possible, shunned by his father’s family. Self-loathing struck Ethan as a likelier possibility. And teenage suicide was all too common.
Ethan finished his hamburger and started in on the French fries, hardly tasting them. He was frustrated by his inability to get through to Laura, yet painfully aware he had no moral high ground here.
When he’d expressed anger at Matt’s buddies on the job, she’d been polite enough not to say, So where were you? Ethan had almost opened his mouth to defend himself anyway, to say, We weren’t really friends. Damn it, he had friends. But the truth is, at the funeral Ethan had looked at Matt’s widow and small, bewildered son, and resolved to check up on them, be sure they were all right. Half the officers there had probably thought the same thing. He’d also vaguely assumed Matt Vennetti’s closer friends would step in to help her out, but that was no excuse.
She’d have been right to paint him with the same brush.
Pushing his empty plate away, Ethan pictured her face. Not when she blazed with anger, but when she had looked at him with such vulnerability and bewilderment. The expression wasn’t so different from the one he’d seen on her boy’s face when he said with such despair, “Mom is going to be so mad.”
Ethan sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face, then reached for his wallet when he saw the waitress bearing down on his table with his tab, a flirtatious smile on her face and a swing to her hips. Okay, he hadn’t misread the tone of voice. She had plenty of curves, and he felt...nothing.
He was pleasant as he signed his credit card slip, then slid out of the booth and walked from the restaurant, noting faces, aware of people in the parking lot, passing vehicles.
Behind the wheel of his Yukon, he inserted the key but, still brooding, didn’t immediately turn it.
He hoped Laura would think twice and call him—but if she didn’t, he’d call her. Just to make sure she and Jake were okay. To let her know he’d meant it. And then he’d let a couple of weeks go by and call again.
This time, he wouldn’t forget. She might not like it, but she needed someone, and he had a feeling there wasn’t anyone else.
And damned if he was going to worry about the subterranean reasons behind the determination he felt to look out for this woman and boy.
* * *
“I’LL PROBABLY GET DETENTION,” Jake grumbled.
Laura poured pancake batter onto the griddle. “You probably will.” She refrained from adding, And you deserve to.
After she woke him up, he’d dragged himself into the kitchen this morning wearing pajama bottoms that hung low on his hips and carrying a T-shirt he pulled over his head as she watched. His chest and rib cage were ridiculously pale and skinny. Anyone looking at him would think she was starving him.
“Get the juice out of the fridge, will you?” she asked.
His bare feet were silent on the vinyl floor. Not until she turned her head did she see he had the orange juice carton tipped up and was drinking right out of it.
“Jacob Vennetti!” With her free hand, she grabbed a dish towel and snapped it at him.
He dodged it effortlessly. His grin made her heart hurt. He couldn’t smile like that if he was really troubled, could he?
She flipped pancakes. “Grab the margarine and syrup, too.”
He complied. He was enthusiastic about meals.
And guns.
How could that be?
She plopped a plate holding the first stack in front of him before turning back to make more.
Behind her, he whined, “If I have to stay home this weekend, what am I supposed to do?”
“I’m sure I can think of something.” They’d been talking about scraping the several coats of peeling paint off the back deck and repainting. This was day three of dry weather, and they ought to take advantage of it, she reflected. April was a rainy month in Portland. As were...well, most months. Even in July, you took a chance planning something like an outdoor wedding around here.
Unfortunately, she was working today, as she did one or two Saturdays a month, and didn’t have time to find what he’d need to start and give him instructions.
He stuffed his mouth full as she set down a platter with more pancakes in the middle of the table and pulled out a chair herself.
“I wish I was playing Little League,” he grumbled.
“In February, you didn’t want to sign up.”
He shrugged discontentedly. She’d supported his decision, mostly because neither of them liked his coach last year and he’d have been on the same team this year. Maybe that was part of his problem, she thought, buttering her pancakes and adding a dollop of maple syrup. Maybe he had too much time on his hands. A couple of his better friends were playing baseball, which ate up a lot of their spare time.
“There are summer camps,” she pointed out. “Baseball and basketball.”
“I could do both,” he said hopefully.
Laura barely hesitated. She’d worry about the money later. Camps weren’t cheap, and she knew he’d need new basketball shoes and new cleats for baseball. All those calories he was packing in were being used for growing. “I don’t know why not,” she said. “See what Ron and Justin plan to do.”
He bent his head and didn’t say anything. Laura’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t mentioned Ron recently. And...when had either boy last called? She ached to ask if something was wrong, but wanted to preserve this morning’s tentative peace.
“How come you won’t tell me what Detective Winter said about me?” he burst out.
She swallowed a bite. Pancakes would go straight to her butt and she shouldn’t be eating them at all, but it was really hard to cook stuff like this and not eat it.
“You’re ignoring me,” he declared indignantly.
She met his eyes. “I’m refusing to repeat myself, that’s all. But since you insist, one more time—I doubt he said anything to me that he didn’t to you.”
He looked sulky. “You talked to him for ages.”
She didn’t even want to think about her conversation with Detective Ethan Winter. Not when it included them holding hands. Not when she had imagined what it would feel like to have his arms around her. To lean against him, lay her head on his very broad shoulder. Feel his lips—
No, she hadn’t imagined that until later, after Jake was in bed and she was alone. That fleeting fantasy had been especially vivid. It had horrified her to the point where she’d resolved not to think about him at all. If she ever got involved with a man again, he wouldn’t be in law enforcement. He wouldn’t carry a gun as casually as she did her purse.
Ethan Winter was off-limits, even assuming he’d been interested and not just...kind. Concerned about Jake. If his gaze had drifted from her face to her breasts, it was probably because he wasn’t being straight with her and didn’t want to meet her eyes.
Only, she didn’t quite believe that, either.
“He said I could call him if I ever need him,” her son said.
Jolted from her silent lecture to herself, she gaped at Jake. “He asked you to call?”
His face was set in stubborn lines. “He said I could if I want.”
“Why did he think you’d want to?”
He shrugged.
“Are there things you’d say to him that you don’t want to say to me?” She was proud of how calm she sounded.
“Maybe,” he muttered. He stole a peek at her. “’Cuz he’s a guy.”
“So is Uncle Brian. And you like some of your friend’s dads.”
“Yeah, but they’re not—you know.”
Cops. They weren’t cops. They didn’t carry guns. Not a one of them even owned a gun. She hoped. She knew her sister’s husband didn’t.
“You know we can talk about your dad whenever you want.”
He sneered. There was no other word for it. “You hate it when I ask about his job!”
“It’s not that.” Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t, not entirely anyway. “Your father didn’t like to talk about what he did,” she said, although that wasn’t quite right, either. He did like to brag, but he’d never talk about things going wrong, and she always knew when he was especially closed off that he’d seen something awful. He’d go out to a bar instead, to hang with his cop friends. Sometimes every night for days on end, stumbling home drunk, until she’d been forced to confront how peripheral her role in his life was.
Some of that, he couldn’t help, she knew, given his upbringing. He’d been...old-fashioned, believing women were to be protected. He hadn’t been crazy about her continuing to work, although thank God she had an employment history, given that suicide invalidated his life insurance policy. Had he given that a moment’s thought before checking out on his responsibilities? she asked herself for the thousandth time, and knew the answer: no. Or if he had, worry about his wife and child’s future hadn’t weighed heavily enough against the shame he was facing. Guilt, too; she knew he’d felt it, but was petty enough to believe in the end what he couldn’t face was the loss of everything that in his eyes made him a man.
Jake jumped up, his chair scraping back. “See? You won’t talk about it! You never do.”
He raced out of the kitchen. The slam of his bedroom door was becoming all-too familiar.
Appetite gone, she stared down at her half-eaten pancakes.
Dear God, she thought, he’s right. There was so much she didn’t want to say about Matt, it stifled her every time Jake asked questions. She’d told herself she was protecting him—but maybe it was herself she needed to protect.
Weary and discouraged, she stood and began to clear the table, scraping sticky lumps of pancake into the trash under the sink. Jake, she couldn’t help noticing, had cleared his plate before he stormed out.
The dishwasher loaded, she leaned against the edge of the counter. She had to try to talk to him...but how was she supposed to know what to say, and what she shouldn’t say? Sometimes she thought having a daughter would have been way easier—but maybe she was wrong. It wasn’t as though she understood herself very well lately, either.
Her gaze strayed to the wooden organizer at one end of the counter that held things like phone books, notepads, pens, paper clips and stamps. She’d dropped the card Ethan Winter had given her in one of the small drawers, telling herself she’d never want it but not quite willing to throw it away. She hated the pull it exerted on her.
He’d have that cop mentality, too. Just because he’d been concerned about Jake and nice to her didn’t mean he was anyone she would ever turn to.
Maybe it was time for her to think about putting Jake in counseling again.
Filing the idea for the moment, she closed her eyes, girded herself and went down the hall to knock on Jake’s door.
* * *
SHE’D FORBIDDEN JAKE to leave the house while she was at work, and was confident he hadn’t. She’d called twice, and he answered the phone both times, but predictably was furious that she was “checking up on him.”
Well, yes.
The week deteriorated from there. Sunday he helped her start scraping the deck, but complained so much she’d have rather done it alone.
He was mad that she insisted he go home after school with his cousins and wait there until she picked him up after she got off work. Why couldn’t he just go home?
“Because it’s going to take time before I believe you’re trustworthy enough again,” she said.
“Everybody cuts school!”
She gritted her teeth. “I don’t care what ‘everybody’ does. You won’t.”
His bedroom door slammed at least once every day. Laura began to wonder if he was reaching early puberty, although she hadn’t seen any other signs.
Her sister just grinned when she complained and said, “He’s spoiled you because he’s been such an easy kid.”
“Tell me at least he’s being polite at your house,” she’d begged.
Jenn had given her a quick hug. “He is. He spent ages pitching to Benji.”
Who was now in fourth grade, and any day now was going to demand his mother call him Ben before she humiliated him in front of his classmates.
Laura at least could be reassured that Jake was being nice to his younger cousins. Wrinkling her nose, she thought, Oh, good. It’s just me he’s mad at.
Saturday morning, a week after the gun show episode, Jake had gone back to his room after breakfast. Laura, grateful to be off for the day, was loading the dishwasher when her phone rang.
The number was her sister’s, which was a surprise since they hadn’t made plans for the weekend. She dried her hands and answered. “Hey. I don’t suppose you’ve decided you’re dying to scrape paint off my deck.”
“Not a chance.” Her sister hesitated. “Laura, Benji just told me something kind of worrisome I thought you should know. Um, are you alone?”
As far as she knew, Jake was still in his room. Nonetheless, she stepped outside, sliding the door closed behind her. It wasn’t raining, but the day was cooler than it had been all week and hinted that drizzle, at least, was on its way.
“Now I am,” she said. “What did Benji say?”
“Did you know Tino and his wife moved last year? Laura, their kids go to Faubion, too.”
Goose bumps of alarm rose on Laura’s arms. Faubion, kindergarten through eighth grade, was Jake’s school. And...Tino’s son was a year older than Jake, which would make him seventh grade, and his next oldest, a daughter...fifth, she thought. Then Tino’s kids stair-stepped down from there. They were a good Catholic family, and had already had three kids with Renata pregnant again the last time Laura saw them. They’d likely added a couple more since then.
“Why didn’t Jake say anything?”
“It gets worse,” her sister warned. “According to Benji, Tino’s kids have been bad-mouthing Jake. Everyone knows about the shooting now.”
“Oh, God.”
“He said kids are whispering about him. He’s seen Jake alone at recess shooting baskets instead of hanging out with friends.”
“And he didn’t say a word to me,” she said, stunned.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for telling me.” So much rage bubbled in her chest, she couldn’t believe how calm she sounded. “I...needed to know.”
“I thought so. Are you going to talk to him?”
“Yes. And then I’m going to talk to Tino.”
“Laura? That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
